Adeeb Aur Azadi-e-raaye

Freedom of expression, whether it belongs to a writer or an ordinary person, is an intrinsic aspect of human freedom that continually manifests itself through the various blessings of civilization and culture. Consider how we have evolved: instead of surviving on wild fruits and roots, we now cultivate our own food from the earth, preserve it, and cook it over a fire. Instead of traveling on foot, we journey by horse, carriage, automobile, and airplane. Rather than suffering and perishing from the extremes of heat, cold, and rain, we live in comfortable homes. We build bridges and dams. Instead of quietly succumbing to diseases and epidemics, we fiercely defend our right to live and thrive in good health. These achievements, along with countless others that allow us to lead comfortable and civilized lives today, are all manifestations of this very freedom—a freedom humanity has forged through its own knowledge and action.

How was this achieved? Not by evading the laws of nature, nor by exercising blind willpower, but by conquering nature through obedience to its laws. There is undoubtedly a dialectical relationship between humanity and nature, but it is essential to understand its true form. Humanity opposes nature not as an external entity, but as an integral part of it. The real conflict lies between human knowledge and ignorance. Humanity is constrained by ignorance, yet liberated by the power of knowledge and action. Today, human freedom has reached such heights that we are no longer prisoners even of this earth, which our poets have long called the abode of sorrow. The earth exerts every possible force to prevent humanity from escaping its confines of time and space, and the heavens make no less of an effort to hinder our flight. Here, a trap of fiery cosmic whirlpools is laid; there, a barrage of meteoric arrows is unleashed. Yet this magician called humanity—who is merely a handful of dust in name, but in reality, the very essence of the universe—overcomes all these obstacles. Today, humanity pitches its tent on the moon and marches onward toward Venus.

Who today would deny that this is the miracle of human freedom? Yet, there are those who declare this earth—which, when viewed from the surface of the moon, appears as the fourth heaven—to be the prison of Adam. They proclaim Iblis (Satan) to be a greater inventor than the children of Adam. They attribute the credit for all these human achievements to Satan. How fortunate is Satan to have such admirers! Someone has rightly said that man's greatest devil is man himself. How amusing it is that, on the one hand, they attribute all these marvels to Satan, yet they do not hesitate to use his inventions. It seems they have no aversion to airplanes, motorcars, radium therapy, or vitality injections; rather, their aversion is to the knowledge that makes the creation of these things possible. Satan's inventions are deemed blessed, but his knowledge is condemned. Perhaps this is because they merely purchase these things rather than manufacturing them themselves. But if—heaven forbid—we were forced to manufacture all these things within our own country, would Satan's vast knowledge still be condemned? If the answer is no, then what weight remains in the notion that freedom of thought is the invention of Iblis? History bears witness that all human liberties are indebted to the freedom of thought. It is knowledge that liberates humanity, not frivolity, erratic behavior, or blind willpower.

The human soul is not only imprisoned when confined by time and space or constrained by the forces of nature. It is equally imprisoned when it becomes a captive of superstition and illusion; when it draws a restrictive circle around its own thinking; when it begins to worship the idol of a single idea; or when, indifferent to the interplay of intellect and experience, it becomes consumed by blind emotion or madness. Furthermore, the soul is imprisoned when it surrenders its very essence of humanity, bowing to a tyrant's decree that dictates: You are not free in your thoughts, in your choice of opinion, or in your expression. Freedom of action stems from freedom of thought, and freedom of thought stems from freedom of action. These two facets of human liberty are so deeply intertwined that they can neither be separated from one another, nor can they pave the way for human freedom in isolation. Whenever a Galileo is silenced from expressing his views, the restriction is not merely placed upon his individual freedom of expression, but upon an entire chain of inventions and the very construction of a new world.

I will now turn to another aspect of this subject. Freedom of expression is the fundamental right of every human being, not just of writers, because all of humanity is endowed with speech and intellect. Why, then, should writers be granted any special privilege in exercising this right? Is it because a writer is more sensitive, conscious, wise, and perceptive than the average person? I am willing to concede this superiority, provided that the individual is a human being first and a writer second, and that their literature is not merely didactic, but deeply empathetic. However, this superiority does not elevate the writer's right to freedom of expression above that of ordinary people, nor does it diminish the public's right in comparison to the writer's. On the contrary, both are equally entitled to it. The most fascinating aspect of this dynamic is that the writer's freedom of expression is actually contingent upon the public's freedom of expression. A writer does not express an opinion in a work of art merely for the sake of exercising freedom. Rather, they do so because they present their chosen message as a universal principle or an objective truth. The writer inherently desires that the opinion they have freely chosen to express will, in turn, be freely adopted by others as their own.

Now, consider the social implications of this concept. The very act of expressing a freely chosen opinion demands that the freedom of expression of others be equally championed. Without this universal freedom, a writer's opinion can neither be freely adopted by others, nor can it be acted upon. In such a scenario, if a writer claims that the public does not require the same freedom of expression that they themselves need, it should be understood that they are not a true writer, but rather a thorough Philistine (a narrow-minded person).

However, this principle applies only to those writers who strive to be human beings before becoming writers, whose art is inherently an exercise in human-building, and who keep their art and their personalities deeply rooted in the lives of the common people. It does not apply to those for whom literature is merely a technique for peddling ideas, and who use this technique to profit even during a recession of free expression. I will elaborate further on this point once I have established the true definition of freedom.

*Azadi*, *hurriyat*, *sofernam*, *ahoora*, *marok*, liberty, freedom—all these words belong to different languages but carry the exact same meaning. They are so melodious that the moment you hear them, they sink straight into the soul. Therefore, no matter how much is said or written in their praise, it is never enough. In the words of Croce, freedom is the very essence of humanity, and freedom is the ultimate summary of the struggle of human history. However, if our goal is to promote and protect it, mere praise is not enough; it requires active struggle. Furthermore, it is essential to understand freedom from a concrete historical perspective.

In this regard, I first want to dispel the misconception that freedom is a gift of nature. Freedom is a gift of human social life, not a natural endowment inherited biologically. Thus, when it is said that freedom is a natural or birthright of man, it simply means that because a human being is a social creature, he inherits this freedom from social life as a tradition. And since freedom is the result of collective human effort—of social knowledge and action—every individual has an equal right to inherit this tradition from society. Freedom is not something a child brings with them from the mother's womb. Nature undoubtedly instills in us the capacity to achieve freedom, but this capacity is transformed into reality through social tradition—something an individual learns, acquires, and then carries forward.

Consequently, when a nation is deprived of the blessings of freedom, the responsibility lies not only with its present but also with its past. However, this does not mean that if the tradition of freedom—or the tradition of struggling for it—is weak in a nation's history, that nation can never achieve freedom. Tradition is not some mysterious entity; it is actively created. It is true, however, that in such circumstances, the burden of consciousness, knowledge, and action upon the nation increases manifold, and it must make immense sacrifices.

Having clarified this, I would now like to shed light on the nature of freedom's historical evolution. Human freedom began the moment a person first used a piece of stone or wood as a tool to achieve a specific purpose. Therefore, the famous English philosopher Whitehead is absolutely correct in stating that freedom is the ability to translate one's goals into reality. The first and most fundamental human freedom is the freedom of action—the act of achieving a goal or creating something. Initially, however, this freedom remained highly restricted for a long time. It only expanded when humanity, through a combined process of continuous observation, experience, and intellect, acquired knowledge of the laws of nature and intelligently applied it to achieve its objectives.

Technology and the knowledge of nature are the two forces that have helped liberate humanity from the tyranny of nature. However, ever since the ancient era of slavery, when humanity began using this power to conquer nations and enslave people—even if the initial motive was merely to secure labor for production—it birthed a contradiction within society. This contradiction gave rise not only to social injustice but also to political oppression, which manifests as the suppression of the willpower and freedom of choice of the subjugated and the poor in order to maintain a system of dominance. Consequently, on one hand, the negative philosophies of fatalism and asceticism are born when the masses are deprived of their freedom of action through the continuous suppression of their willpower and freedom of choice. On the other hand, this very political oppression and censorship also give rise to romantic philosophies of rebellion, which are rooted in blind willpower, the worship of raw emotion and frenzy, or the hope for a messiah and the manifestation of miracles.

However, both of these paths to achieving freedom are misleading. The first path is entirely negative, while the second path ultimately proves unsuccessful. Just as humanity transforms external nature through the knowledge of its laws rather than through sheer willpower alone, it overcomes social injustices and political oppression not merely through willpower, but by acquiring knowledge of the laws of social evolution. In this context, it would not be out of place to mention that the freedom of willpower is nothing more than the ability to make a decision about something based on a complete understanding of it. Alongside willpower, a comprehensive knowledge of objective reality is essential for achieving one's goals. This means that the attainment of freedom does not lie in ignoring the resistance of external circumstances and placing blind faith in internal freedom. Rather, it lies in acquiring a complete understanding of external conditions and then mobilizing one's internal faculties accordingly.

The aspects of freedom of expression we have considered so far are these: freedom of expression is the internal aspect of human freedom of action, and both these aspects are intrinsically united. Freedom of expression leads to freedom of action, and freedom of action leads to freedom of expression; and freedom of action is simply the ability to translate one's goals into reality. A writer's freedom of expression is conditional upon the freedom of expression of the masses, or of all humanity, because freedom is a traditional heritage of social life, not an innate biological endowment. While humans undoubtedly derive the potential mental capacity for freedom from nature, they transform this potential into reality through a social process, aided by the collective social mind. Therefore, both freedom and the freedom of expression are the rightful share of every human being. No individual has the right to suppress the freedom of expression of others through any system of dominance, be it through the barrel of a gun, the power of capital, or the force of propaganda.

I will now examine freedom of expression in relation to literature. In this context, the first question that arises is: since literature is fundamentally an imaginative representation of reality, to what extent should it be judged by the standards of pure reason? The second question is: to what extent does a conscious writer bear a greater responsibility to secure freedom of expression compared to the average person? As for the first question, it may seem tangential to the topic, but I have raised it because a writer does not always present a positive viewpoint. Sometimes—in fact, quite often—they present a negative perspective; their gaze falls more heavily on flaws than on virtues. Furthermore, to highlight a particular flaw, a writer might distort reality or present it with exaggeration. In all such cases, a writer's opinion should not be judged solely through the lens of strict rationality; one must also make room for the eye of imagination. And if their expression happens to be exceedingly bitter and harsh, it must be tolerated.

I have raised the second question because every great writer and every great thinker, by virtue of their extraordinary insight, thinks far beyond the historical confines of their time. Sometimes, they utter something that shatters an order established over centuries. In retribution, they might be bound to rocks like Prometheus... or hanged like Bruno, but this does not destroy the idea. A secret, once revealed from the womb of nature, inevitably grows and flourishes. And it is the result of the efforts of such individuals that humanity, which crawled like an ant for its first thousands of years, is seen leaping forward today.

In light of these circumstances, the true nature of the relationship between the writer and freedom of expression, in my view, is that the writer is not merely a seeker of freedom of expression, but also its creator. They do not beg for freedom; rather, they seize it and distribute its wealth among all people. And just as there is no limit to human freedom of action, there is similarly no limit to human freedom of thought. This is because freedom is the primary prerequisite for any creation or creative process, and human beings live on through their diverse creations. Through their creative process, they continuously reinvent themselves.

Freedom of expression, whether it belongs to a writer or an ordinary person, is an intrinsic aspect of human freedom that continually manifests itself through the various blessings of civilization and culture. Consider how we have evolved: instead of surviving on wild fruits and roots, we now cultivate our own food from the earth, preserve it, and cook it over a fire. Instead of traveling on foot, we journey by horse, carriage, automobile, and airplane. Rather than suffering and perishing from the extremes of heat, cold, and rain, we live in comfortable homes. We build bridges and dams. Instead of quietly succumbing to diseases and epidemics, we fiercely defend our right to live and thrive in good health. These achievements, along with countless others that allow us to lead comfortable and civilized lives today, are all manifestations of this very freedom—a freedom humanity has forged through its own knowledge and action.

How was this achieved? Not by evading the laws of nature, nor by exercising blind willpower, but by conquering nature through obedience to its laws. There is undoubtedly a dialectical relationship between humanity and nature, but it is essential to understand its true form. Humanity opposes nature not as an external entity, but as an integral part of it. The real conflict lies between human knowledge and ignorance. Humanity is constrained by ignorance, yet liberated by the power of knowledge and action. Today, human freedom has reached such heights that we are no longer prisoners even of this earth, which our poets have long called the abode of sorrow. The earth exerts every possible force to prevent humanity from escaping its confines of time and space, and the heavens make no less of an effort to hinder our flight. Here, a trap of fiery cosmic whirlpools is laid; there, a barrage of meteoric arrows is unleashed. Yet this magician called humanity—who is merely a handful of dust in name, but in reality, the very essence of the universe—overcomes all these obstacles. Today, humanity pitches its tent on the moon and marches onward toward Venus.

Who today would deny that this is the miracle of human freedom? Yet, there are those who declare this earth—which, when viewed from the surface of the moon, appears as the fourth heaven—to be the prison of Adam. They proclaim Iblis (Satan) to be a greater inventor than the children of Adam. They attribute the credit for all these human achievements to Satan. How fortunate is Satan to have such admirers! Someone has rightly said that man's greatest devil is man himself. How amusing it is that, on the one hand, they attribute all these marvels to Satan, yet they do not hesitate to use his inventions. It seems they have no aversion to airplanes, motorcars, radium therapy, or vitality injections; rather, their aversion is to the knowledge that makes the creation of these things possible. Satan's inventions are deemed blessed, but his knowledge is condemned. Perhaps this is because they merely purchase these things rather than manufacturing them themselves. But if—heaven forbid—we were forced to manufacture all these things within our own country, would Satan's vast knowledge still be condemned? If the answer is no, then what weight remains in the notion that freedom of thought is the invention of Iblis? History bears witness that all human liberties are indebted to the freedom of thought. It is knowledge that liberates humanity, not frivolity, erratic behavior, or blind willpower.

The human soul is not only imprisoned when confined by time and space or constrained by the forces of nature. It is equally imprisoned when it becomes a captive of superstition and illusion; when it draws a restrictive circle around its own thinking; when it begins to worship the idol of a single idea; or when, indifferent to the interplay of intellect and experience, it becomes consumed by blind emotion or madness. Furthermore, the soul is imprisoned when it surrenders its very essence of humanity, bowing to a tyrant's decree that dictates: You are not free in your thoughts, in your choice of opinion, or in your expression. Freedom of action stems from freedom of thought, and freedom of thought stems from freedom of action. These two facets of human liberty are so deeply intertwined that they can neither be separated from one another, nor can they pave the way for human freedom in isolation. Whenever a Galileo is silenced from expressing his views, the restriction is not merely placed upon his individual freedom of expression, but upon an entire chain of inventions and the very construction of a new world.

I will now turn to another aspect of this subject. Freedom of expression is the fundamental right of every human being, not just of writers, because all of humanity is endowed with speech and intellect. Why, then, should writers be granted any special privilege in exercising this right? Is it because a writer is more sensitive, conscious, wise, and perceptive than the average person? I am willing to concede this superiority, provided that the individual is a human being first and a writer second, and that their literature is not merely didactic, but deeply empathetic. However, this superiority does not elevate the writer's right to freedom of expression above that of ordinary people, nor does it diminish the public's right in comparison to the writer's. On the contrary, both are equally entitled to it. The most fascinating aspect of this dynamic is that the writer's freedom of expression is actually contingent upon the public's freedom of expression. A writer does not express an opinion in a work of art merely for the sake of exercising freedom. Rather, they do so because they present their chosen message as a universal principle or an objective truth. The writer inherently desires that the opinion they have freely chosen to express will, in turn, be freely adopted by others as their own.

Now, consider the social implications of this concept. The very act of expressing a freely chosen opinion demands that the freedom of expression of others be equally championed. Without this universal freedom, a writer's opinion can neither be freely adopted by others, nor can it be acted upon. In such a scenario, if a writer claims that the public does not require the same freedom of expression that they themselves need, it should be understood that they are not a true writer, but rather a thorough Philistine (a narrow-minded person).

However, this principle applies only to those writers who strive to be human beings before becoming writers, whose art is inherently an exercise in human-building, and who keep their art and their personalities deeply rooted in the lives of the common people. It does not apply to those for whom literature is merely a technique for peddling ideas, and who use this technique to profit even during a recession of free expression. I will elaborate further on this point once I have established the true definition of freedom.

*Azadi*, *hurriyat*, *sofernam*, *ahoora*, *marok*, liberty, freedom—all these words belong to different languages but carry the exact same meaning. They are so melodious that the moment you hear them, they sink straight into the soul. Therefore, no matter how much is said or written in their praise, it is never enough. In the words of Croce, freedom is the very essence of humanity, and freedom is the ultimate summary of the struggle of human history. However, if our goal is to promote and protect it, mere praise is not enough; it requires active struggle. Furthermore, it is essential to understand freedom from a concrete historical perspective.

In this regard, I first want to dispel the misconception that freedom is a gift of nature. Freedom is a gift of human social life, not a natural endowment inherited biologically. Thus, when it is said that freedom is a natural or birthright of man, it simply means that because a human being is a social creature, he inherits this freedom from social life as a tradition. And since freedom is the result of collective human effort—of social knowledge and action—every individual has an equal right to inherit this tradition from society. Freedom is not something a child brings with them from the mother's womb. Nature undoubtedly instills in us the capacity to achieve freedom, but this capacity is transformed into reality through social tradition—something an individual learns, acquires, and then carries forward.

Consequently, when a nation is deprived of the blessings of freedom, the responsibility lies not only with its present but also with its past. However, this does not mean that if the tradition of freedom—or the tradition of struggling for it—is weak in a nation's history, that nation can never achieve freedom. Tradition is not some mysterious entity; it is actively created. It is true, however, that in such circumstances, the burden of consciousness, knowledge, and action upon the nation increases manifold, and it must make immense sacrifices.

Having clarified this, I would now like to shed light on the nature of freedom's historical evolution. Human freedom began the moment a person first used a piece of stone or wood as a tool to achieve a specific purpose. Therefore, the famous English philosopher Whitehead is absolutely correct in stating that freedom is the ability to translate one's goals into reality. The first and most fundamental human freedom is the freedom of action—the act of achieving a goal or creating something. Initially, however, this freedom remained highly restricted for a long time. It only expanded when humanity, through a combined process of continuous observation, experience, and intellect, acquired knowledge of the laws of nature and intelligently applied it to achieve its objectives.

Technology and the knowledge of nature are the two forces that have helped liberate humanity from the tyranny of nature. However, ever since the ancient era of slavery, when humanity began using this power to conquer nations and enslave people—even if the initial motive was merely to secure labor for production—it birthed a contradiction within society. This contradiction gave rise not only to social injustice but also to political oppression, which manifests as the suppression of the willpower and freedom of choice of the subjugated and the poor in order to maintain a system of dominance. Consequently, on one hand, the negative philosophies of fatalism and asceticism are born when the masses are deprived of their freedom of action through the continuous suppression of their willpower and freedom of choice. On the other hand, this very political oppression and censorship also give rise to romantic philosophies of rebellion, which are rooted in blind willpower, the worship of raw emotion and frenzy, or the hope for a messiah and the manifestation of miracles.

However, both of these paths to achieving freedom are misleading. The first path is entirely negative, while the second path ultimately proves unsuccessful. Just as humanity transforms external nature through the knowledge of its laws rather than through sheer willpower alone, it overcomes social injustices and political oppression not merely through willpower, but by acquiring knowledge of the laws of social evolution. In this context, it would not be out of place to mention that the freedom of willpower is nothing more than the ability to make a decision about something based on a complete understanding of it. Alongside willpower, a comprehensive knowledge of objective reality is essential for achieving one's goals. This means that the attainment of freedom does not lie in ignoring the resistance of external circumstances and placing blind faith in internal freedom. Rather, it lies in acquiring a complete understanding of external conditions and then mobilizing one's internal faculties accordingly.

The aspects of freedom of expression we have considered so far are these: freedom of expression is the internal aspect of human freedom of action, and both these aspects are intrinsically united. Freedom of expression leads to freedom of action, and freedom of action leads to freedom of expression; and freedom of action is simply the ability to translate one's goals into reality. A writer's freedom of expression is conditional upon the freedom of expression of the masses, or of all humanity, because freedom is a traditional heritage of social life, not an innate biological endowment. While humans undoubtedly derive the potential mental capacity for freedom from nature, they transform this potential into reality through a social process, aided by the collective social mind. Therefore, both freedom and the freedom of expression are the rightful share of every human being. No individual has the right to suppress the freedom of expression of others through any system of dominance, be it through the barrel of a gun, the power of capital, or the force of propaganda.

I will now examine freedom of expression in relation to literature. In this context, the first question that arises is: since literature is fundamentally an imaginative representation of reality, to what extent should it be judged by the standards of pure reason? The second question is: to what extent does a conscious writer bear a greater responsibility to secure freedom of expression compared to the average person? As for the first question, it may seem tangential to the topic, but I have raised it because a writer does not always present a positive viewpoint. Sometimes—in fact, quite often—they present a negative perspective; their gaze falls more heavily on flaws than on virtues. Furthermore, to highlight a particular flaw, a writer might distort reality or present it with exaggeration. In all such cases, a writer's opinion should not be judged solely through the lens of strict rationality; one must also make room for the eye of imagination. And if their expression happens to be exceedingly bitter and harsh, it must be tolerated.

I have raised the second question because every great writer and every great thinker, by virtue of their extraordinary insight, thinks far beyond the historical confines of their time. Sometimes, they utter something that shatters an order established over centuries. In retribution, they might be bound to rocks like Prometheus... or hanged like Bruno, but this does not destroy the idea. A secret, once revealed from the womb of nature, inevitably grows and flourishes. And it is the result of the efforts of such individuals that humanity, which crawled like an ant for its first thousands of years, is seen leaping forward today.

In light of these circumstances, the true nature of the relationship between the writer and freedom of expression, in my view, is that the writer is not merely a seeker of freedom of expression, but also its creator. They do not beg for freedom; rather, they seize it and distribute its wealth among all people. And just as there is no limit to human freedom of action, there is similarly no limit to human freedom of thought. This is because freedom is the primary prerequisite for any creation or creative process, and human beings live on through their diverse creations. Through their creative process, they continuously reinvent themselves.