How 'Azadi' evolved from anti colonial rallying cry to political flashpoint

The contagious word "Azadi", which was the cry of Indian youth in the Jantar Mantar in the past month or at universities across India over the past decades, is often wrongly attributed to the Kashmiri secessionist movement. The ideological moorings of the Persian word “Azadi” were anchored in resistance itself, one that is etched in the political consciousness of India, though the slogan itself had failed to awaken or mobilise the anti-establishment sentiment it intended, partly due to the political stigma associated with it. That stigma makes it deeply polarised, creating an immediate ideological wall instead of broad consensus.

From anti-colonial roots to social justice

For decades leading up to 1947, demanding "Azadi" was considered the highest form of patriotism. Not just "Azadi"; many other Urdu and Persian vocabulary terms, such as "Inquilab Zindabad" and "Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna", formed the bedrock of the revolutionary expression. It is kind of an irony that the post-colonial nation-state bureaucratised the word “Azadi” and absorbed it within school and college textbooks. The word did not die, but it was pacified, losing its revolutionary potential.

It found a rebirth in the feminist movement in the 1980s in Pakistan. The framing of Azadi reverberated under General Zia-ul-Haq's dictatorship in the streets where women became the vanguard of resistance; they framed "Azadi" against Patriarchy. Zia's regime introduced repressive Islamic laws like the Hudood Ordinances, stripping women of basic rights.

Feminist activist Kamla Bhasin encountered the chant and brought it back to India. “I witnessed one such meeting, and that’s where they chanted it. The chant went: 'Aurat ka naara – azadi/Bachchon ka naara – azadi/Hum leke rahenge – azadi/Hai pyara naara – azadi,'" said Bhasin in an interview with Quint in 2019. She first raised it publicly in 1991 at a Women's Studies conference at Jadavpur University.

Simultaneously, it found another rebirth in the streets of Srinagar during the Kashmiri insurgency in the late 1980s-90s. It started to turn rhythmic and an anthem for the separatist movement in the region.

“Hum kya chahte? Azadi! Zara zor se bolo – Azadi! Hai hak hamara – Azadi! Hum cheen ke lenge – Azadi! Khushboo wali – Azadi! Hai jaan se pyari – Azadi! Aye moula dede – Azadi! Shodah ke sadkey – Azadi! Mein marr bhi Jaaun toh, mera kafan pe likhna – Azadi! Aayee, aayee – Azadi!”

With demands ranging from an independent Kashmir to unification with Pakistan. The period also saw the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley.

On February 14, 2013, following the Nirbhaya gang rape, Kamla Bhasin was leading the protest march “One Billion Rising from South Asia”. During that march, she went on to the stage in a wheelchair and delivered the highly animated version-

“Hum leke rahenge – Azadi! Tum kuch bhi karlo – Azadi! Pitra-satta se – Azadi! Loot-paat se – Azadi!”

Though she did mention that its cry for equality and social justice, it was not freedom from India but freedom within India. From there, the format spread to Indian labour unions and tribal rights groups; it seeped into universities in 2016 in JNU with people like Kanhiya Kumar, demanding Azadi from discrimination, Brahminism, Manuvad and poverty. Then it ventured into pop culture with a modern rendition in the film “Gully Boy”.

‘Azadi’ irked the Indian government. It acknowledged the revolutionary potential, became increasingly wary and viewed it as a threat. In January 2020, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said those found chanting the 'azadi slogan' during anti-CAA protests would be booked for sedition. It became a symbol of dissent in the Anti-CAA protest in 2020, then in the Farmer protest, now as recent as the CJP protests in Jantar Mantar. The state, which inherited the colonial-era sedition law, reacted almost the same as the British Colonial government did. It stigmatised the chant; the mainstream semiotic flipped the call for freedom to treason. It is criticised severely when raised at public squares or political rallies, sometimes resulting in police crackdowns, legal charges, or organisers banning the chant.

Throughout its journey, rather than having a single political meaning, “Azadi” has evolved and acquired different meanings across movements, from anti-colonial resistance and feminist campaigns to Kashmiri separatism and expression of dissent in contemporary protests over social justice.