DNA Edit: Sovereignty and I

“No man is an island,” said John Donne in the 17th century, but today is neither his day nor his age. Today is the dawn of a new era. The Supreme Court marks in no unclear terms that if a man is so inclined, he can protect his identity and his attributes from the incursions of the digital age and from the eyes of the ever-watching State. In fact, the SC, in one stroke, has cautioned both State and non-State actors from overstepping their boundaries. For far too often, we have lived in the fear of an all-powerful State, whose excesses — be it flagrant or slight — held the power to ravage our lives.

What is a man to do when such overwhelming and unfettered power looms large over him? What recourse is left for him but to slink, and to crawl and to squirm in the pettiness of his life? The State’s strength as the Big Brother scared us witless when we saw its evil designs during the Emergency. Even as thousands of political opponents and innocent civilians were arrested without trial, there was but one judge who bravely stood for the right of men to live — free, untrammelled and without interference — when four of his brothers bent themselves into judicial infamy. Yes, it is Justice HR Khanna we speak of, who opposed the Indira Gandhi government’s diktat of suspending the right to life and liberty during the Emergency.

This Supreme Court’s unanimous groundbreaking judgement is a reminder that our dominion over ourself is complete and unassailable. It is a right so inalienable that no power dares rob us of it. Perhaps, the Congress is a party that refuses to learn from history. It was the Congress government that had introduced the Aadhaar scheme without legislative support. It was the NDA government that took the pains to introduce the necessary legislation. After the judgement, many have criticised the NDA government, taking the submission of the former Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi as its final stand on privacy. Nothing can be farthest from the truth. Before you form an opinion, heed Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s words in the Rajya Sabha when the Aadhaar Act was laid before it. He said, “Is privacy a Fundamental Right or not? The present ill presupposes and is based on the premise and that it is too late in date to contend that privacy is not a Fundamental Right. So, I do accept that probably privacy is a Fundamental Right.”

The court’s observation steels our resolve in fighting for privacy in this era of pervasive information. In this digital age, the fear that we once saw in the avatar of the Stasi stands amplified.  Stasi was the official state security service in East Germany, which was effectively ruthless and pervasive; tapping as it was a vast network of citizens who would in turn spy on other fellow citizens. In the Stasi era, neighbours would report on neighbours, family members on their very own, the air would be rent with doubt and the mind would be filled with fear. In the end, the State was reduced to a voyeur and the citizens its guileless performers. These fears have now become paranoia.

Today, we may have become insular, even reclusive, keeping our distance from the neighbours, but we have also simultaneously opened the doors of our lives to a small clique of friends and family and unknowingly to a clutch of data-collection agencies that are secretly profiling us, picking up on our tweets and Facebook posts; our travels; our tastes; our likes and our dislikes; our sexual orientations; our insecurities and our horrible little secrets. Unknown to you, in a server stationed in a faraway secured location, under a nondescript label, is a file profiling the details from the recesses of your psyche for commercial exploitation. Until now, it was only developed countries that were alive to the threats of data privacy invasion. Now, India has joined these countries in defending its citizens against such an ominous threat.