Colonial Chains to Cognitive Clarity: Rethinking Freedom in Modern India

Freedom is not the negation of chains, but the affirmation of clarity. The national flag flutters against the August sky. Patriotic songs echo through city streets. Children pin saffron, white and green badges to their shirts. India celebrates yet another year of its hard-won independence. But somewhere beneath this external celebration lies a quiet question: Are we truly free?

In 1947, India broke free from colonial chains, but only externally. The British may have left but the mental architecture of hierarchy, group-think and self-doubt they designed is still there. And so while we recite the words of liberty, many are nevertheless still bound, conditioned by incapacity based on beliefs that never belonged to us. Freedom, in modern India, is no longer a war of swords. It is a war of thought.

To enslave a nation, you don’t just seize its land, you steal its stories. Colonialism didn’t just rewrite our laws and divide our maps. It rewrote the way we think. The English language, while a bridge to opportunity, also became a subtle tool of cultural hierarchy. Western education was introduced to produce clerks, not thinkers. We learned to see ourselves from foreign eyes: our skin too brown, our traditions too backward, our accents too broken.

Generations grew up mistrusting their own roots, dismissing Ayurveda for imported pills, Indian philosophy for Eurocentric logic and regional languages for colonial fluency. This wasn’t just loss of land, it was loss of selfhood. Even after Independence, we still have the remnants: colourism, elitism, casteism and an indefatigable worship of anything and everything from the West. So what do we do when the oppressor no longer wears a uniform but whispers from within?

We often imagine freedom as external: no rules, no restrictions. But real freedom begins internally with the courage to examine our inherited beliefs. To be truly independent today means to be cognitively clear. It means looking at what we’ve been told about caste, class, gender, religion and asking, Is this truly mine? It means shifting from collective conditioning to conscious awareness. It means refusing to let outdated social structures dictate our choices. Cognitive freedom allows us to move from reaction to reflection. From inherited fear to informed choice. From mindless repetition to mindful resistance.

The traumas of colonialism have seeped into our families, education and silence. We raise children to obey, not question. We dismiss therapy as a Western fad, yet live with unresolved generational pain. We tell our girls to be independent but still measure their worth in marriages. We claim caste is irrelevant but make assumptions based on surnames. Healing begins when we name these contradictions. When we stop pretending that freedom is a date in the calendar and start understanding it as a practice.

Cognitive clarity does not come from denial, it comes from deeper dialogue. From a kind of education that respects multiple truths, a kind of therapy that includes ancestral wounds, a kind of art that revives our voices and a kind of relationship based on consent rather than control. 

Freedom is not a place, it is a daily employment of negotiation within ourselves. It is the ability to say no without guilt, to set boundaries without shame, to ask for help without stigma and to embrace who you are without discriminating who someone else is. Freedom is not about uncritically romanticizing the past, it is about engaging with the past mindfully. It is about asking ourselves, which parts of our past empower us and which part of it disempower us?It is about rethinking masculinity to contain softness, leadership to contain empathy and success to contain rest.  It will be shaped by how free its people feel within and how safe they are to be different, to dissent, to dream.

This Independence Day, let’s move beyond tokenism, plastic flags and patriotic posts. Let us strive for deeper freedom. Freedom that we show up in the way we think, the way we relate and the way we heal. 

Let us teach our children not only how to remember the names of freedom fighters but also how to be brave enough to recognize the chains in their own minds. Let us build classrooms where curiosity is valued over compliance. Workplaces where voices are heard, not hushed. Homes where emotions are allowed, not punished. To honour the freedom we were gifted, we must do the work of becoming freer people.

Colonialism may have been a political event. But decolonization is a psychological process. As we remember the sacrifices that got us here, let us also take responsibility for where we are going. Let us not pass on the same chains, simply painted in different colours. Let us not reduce freedom to rituals. Let us redefine it as a conscious, courageous way of living. One that questions, heals and evolves.

Because true independence is not just in the past we celebrate. It is in the future we choose to create.

Written By : Ms. Yatika Sehgal Psychology Honors, Delhi University