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.
