National Freedom or National Liberation

In the context of colonial subjugation, nationalist struggles in Asia and Africa and also Latin America against the foreign domination has been termed as national freedom or liberation movements. In India also, we generally refer to the struggle for independence as India’s national freedom movement. With the emergence of nationalist consciousness and awareness for political independence, many ‘third world’ countries witnessed radical national freedom or liberation movements against colonial occupation. It was based on struggle, not only for political independence, but also against cultural, economic, psychological and moral domination of colonial powers. In India, at the end of nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century, Dadabhai Naoroji in his Poverty and un-British Rule in India and R. C. Dutt in his The Economic History of India portrayed the economic consequences of colonial domination. In his The Wretched of the Earth written in the light of the Algerian liberation struggle, Fanon developed a powerful critique of the psychological impact of colonialism.’²¹ Kwame Nkrumah in his Neo-Colonialism: The Highest Stage of Imperialism depicted how continuance of colonial linkage even after the end of political domination results in economic and other forms of colonial relations between the liberated nation and erstwhile colonial master. There have been ‘national liberation’ movements demanding independence from either the constituted nation-state after the end of colonialism such as in case of India, Sri Lanka, etc. or against perceived or unjustified occupation by a country such as Palestine Liberation against Israel or The Tibetan Liberation against China.