Except for the period of the Emergency (June 1975 to March 1977), at no other time in recent Indian history was there such an urgent need for the legitimization of this basic right.

The reason is the government’s encroachments on areas of personal life relating to food, attire, books, movies, love of country, sexual orientation, et al.

It is just as well, therefore, that the judgment has come when the Maharashtra government’s plea on allowing the police to enter private homes to check whether beef is being eaten is pending before the judiciary.

The judgment on privacy says, however, that no one “would like to be told by the state as to what they should eat or how they should dress or whom they should be associated with”. It has also said that “one’s sexual orientation is undoubtedly an attribute of privacy”.

In matters with a political overtone, the nine-judge bench has outlawed forced feeding and telephone tapping. A woman’s right to have a baby or to abort it has also been upheld.

There is little doubt that the verdict is a giant step forward in the field of individual liberty, has been under considerable strain in recent years with the government banning books like Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism and censoring films such as In the Shade of Fallen Chinar and documentaries such as the one by the BBC on the gang rape of a Delhi girl in 2012.

While the liberal intelligentsia will wholeheartedly welcome the judgment, only wondering why it took so long, this palpable entry of the nation into the modern world may not appeal to the diehard conservatives among the present-day rulers at the Centre.

For the BJP and more particularly the RSS and its hardline affiliates like the VHP, the assertion of personal freedoms goes against the grain of their orthodox worldview, which stipulates uncompromising standards of conduct on diet, dress, especially of women, inter-faith romance and even the calls for prayer by a certain community.

Any deviation from them, such as a reluctance to chant a patriotic slogan chosen by the hardliners, can expose the dissenters to the charge of sedition. The court, however, has quoted Amartya Sen to argue that criticism lies at the “core of democratic governance”.

The reference to Sen could not have pleased the BJP, however, since one of its stalwarts had called for depriving the Nobel prize winner of his Bharat Ratna award for having said that Narendra Modi is not his favourite prime minister.

Little wonder that the Modi government tried its best to block the enthroning of privacy as a fundamental right with its lawyers arguing against the elevation. Subsequently, the former attorney-general, Mukul Rohatgi, conceded that the judgment denoted a failure on the government’s part.

During the hearings, the present A-G, K.K. Venugopal, presented the typically fascistic argument that the subject of privacy was an elitist fad which did not concern the poor.

The court countered this argument by saying that “the refrain that the poor need no civil and political rights and are concerned only with economic well-being has been utilized through history to wreak the most egregious violations of human rights”.

Rohatgi’s lament over the government’s defeat in the privacy case is understandable. As one of the BJP’s doughty champions – he successfully defended the party in the cases on the Gujarat riots and fake encounters – he realizes the legal roadblock which the judgment has set up to stop the BJP from fulfilling its Hindutva dream of putting an individual at the mercy of the state.

If anything denotes modernity, it is personal liberty. Yet, such freedom is anathema to the fundamentalists in all regimented societies whether run by theocrats or fascists or communists. Faith – as in communist theory or in religion - and the evocation of “culture” are the tools which they use to put a person in a straitjacket.

It has been the endeavour of all enlightened leaders and groups throughout history to free the individual from such a constricted environment. It is a difficult task, however, because the championing of “ancient” traditions is a handy weapon in the hands of the canny politicians to beguile the ordinary people and denounce those who call for greater personal freedom as heretics.

In the BJP’s case, such dissenters are described as deracinated persons who are cut off from the nation’s heritage which the party claims to uphold. Another of the BJP’s charges against the critics is that they are too Westernized – “Macaulay’s children”, is the standard phrase – to appreciate India’s traditional culture.

Unfortunately for the BJP, it cannot level the same charge against the judiciary. Considering, however, that the RSS favoured the replacement of the Constitution by Manusmriti, the attitude of the saffron brotherhood towards the judicial system can well be imagined.

For instance, the Organizer, mouthpiece of the RSS, wrote in 1949: “Manu’s laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia (sic). To this day, his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world … But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing”. (IPA Service)