It’s one of those glorious Sundays – falling as it does at the end of a long weekend that started on Friday. Barring a few of you still standing to the national anthem, the rest of us are either getting ready to return from our Independence Day long weekend getaway, or playing the recap of the last few episodes of whatever streaming show we passed out watching last night.
And a few of us are hatching a plan to turn tomorrow also into a holiday – by observing the 80th anniversary of the day Subhas Chandra Bose did not die on August 18, 1945, when the plane that he was in, crashed in Japanese-ruled Formosa (modern-day Taiwan, but that’s for another time, another op-ed). We may figure out something for Tuesday as well.

For those of you emitting a disapproving dad grunt at my treatment of the day India gained its hard-won freedom from a public-owned multinational company when my father was 7, let me defend myself by saying that to truly celebrate something like Independence Day, one should tap into its celebratory core, and less into its dutiful, commemorative aspect. Unless you’re in school, of course, where a good brainwash is always rejuvenating for nanha munha to be rahi and desh ka sipahi.

Sure, 15th August is also a date on the calendar where we use a past event to pat ourselves on the back for present achievements, real or imaginary. But instead of making it a kind of non-financial Budget Day exercise, or Republic Day without the tanks, tableaux and parades – where ministers and MLAs and all sorts of camera non-shy persons wrestle with each other to be the one to hoist the flag with their own petard – I-Day could well become a Grand Party Day that celebrates the greatest f-word of them all: freedom.

It would be nicely intoxicating to recall that among all the jubilant news on the front pages of the 15th August, 1947 edition of newspapers, there were also adverts telling readers to enjoy. The Times of India, for instance, showcased the Frank Sinatra-starring musical romcom, It Happened in Brooklyn, playing at Bombay’s Metro – ‘India’s Premier Theatre’ with its ‘Every Seat a Cool Retreat’ tagline – on its front page. The Statesman in Calcutta splashed a classy, minimalist ‘It’s an Omega’ high-end wristwatch ad issued by the brand’s Indian retailers Ch Abrecht.

The Hindu (surprisingly?) devoted its front page only to advertisements, including congratulatory ones by The India Electric Works and Jabco – ‘Leaders in India’s cosmetic industry’ – brandishing the newly independent country’s flag. But standing out was the publicity poster of the Tamil fantasy adventure film, 1000 Thalaivangi Apoorva Chinthamani (Unique Chinthamani, Who Took a Thousand Lives), complete with a glitzy cutout – in colour! – of star VN Janaki (who would later go on to be Janaki Ramachandran, MGR’s wife).

If anything, Independence Day – and all the other days that come before it as well as follow – should be about practising and celebrating being free. 78 years ago, it was about literally becoming master of your own house and seeing the backs of ‘benign’, patronising asset-strippers. Today, it should be about being free under our own roof as – selfish word alert! — individuals.

In his 1941 book, The Fear of Freedom, psychoanalyst Eric Fromm distinguished between ‘freedom from’ (external constraints) and ‘freedom to’ (act or think without constraints). While modern society provided the former more than ever, Fromm argued that it hadn’t fostered the latter. What was true in the 1940s, holds true today: how so many people find relief from anxiety, paranoia and fear by relinquishing freedom. For such people, authoritarianism – whether in government, family, or community peddling anxiety, paranoia and fear – can be such a jolly good escape.

In our zamaana of the cult of the strongman, celebrating being free – rather than the ritual abstraction of ‘freedom’ – is what independent days should be all about. A flagpole dance to remember a country gaining freedom from another country would be rather wan if individuals are regularly reminded to mind their p’s and q’s, and given lectures on the limits of freedom, rather than encouraged to constantly test drive it.

But enough of gyaan. Back to the swadhinta of a Sunday… Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…