Freedom (G.B Shaw) — NCERT Solutions

Given/Context: Krishnamurti argues that externally imposed discipline is incompatible with true freedom.

Answer:
According to Krishnamurti, freedom and (externally imposed) discipline are contradictory because:

1. Discipline suppresses the individual: When discipline is imposed from outside — by a teacher, a tradition, a guru, or a social norm — it requires the individual to conform to a pattern set by someone else. This conformity kills independent thought and sensitivity.

2. Discipline is a wall: Krishnamurti uses the image of 'walls of discipline' to suggest that external rules enclose the mind rather than liberating it. A mind enclosed by rules cannot explore freely.

3. Imitation versus intelligence: Discipline based on imitation (doing what others do, following prescribed rules) prevents the awakening of intelligence. True freedom, for Krishnamurti, comes from intelligence — the ability to inquire, question, and understand for oneself.

4. Fear as the basis of discipline: Much external discipline is maintained through fear of punishment or social disapproval. A person acting out of fear is not free.

5. Freedom requires sensitivity: To be truly free, one must be sensitive — open and responsive to the world. Rigid discipline makes the mind mechanical and insensitive.

However, Krishnamurti does not reject all discipline — he implies that an inwardly understood discipline that arises from one's own intelligence is different from imposed conformity. It is the latter that contradicts freedom.

Given/Context: Krishnamurti argues that genuine inquiry is the path to freedom.

Answer:
According to Krishnamurti, the process of inquiry leads to true freedom in the following ways:

1. Breaking the habit of conformity: When one genuinely inquires — asks 'why?' rather than simply accepting — one begins to break free from the conditioning of tradition, social norms, and inherited beliefs.

2. Awakening intelligence: Inquiry is not mere intellectual questioning but a deep, honest examination of one's own mind, fears, and assumptions. This process awakens intelligence — the capacity to see things as they are rather than as one has been told they are.

3. Developing sensitivity: Through inquiry, one becomes aware of the world around oneself — the suffering of others, the beauty of nature, the complexity of human relationships. This sensitivity is itself a form of freedom, as it breaks the prison of self-enclosure.

4. Freedom from fear: Much of what enslaves people inwardly is fear — fear of what others think, fear of failure, fear of the unknown. Honest inquiry into the nature of one's fears helps dissolve them.

5. Self-knowledge: Krishnamurti emphasises that knowing oneself — understanding one's own conditioning, desires, and prejudices — is the foundation of freedom. This self-knowledge can only come through sustained, honest inquiry.

6. Sowing the seed of freedom: Krishnamurti says that to awaken intelligence through inquiry is to 'sow the seed of freedom' — once this intelligence is alive, the individual can tackle all problems of life from a position of inner freedom rather than conditioned reaction.

Given/Context: Shaw argues that the right to vote is used as a substitute for genuine freedom, keeping the masses content while real power remains with the privileged.

Discussion Answer:
Shaw's observation has considerable relevance to the Indian context, though with important qualifications.

Ways in which it holds good:

1. Economic inequality persists: Despite universal adult franchise since 1947, vast economic inequality continues. Millions of Indians remain in poverty, working as agricultural labourers, domestic workers, or in the unorganised sector under exploitative conditions — a form of economic slavery.
2. Voting without real change: Elections are held regularly, but many voters feel that regardless of which party wins, their daily conditions of life — wages, access to healthcare, education, and housing — change little.
3. Propaganda and false consciousness: Political parties, media, and religious/caste identities are used to mobilise voters in ways that may not serve their economic interests, much as Shaw describes.
4. Education and conditioning: The education system, while improved, still reflects class and caste biases that condition people to accept their social position.

Where it does not fully hold:

1. India's democracy has genuinely empowered marginalised groups — Dalits, women, and OBCs have used the vote to gain political representation and policy benefits (reservations, MGNREGA, etc.).
2. Civil society, a free press, and judicial independence provide checks that Shaw's England lacked.
3. Social movements have successfully used democratic processes to win real rights.

Conclusion: Shaw's insight is a useful critical lens, but India's democracy is not merely a facade — it has delivered real, if incomplete, gains. The challenge is to deepen democracy so that political freedom translates into genuine economic and social freedom for all.

Given/Context: Shaw warns that human beings, though they have learned to manipulate Nature through science and chemistry, should not assume they have mastered her completely.

Discussion Answer:
This statement is remarkably prophetic and resonates powerfully with contemporary environmental concerns.

Shaw's original point:
Shaw acknowledges that science and chemistry have given human beings enormous power over Nature — the ability to produce food artificially, control diseases, and manipulate natural processes. However, he cautions that Nature is not infinitely exploitable. She may have unforeseen responses — 'tricks up her sleeve' — that could check human greed and overreach.

Contemporary relevance:

1. Climate change: The greedy exploitation of fossil fuels and natural resources has led to global warming, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events — Nature's 'trick' in response to industrial overexploitation.
2. Antibiotic resistance: The overuse of antibiotics (a chemical intervention) has led to the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria — Nature evolving to overcome human manipulation.
3. Pesticide resistance and soil degradation: Intensive chemical farming has led to soil exhaustion, loss of biodiversity, and the emergence of pesticide-resistant pests.
4. Pandemics: The destruction of natural habitats and exploitation of wildlife has increased the risk of zoonotic diseases jumping to humans.
5. Plastic pollution: The chemical industry's products have created a pollution crisis that is now entering the food chain.

Conclusion:
Shaw's warning is essentially an early articulation of the principle of ecological balance. Nature is not a passive resource to be exploited without limit; it is a complex, dynamic system that responds to human interference. Sustainable development, respect for ecological limits, and the precautionary principle are the practical lessons that follow from Shaw's insight.

Given/Context: Krishnamurti's text raises the question of how young people relate to authority — parents, teachers, and tradition.

Discussion Answer:
This is a distinction of great importance, particularly in the Indian cultural context where respect for elders is a deeply ingrained value.

Respect for elders — its value:

1. Elders possess experience, wisdom, and knowledge accumulated over a lifetime that younger people lack.
2. Respect for elders creates social harmony, maintains family bonds, and transmits cultural values across generations.
3. Listening to elders with an open mind is a form of learning — not all traditional wisdom is wrong or outdated.
4. Respect involves courtesy, consideration, and acknowledgment of the elder's dignity as a human being.

Why blind obedience is different and harmful:

1. Suppresses individual intelligence: Krishnamurti argues that when young people simply obey without understanding, they never develop their own capacity for thought and judgment.
2. Perpetuates injustice: Many harmful practices — caste discrimination, child marriage, gender inequality — have been maintained precisely because younger generations were taught to obey elders blindly rather than question.
3. Creates psychological dependence: A person who has always obeyed cannot function independently when elders are no longer present.
4. Confuses authority with truth: An elder may be wrong. Blind obedience prevents the correction of errors.
5. Stifles growth: Progress — social, scientific, moral — requires the willingness to question received wisdom.

The right balance:
True respect for elders means listening to them carefully, considering their views seriously, and acknowledging their experience — while retaining the right and responsibility to think for oneself, ask questions, and, when necessary, respectfully disagree. As Krishnamurti suggests, the goal of education should be to awaken intelligence, not to produce obedient followers.

Conclusion: Respect is a virtue; blind obedience is an abdication of one's own humanity and intelligence. The two must not be confused.

Given/Context: The two texts are Shaw's essay on freedom (from a socio-political perspective) and Krishnamurti's talk on freedom (from a psychological/spiritual perspective).

Answer:

Shaw's Style:

1. Satirical and polemical: Shaw uses sharp wit, irony, and sarcasm to expose the hypocrisy of the ruling class and the political system. His tone is combative and deliberately provocative.
2. Socio-political and economic focus: Shaw approaches freedom as a material, political, and economic question. Freedom, for him, is about wages, leisure, working hours, and the distribution of wealth.
3. Use of historical examples: Shaw marshals specific historical events (Magna Carta, the Spanish Armada, the American Declaration of Independence) to debunk myths about freedom.
4. Direct address to the reader: Shaw uses 'you' and 'we' to involve the reader, but his tone is that of a lecturer or debater — confident, assertive, and argumentative.
5. Humour and exaggeration: Shaw uses hyperbole and comic examples (e.g., children eating needles) to make serious points memorable.
6. Practical and concrete: His solutions are practical — more leisure, more wages, honest work.

Krishnamurti's Style:

1. Meditative and introspective: Krishnamurti's tone is gentle, probing, and inward-looking. He invites the reader to examine their own mind rather than attacking external institutions.
2. Psychological and spiritual focus: Freedom, for Krishnamurti, is an inward state — freedom from fear, conditioning, self-interest, and imitation.
3. Use of rhetorical questions: Krishnamurti uses a series of rhetorical questions to make the reader confront their own attitudes and behaviour.
4. Simple, direct language: His sentences are relatively simple and personal, creating a sense of intimate dialogue between speaker and listener.
5. Concrete images from daily life: He uses vivid, immediate images — villagers carrying heavy loads, women in torn clothes — to awaken sensitivity in his young audience.
6. No political programme: Unlike Shaw, Krishnamurti offers no external solution. The transformation he seeks is entirely inward.

Conclusion: Shaw treats freedom as a political and economic problem requiring structural change; Krishnamurti treats it as a psychological and spiritual problem requiring inner transformation. Shaw's style is argumentative and satirical; Krishnamurti's is contemplative and dialogic.

Given/Context: Shaw's argumentative style relies heavily on illustrative examples to support his claims.

Answer:

Section 1:

Main Statement: 'From our earliest years we are taught that our country is the land of the free, and that our freedom was won for us by our forefathers.'

Examples provided by Shaw:

• When they made King John sign Magna Charta
• When they defeated the Spanish Armada
• When they cut off King Charles's head
• When they made King William accept the Bill of Rights
• When they issued and made good the American Declaration of Independence
• When they won the battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar on the playing-fields of Eton
• When they changed the German, Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires into republics

How it contributes to effectiveness: By piling up example after example in a long, cumulative list, Shaw creates a powerful satirical effect. The sheer number of examples makes the propaganda seem absurd and overblown. The reader begins to see that these historical events, however grand, had nothing to do with the freedom of ordinary working people. The rhetorical accumulation is both comic and devastating.

Section 2:

Main Statement: The master class is more completely deluded by the propaganda than the working class.

Examples/Illustration: Shaw describes the gentleman whose mind has been formed at a preparatory school, then a public school, then a university — each stage reinforcing his belief in his own superiority. He is taught that workers exist to brush his clothes, carry his parcels, and earn his income for him. Because he agrees with this picture, he sincerely believes the system is just and will defend it with his blood. The working class, by contrast, cannot be so deluded because the harsh facts of their lives — rack-renting, underpayment, being treated as inferiors, being cast off on the dole — constantly contradict the official story.

How it contributes to effectiveness: The contrast between the two classes is made vivid and concrete through specific details. The gentleman's education is described with ironic precision; the worker's suffering is listed in a blunt, unadorned catalogue. This contrast makes Shaw's argument immediately convincing and memorable.

Given/Context: Both Shaw and Krishnamurti make extensive use of first and second person pronouns.

Answer:

Use of personal pronouns:

Shaw uses 'we', 'you', 'our', and 'I' throughout. 'We' creates a sense of shared condition — Shaw places himself alongside the reader as a fellow citizen subject to the same system. 'You' directly addresses the reader, making the argument feel personal rather than abstract. 'I' establishes Shaw's own voice as a frank, honest speaker who refuses to pretend.

Krishnamurti uses 'you' extensively in his rhetorical questions: 'What is your feeling about them?', 'Do you have any feeling for them?', 'Are you so frightened...?' This direct address makes the reader feel personally implicated — as if Krishnamurti is speaking to them alone, in a one-to-one conversation.

Effect of personal pronouns:
Yes, the use of personal pronouns significantly increases the reader's identification with the topic. An impersonal, third-person style ('One may observe that citizens are often unaware of their economic condition...') creates distance and allows the reader to remain a detached observer. The use of 'you' and 'we' removes that distance — the reader cannot simply observe; they are drawn into the argument as a participant.

Relating to one's own life:
Krishnamurti's questions in particular — about whether one notices the suffering of poor people, whether one is too concerned with one's own examinations and appearance to be aware of others — are directly applicable to the experience of any student. Shaw's questions about whether one's vote has ever actually changed one's economic condition are equally relevant to any citizen. Both writers use personal pronouns precisely to prevent the reader from treating freedom as an abstract philosophical topic and to make them examine their own lives and choices.

Concept: A clause is a group of words containing a subject and a verb. A main clause makes complete sense on its own; a subordinate clause depends on the main clause for its full meaning.

(i) There is no freedom if you are enclosed by self interest or by various walls of discipline.

• Main clause: There is no freedom
• Subordinate clause (conditional): if you are enclosed by self interest or by various walls of discipline

Type: Complex sentence

(ii) When you see a servant carrying a heavy carpet, do you give him a helping hand?

• Main clause: do you give him a helping hand
• Subordinate clause (adverbial — time): When you see a servant carrying a heavy carpet

Type: Complex sentence

(iii) Very young children will eat needles and matches eagerly—but the diet is not a nourishing one.

• Main clause 1: Very young children will eat needles and matches eagerly
• Main clause 2: the diet is not a nourishing one
• Coordinating conjunction: but

Type: Compound sentence (two independent main clauses joined by 'but')

(iv) We must sleep or go mad: but then sleep is so pleasant that we have great difficulty in getting up in the morning.

• Main clause 1: We must sleep or go mad
• Main clause 2: sleep is so pleasant
• Subordinate clause (result/degree): that we have great difficulty in getting up in the morning

Type: Compound-complex sentence (two main clauses joined by 'but', with a subordinate 'that' clause depending on the second main clause)

(v) Always call freedom by its old English name of leisure, and keep clamouring for more leisure and more money to enjoy it in return for an honest share of work.

• Main clause 1: Always call freedom by its old English name of leisure
• Main clause 2: keep clamouring for more leisure and more money to enjoy it in return for an honest share of work
• Coordinating conjunction: and

Type: Compound sentence (two main clauses — both imperative — joined by 'and')

Note: The phrase 'to enjoy it in return for an honest share of work' is an infinitive phrase functioning as an adverbial modifier within the second main clause; it is not a separate clause as it has no finite verb.

Concept: A rhetorical question has the grammatical form of a question but functions as a statement. If the question is positive, the implied statement is negative, and vice versa.

Examples from Krishnamurti's text:

1. Rhetorical Question: 'On the road you have often passed villagers carrying heavy loads, have you not?'

• Implied Statement: You have passed villagers carrying heavy loads. (The question assumes the answer 'yes' and draws the reader's attention to a fact they have been ignoring.)

2. Rhetorical Question: 'What is your feeling about them?'

• Implied Statement: You probably have no real feeling for them — you pass by indifferently. (The question challenges the reader to examine their own indifference.)

3. Rhetorical Question: 'Do you have any feeling for them?'

• Implied Statement: You probably do not have genuine feeling for them. (Negative question implies the answer is 'no'.)

4. Rhetorical Question: 'Or are you so frightened, so concerned about yourself, about your examinations, about your looks, about your saris, that you never pay any attention to them?'

• Implied Statement: You are so self-absorbed that you do not pay attention to the suffering of others.

5. Rhetorical Question: 'Do you feel you are much better than they, that you belong to a higher class and therefore need have no regard for them?'

• Implied Statement: You do feel superior to them, and this class consciousness prevents you from feeling compassion.

6. Rhetorical Question: 'Don't you want to help them?'

• Implied Statement: You do not actually want to help them, or if you do, you suppress that impulse.

7. Rhetorical Question: 'Are you so dulled by centuries of tradition, by what your fathers and mothers say, so conscious of belonging to a certain class, that you do not even look at the villagers?'

• Implied Statement: You are dulled by tradition and class consciousness to the point of blindness.

8. Rhetorical Question: 'Are you actually so blinded that you do not know what is happening around you?'

• Implied Statement: You are blinded by your conditioning and do not see the reality around you.

From Shaw's text:

9. Rhetorical Question (implied): 'What are we going to do with them?' (referring to leisure and money, if won)

• Implied Statement: We do not know what to do with leisure because we have never been brought up to it — a serious indictment of the education and social system.

Communicative purpose: Krishnamurti uses rhetorical questions to make his young audience confront their own insensitivity, class prejudice, and self-absorption. Rather than stating 'You are insensitive and class-conscious,' he asks questions that lead the listener to arrive at this uncomfortable conclusion themselves. This is far more effective as a persuasive device because the listener cannot simply reject an external accusation — they must answer the question in their own mind and face the truth of their own attitudes.

Concept: V = vowel sound (a sound that can occur at the centre of a syllable); C = consonant sound (a sound at the edge of a syllable). Note that letter combinations like 'ee', 'ea', 'oa' represent single vowel sounds, and 'th', 'ng' represent single consonant sounds.

Notes:

• In sleep: 'ee' = one vowel sound /iː/
• In thrift: 'th' = one consonant sound /θ/
• In snake: 'a_e' = one vowel sound /eɪ/ (the silent 'e' is not counted)
• In smear: 'ear' = one vowel sound /ɪə/
• In facts: the final cluster /kts/ = three consonants → CVCCC
• In boasts: /əʊ/ = one vowel; final /sts/ = three consonants → CVCCC
• In strangle: the final /gl/ are two consonants; the 'le' ending has no separate vowel sound in this analysis of the consonant cluster
• In strengths: 'th' = /θ/ (one consonant); 'ng' = /ŋ/ (one consonant); the cluster /ŋθs/ = three consonants