“Whenever the famous writers protest against this imposture, ...you are taught that they are atheists and libertines, murderers and scoundrels, and often it is made a criminal offence to buy or sell their books.”—Explain the lines.

Ans. These lines have been taken from George Bernard Shaw's essay Freedom. From the very old time, it is seen that the upper class always exploits the poor and the labourer class and here Shaw has stated how the rulers or master class try to delude the poor and the oppressed and make them believe that they are free. Philosophers, thinkers in many countries and in different ages have exposed the hypocritical claims and cheat of the ruling class and disclosed the real face of the ruling class. Also the well-thinkers of society in different ages wrote books on this issue. But the upper class has tried to stop the propagation of thoughts by making it a criminal offence to buy or sell their books. Their books are banned and the possessors of their books are punished. Not only that, their authors are depicted as atheists, murderers, libertines and scoundrels and anti-national. The rich people also decide to announce war against those people in any country, inspired by the thoughts of the great thinkers like Rousseau, Tom Paine, Karl Marx etc. England rulers anyhow want to suppress the revolutionaries. They just want to establish such a social system where there will be no question, revolution against them. In many wars in past, when England won the battle, it was announced that this victory would bring freedom to common people. It makes the writer surprised to see that those oppressed workers of England, instead of understanding the real meaning the freedom, believed all these false propagandas and cheered the army and the ruling class enthusiastically.