Doval’s remarks on freedom betray Tilak’s legacy as India’s exemplary protestor
By warning the youth against mistaking freedom for unrestrained liberty, Doval invokes Lokmanya Tilak’s name even as his own record, from “civil society as a frontier of war” to the crackdown on dissenters, stands in direct contradiction to everything Tilak stood and suffered for.
Published on: 4 August 2026, 02:39 pm
WHILE RECEIVING the Lokmanya Tilak National Award in Pune in recognition of his contribution to strengthening India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval urged the younger generation to be mindful that freedom should not be understood merely as the liberty to do whatever one desires. To drive home the point he appealed to the youth to dedicate themselves to serve the nation and flagged that the freedom they enjoyed is very precious in contrast to the colonial era when Lokmanya Tilak struggled and faced hardships which the present generation in India would hardly imagine. “Every Indian, especially our youth, needs to reflect on his words, consider the vision he held for India and the spirit of nation-building he embodied,” Doval remarked.
He proceeded to add,“Young people today might assume that India has always been the way it is now, or they might mistake freedom for the mere liberty to do whatever one desires. But that is not what freedom truly means.”
‘Civil society new frontier of war’: Doval
Like his 2021 statement, at a passing-out ceremony of IPS officers in Hyderabad, that civil society is the “new frontier of war”, his 2026 remark that youth should not interpret freedom for the mere liberty has caused consternation among liberal-minded people.
Earlier in 2021, he had commented that “the new frontier of war, what you call the fourth-generation warfare, is civil society... that can be… manipulated to hurt the interest of a nation,” and had urged police officers to perform their duties so that the land of India is fully protected.
“Young people today might assume that India has always been the way it is now, or they might mistake freedom for the mere liberty to do whatever one desires. But that is not what freedom truly means,” Doval said.
He was widely criticised and charged that his statement would mean crushing dissent and demolish the police officers’ duty to remain committed to the Constitution, making them pliable instruments of the party in power.
The Constitutional Conduct Group, which consists of distinguished civil servants and diplomats, in a statement had regretted that “instead of exhorting the IPS probationers to abide by the values enshrined in the Constitution to which they had sworn allegiance, the NSA stressed the primacy of the representatives of the people, and the laws framed by them.”
A former Intelligence Bureau director said that Doval’s statement was “shocking” and unbecoming of a National Security Adviser. He remarked that Doval “…in effect, asking trainee IPS officers to act against civil society groups and crush dissent. He seems to have forgotten that India is still a democracy and not a police state.”
Criticism of Doval’s remarks
Five years later, his statement, while receiving the Lokmanya Tilak award, that the younger generation should not see freedom they have as the liberty to do whatever one desires has caused worry and anxieties in the context of the students’ protest at Jantar Mantar. The protests against the rotten education and examination system forced the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign.
NDTV, which is owned by Gautam Adani and hardly interrogates the Modi regime, published a piece, “Youth May Mistake Freedom for Liberty to Do What One Wants: Ajit Doval” in which it is remarked, “Doval’s warning in Pune that contemporary young people risk misinterpreting freedom as the mere liberty to act without restraint arrives directly on the heels of unprecedented youth-led demonstrations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.”