A woman practicing yoga by the Himalaya mountains in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir. Image for representation only. Getty ImagesFreedom, for me, is basically personal freedom. But at the same time, it should not breach the freedom and rights of another individual.
We enjoy several rights and liberties that our constitution guarantees. But the freedom for self- determination is what the times and the new generation demand the most. Sadly, at present, the
situation is that a person has to undergo merciless trial simply for the choices she makes.
For every likes and dislikes; for joining a particular course, for selecting a job, for inviting a person you like to your life...Thus, for each and every choice in your life, you have to face a hell lot of
questions from the people around you and even from the strangers.... What a disgusting state of affairs!
Everybody has the right to marry the person of one's choice; just like that everyone has an equal right to remain unmarried. So many people want to remain as singles nowadays. But the one who takes such a decision will have to undergo a tiring time standing for the scrutiny of the public. Every individual has the right to decide on how to marry and whom, how many children they need and when, so on and so forth.
The core of the problem is that we often don't realize that our freedom has a limit when we intermingle with another person, however close he or she may be. Society should give the freedom for each person not to be judged by the mob for her likes and dislikes.
Of course, women in our society are yet to see the dawn of many of these individual rights. Their choices remain very limited and at the same time, it's not uncommon that most of them don't have any like to call their own. Their likes and dislikes are that of their kith and kin.
Anthem, the novella written by the Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, details on the story of a world of those who lost their identity forever. The people there don't have even a name of their own, but only numbers. Even the use of 'I' is banned there. A democratic country should not be like that- a world without individual rights, a world were individual diversity doesn't exist at all.
(The author is a Malayalam filmmaker and screen writer)
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