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Journalism of Courage
The Union home ministry is suddenly in the business of opinion polls. It will, henceforth, measure the worth of basic democratic rights against its fuzzy notions of what public opinion can withstand. The ministry has filed an abhorrently absurd affidavit in the Supreme Court on the need to retain Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code8212;provisions that render homosexuality 8220;unnatural8221; and an offence. The affidavit includes a line that so categorically knocks out the liberal foundations of the Indian Constitution that it bears repetition: 8220;Even if it is assumed that the rights of sexual minorities emanate from a perceived right to privacy, the right to privacy cannot be extended to defeat public morality which must prevail over the exercise of any private right.8221;
This case is still in court, and the right to exercise individual choice will be contested there. But the government must know that there is nothing 8220;perceived8221; about the right to privacy. That right8212;along with other individual rights8212;is enshrined in the contract between individual and state in any democracy. Governments that derive their mandate from the will of the people cannot be arbiters of what is moral or immoral. Any curb that they place on civil liberties must be carefully shown to be necessary in delivering justice and order. Considerations of morality have no place in any of this.
