Book Excerpt: Languages of Freedom- The Idea of India in Political Theory, Bombay Cinema and Progressive Urdu Poetry by Neera Chandhoke

An exclusive excerpt from Languages of Freedom: The Idea of India in Political Theory, Bombay Cinema and Progressive Urdu Poetry by Neera Chandhoke (Speaking Tiger, 2026)

The prominent political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was one of the most famous figures of the French Enlightenment as a theorist of freedom, or rather lack of it. Among the most influential thinkers in history, who inspired the French Revolution, and contributed majorly to music, to political and moral philosophy, and to the world of literature, Rousseau’s eternal search was for the perfect society that would restore freedom to where it belonged. According to him, it was the original condition of human kind.

The moment human beings are born, Rousseau argued, they lose their original innocence and are mired in webs of greed, avarice and corruption that hold society in their grip. Society and its rationalizers are complicit in this theft of innocence, and drown individuals in the maelstrom of alienation that separates them from other human beings. Human beings, he fervently believed, are good but they are corrupted by society. This was the theme of his famous essay for which he won an award in a contest organized in 1749 by the Academy of Dijon on the subject of whether the progress of the arts and sciences had contributed to the purification or the corruption of morals. He gained immediate literary fame for the essay in which he attacked civilization as having corrupted the goodness of citizens. The title of his award-winning essay was ‘What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by the natural law?’ It was better known in its shorter form as the ‘Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’ or his ‘First Discourse’.1 Essays on ‘A Discourse on Political Economy’ and ‘The Social Contract’ followed.

The task he set for himself is awe-inspiring, and he understood its magnitude. Rousseau focused on the need to allow human creativity and emotions to flourish in their full glory in freedom. But freedom cannot be protected except in a social order. He introduces his famous work, The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right, by writing thus: ‘I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be.’2

Read an interview with author Neera Chadhoke discussing this book on Kitaab

The first section of the work starts with the famous statement that ‘Man is born free: and everywhere he is in chains.’ We can think of ourselves as the masters of others, he wrote, and still remain greater slaves than they. How did this change come about? He accepted that he did not know. What can make it legitimate? This question, he thought, he could answer. Freedom, Rousseau suggested, was inhibited by legislators who manipulate public opinion and drive human beings further from each other, and from their natural innocence. The chains he spoke of were imposed by society and the state. The only answer was to design a political community that would allow human beings to live with each other without artifice, manipulation, sexual and other forms of competition, duplicity, deceit, domination, exploitation and constant dissatisfaction that is the wont of the human condition. Constant to his work was concern for human freedom, legitimacy of the state, political obligation, and justice.

The state is indispensable because individuals have to be brought together to satisfy their needs, and to escape the constant state of competition and greed. In the Social Contract, Rousseau claims to have created a society which escapes the category of the class state that functions only in the interest of the rich. In his ideal society, each person enjoys the protection of the common force while remaining as free as in the state of nature, provided they are governed by the General Will—the collective will of the citizens, which stands above individual interests. As the expression of each and every citizen, the General Will is what lends legitimacy to the law. Citizens, in obeying it, are subject only to their own will and thus remain free. Moral freedom becomes possible because one obeys a law one has prescribed for oneself. The chains forged by society can be broken.

The concept of the General Will has drawn much flak from philosophers; it is unclear and ambiguous. In democratic societies, the General Will is decided by the citizens in their sovereign assemblies. Is the General Will the sum total of each will? But that brings us to the problem of majorities and minorities, with the General Will accommodating some wills and leaving out others. Does the General Will transcend individual wills? This again is a problem, because no one can be sure that his or her will has been incorporated into the General Will. The process of identifying one’s own will in the condensate of all wills, i.e. the General Will, can be deeply frustrating, and many a philosopher has spent long hours figuring out what Rousseau meant.

Excerpted with permission from the author and the publisher of Languages of Freedom: The Idea of India in Political Theory, Bombay Cinema and Progressive Urdu Poetry by Neera Chandhoke (Speaking Tiger, 2026)

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About the Book

An urgent and panoramic work on how democracy has been imag¬ined by the great political and cultural figures of India—written by one of the most distinguished political scientists in the country.

Languages of Freedom asks a simple but urgent question: what does it mean to be free—and why does freedom so often slip through our hands?

In these wide-ranging and incisive essays, political scientist Neera Chandhoke moves between political theory, mid-20th-century Hindi cinema and Urdu poetry of the Progressive Writers’ Movement to trace how freedom has been imagined, claimed and constrained in modern India.

Beginning with early conceptions of freedom—from 19th-century revivalists to the idea of Swaraj as articulated by Dadabhai Naoroji and transformed by Gandhi—she examines how ‘Indian’ culture came to be narrowly identified with ‘Hindu’ culture. Revisiting landmark debates on swaraj, particularly those initiated by philosopher K.C. Bhattacharya, she shows how attempts to free the Indian mind from Western domination often overlooked the richness of our shared inheritance.

The book then turns to the 1930s, when, inspired by socialist currents worldwide, Urdu poets like Faiz, Majaz, Sahir and Majrooh reimagined freedom beyond independence and gave moral depth to the movement against colonialism. Cinema carried this argument forward. Examining V. Shantaram’s reformist films such as Sant Tukaram, and the searing critiques of Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy, Chandhoke shows how filmmakers exposed the limits of political freedom in a society still marked by poverty and inequality.

The final essay confronts a difficult question: can India think politically in its own voice after colonialism? What would it mean to write an Indian political theory grounded in our histories, yet alive to the present?

Across these essays runs a single insight: freedom is never a uniform, settled idea. It is argued over in philosophy, fought for in politics, and imagined in literature and popular culture—and it always runs the risk of being narrowed or lost. In recovering these different languages of freedom, Chandhoke invites us to see both what has been achieved and what remains at stake.

About the Author

Neera Chandhoke is currently Visiting Professor, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi. She was formerly Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Developing Countries Research Centre at the University of Delhi. Some of her recent books include We, the People, and Our Constitution (2024), Violence in Our Bones (2021), Rethinking Pluralism, Secularism, Tolerance (2019), Democracy and Revolutionary Politics (2015) and Contested Secessions (2012).