"To be able to free oneself is nothing; the harder part is being able to live with one's freedom"
:Gide
If one has to define existentialism in simplest terms, a very good definition would be "Life of a person has no meaning until and unless he himself fills it with a meaning relevant to him." In other words, the very existence of a person is in danger if he does not know what is the purpose of his life in the society and this purpose has to be defined by him and only him, for in this world, freedom of choices exists and he and only he is responsible for the actions and consequences. This stream of philosophy categorically denies the existence of god as god and freedom of choices can not exist side by side. This idea was intensively promulgated by Sirtre in Europe after second world war and found a huge support among youth. The main reason behind its popularity was the devastating 2nd WW which left Europeans (as a matter of fact people all over the world) delusional. Faith over institutions like church, state were trampled, Bible became apocryphal and a mist of uncertainty over the basic human nature prevailed. In this backdrop, existentialism brought a new ray of hope, an ideal society where people will free to take their decisions, where they can forget their past and can create a new order where everyone will be looked upon equally. In this society, people will hold the ultimate power to decide the course of their future and not the state. This very idea of freedom liberated the european society from conformity to orthodox institutions and set it on the right path of growth and development.
Compare the situation with India. When British vacated India, the socio-economic situation was similar to, if not worse than any other european country. Though existentialism never found its way among the masses of the country but one can safely assume that the top leaders (specially Nehru) of the country at that time identified the freedom of choices they can execute in deciding the course of development. India's foreign policy (specially NAM), a closed economy were few of the glimpses of freedom of choice even if they were partial in nature. Looking at the initial few years of growth and development, one can say that India was on a right path and it might have given a neck to neck competition to other developed countries. But then what went wrong which left the country in its current state, a state defined by corruption, political hegemony, nepotism, poverty, illiteracy?
Sirte throughout his life flirted with communist ideas. His ideas were based on the fact that if people assume that they have freedom of choice, they will use it treating others equal i.e. liberty of one will ensure the liberty of other. However, the other extreme of it also exists which when practised will have severe ramification on the freedom of individual as became the case in India. If the freedom of choice is with the ego maniacs who consider others as no more than dirt, the whole concept of liberty and freedom would collapse as in that scenario, one can not be free without curtailing other's freedom. The later political stage in India (70s onwards) is full of such ego maniacs who exercised politics for personal gains leaving aside the society/common man. But then why they were/are not stopped? The answer lies in the core philosophy itself. The Indian public since beginning has been kept in delusion of a perfunctory equality and freedom. Political leaders, very cleverly have fomented the divisions in the society on the basis of caste, religion, region and language and have made people believe that no choice exists but to stick to their "in group" . Only the in group will take care of the needs and security of its members but not the whole society. This has lead to the severe limitation in the choices that people have while electing their representatives in legislative assemblies.
The need of the hour is to make people believe that they are responsible for the current situation and it is in their hands to change the face of the society. They do have freedom of choices, a fact strongly backed by the constitution of India. In this regard the movements of Anna Hazare should be given credit for making people at least think that how and why should few "ombudsmen" take hold of the socio-economic situation for their personal interest leaving aside the superordinate goal envisioned by the makers of our nation. What we need is more and more movements of this nature which strike at the very core of socio-economic ad political conservatism. The freedom of choice and its right execution will make our life purposeful for which we exist.
