Happy 78th!

On August 15, India’s Independence Day, here are eight portraits of freedom

Actor Manoj Bajpai shared this photograph from his school days in Bettiah. He describes his dreams for his daughter and the India in which he would like to see her grow up: it is a dream of a country that more than flaunting its wealth provides equality and justice for all.

Writer and journalist Supriya Nair articulates an optimistic idea of unimagined (and unimaginable) freedom that the young might usher into our future. (In this photograph she is framed by an admirable trio of writers: Naresh Fernandes, Amit Varma and Rahul Bhatia.)

Film director, lyricist and popular standup comic Varun Grover presents an urgent vision of the artist in contemporary India. What can each one of us do to remain free?

Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair of Alt-news want us to learn the difference between fact and opinion, fact and fiction, fact and fake news. Information is critical to a sense of democracy that is free of propaganda and hate.

What to the slave is the Fourth of July? This was the question famously asked by Frederick Douglass. On this Independence Day, let us remember that Umar Khalid is in prison without the benefit of a trial. Here is Umar’s friend Banojyotsna with an important appeal.

Then there is the migrant worker Pankaj Kumar whose sense of self is tied to his meager earnings far away from home carrying heavy bags. For each bag, ten rupees.

In a small town near Kozhikode, I asked the journalist Sidhique Kappan to tell me what freedom meant to him.

At the end, the words of writer and professor of literature at Delhi University, Apoorvanand: “Freedom is a practice. A daily one. If the idea of it is surrendered to someone else, it risks disappearance. Mandates in the guise of necessity should be refused—whether it is with respect to the national anthem or the national flag.”