A few days before Independence Day, I asked my daughter and her friends, all aged 13 or 14: What does freedom mean to you?
Nadia, her friend, also wanted “freedom to live in this country without fear. Oishani wrote: “I wish there was freedom of not being discriminated (against in any way) or i wish there was freedom of not being harassed. Riah bowled a yorker: “Freedom to me would be to have control over myself to be able to do things that I want, say things I want and wear things I want without ppl questioning me on decisions that do not affect them.
“freedom to me would be being able to dye my hair, get alotttt of piercings, being able to travel the world and being able to go out without the fear of a man kidnapping me,” my daughter wrote. Avantika wanted “the freedom to say ur opinions without being judged”. That qualification stayed with me: “decisions that do not affect them”. Nyla wrote: “Freedom to me is… staying in the park after 8pm with my friends and knowing im safe, freedom to me is having the world be such a good place my parents literally have no reason to stop me from stuff (excluding drinking and all obvs).”
We are rightfully proud of how we won our great country back. The safety of not having to calculate how dangerous the unwanted attention might be, and how to navigate it: leave, stay, take a bus, don’t take a bus? Call dad? Pretend to make a call? Simply go home? They’re not wrong. Meanwhile, I had assumed my daughter and her friends would equate independence with fewer rules, more screentime, later nights. And there was some of that as well. But here too, gender played a role. Maybe, someday, everyone in it will feel equally free, in all the ordinary, unremarkable moments of their lives. (Charles Assisi is co-founder of Founding Fuel. He can be reached on [email protected]. The views expressed are personal)
I think what surprised me most was my sense of surprise. I mean, as the father of girls, I worry. I know they worry. But I wouldn’t have put that worry on top of pretty much every list. What must it feel like to move through the world feeling like this? It is worth noting that this is a group of teens in Mumbai, famously one of India’s safest cities. All these young women arrived at safety and freedom in the same breath. Not merely safety from violent crime, but the everyday ease of being able to walk around or sit in a park without drawing eyes, or comments, or attention of a worse kind. Parents call it protection. Society calls it propriety. Across our country and around the world, young women face so much worse that freedom gains even darker definitions: the ability to stay in school; to refuse a marriage; to live in a home free of violence and abuse. I’m glad I asked my daughter and her friends the question. We really do need to listen more.
Yet, even here, even at 14, they know that what they have to put up with is wrong. At 14, they are already tired of negotiating this. I’m thinking of the day after, when the flags come down, the speeches end, the country goes back to work; and a 14-year-old has to decide whether she should leave the park at sunset.
Because the primary concern is surviving the day unharmed, what priorities get pushed to the side; what choices are never made; and what experiences are missed out on, all. Because adults spend a great deal of time telling children what independence means. Because now, I am no longer focused only on the celebration of August 15.
At some point, girls learn to distinguish between the things they can choose (a dress, but of the “right” kind) and the things they will have to explain (“what were you doing in the park at 8 pm?”).
