Iqbal cared deeply about political freedom — he lived under empire and wanted it gone. But he insisted that the deeper freedom, the one that makes political freedom worth having, is inward; and a people not free inside will not stay free outside for long.
Inner freedom, for Iqbal, is the condition of a fully-built self: a person who thinks their own thoughts, who cannot be bought or bullied into betraying them, who bows — if at all — only to what they have genuinely chosen. The falcon refusing the palace, the celestial bird preferring death to a flight-clipping wage: these are his images of freedom.
It is a demanding idea, because it puts the work on you. Iqbal will not let you locate all your unfreedom in others. He asks what you have done to become someone who cannot be owned — and warns that a hundred small compromises can cage a person more completely than any prison.
See it in the verse
Jis rizq se aati ho parvaaz mein kotahi
Hazaar sajdon se deta hai aadmi ko nijaat
Wo bagh ki baharen, wo sab ka chahchahana