Evolution of Liberalism in India

Introduction:

In politics, liberty entitles every person its social and political freedoms.1 Liberty however is
different from freedom, freedom is primarily, if not exclusively, the ability to do as one wills and
what one has the power to do whereas liberty concerns the absence of arbitrary restraints and
takes into account the rights of all involved. As such, the exercise of liberty is subject to
capability and limited by the rights of others.2

Plato once put in, “The most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery arises out of the most
extreme liberty”, and the modern concept of political liberty is inspired from the Greek concepts
of freedom and slavery, where Greeks believed that to be free was not to have a master but to be
independent from a master.

Liberalism:
One of the ideologies of liberty, liberalism got introduced in the late 17th century in the Europe.
The philosophy was given by English philosophers John Locke, Jeremy Bentham and Adam
Smith. Liberalism started to spread rapidly after the French revolution and also due to
industrialization. It evolved in the late 17th century in order to liquidate feudal privileges of land-
owning classes and to create favorable conditions for new entrepreneurial class to enable them to
contribute to social progress. Liberalism was of the basic idea that individuals’ freedom lead to
general prosperity. Individuals’ freedom included protection of individuals’ rights and letting
them pursue any profession (as one likes), which is not harmful to the society and its people.

1
“A civil liberty”. Oxford English Dictionary
2
John Stuart Mill (1869), “Chapter 1: Introductory”, On Liberty.