Why Gandhi’s use of oxygen as a metaphor during the freedom struggle has resonance for India today Why Gandhi’s use of oxygen as a metaphor during the freedom struggle has resonance for India today Freedom of opinion and freedom of association are ‘the two lungs that are absolutely necessary for a man to breathe the oxygen of liberty’, he wrote. Mohandas Gandhi in the 1920s. | Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons “One who owes his oxygen to the pump is a dying man. Is it any wonder that India is in a dying condition?” It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that these lines were written by someone deeply agonised by the deaths of thousands of Indians during the Covid-19 second wave in April and May. As it turns out, those sentences actually appeared in