The ‘I’ In Individual

Our liberties make us & society stronger. Groupthink doesn’t. But state & even some courts don’t get it

Harish Rana has been in a vegetative state for 13 years. All this while, his parents have loved him, cared for him. For years, they have also pleaded for permission to withdraw the tubes clinically feeding him. Yesterday, the Supreme Court finally came through for them. Remember, the court had ruled the right to die with dignity, as being folded within the right to live with dignity, in 2011, and again in 2018. That didn’t save Rana’s parents, from running around the medical and judicial establishments, exhaustingly. It was their choice – but they had to wait 13 years to exercise it.

Look around at our turbulent world, and you see that many countries are not big on individual freedoms. India is different. Its Constitution, written by a people emerging from colonial subjugation, acutely conscious of what the denial of freedom meant in practice, committed to a transformative agenda. And placed the individual citizen at the nation’s core, rather than traditional hierarchies. But too often, practice falls tragically short of theory. Theoretically, an adult is free to love any other adult of their choice. In reality, khap panchayats, ‘love jihad’ laws, ‘honour’ killings, and countless busybodies, just won’t let lovers be. Likewise, a woman’s bodily autonomy is strong on paper. But in reality, hostile doctors and judges can vamoose her right to abortion. Even something as basic as what food a person chooses to eat, can be restricted by govt fiat or mob fury.

In the two fast & furious centuries since John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill’s seminal text, On Liberty, was published, several weaknesses have been exposed in it. But this insight has held firm and true – that freedom of thinking is indispensable not just to make great thinkers, but also to enable average persons to become the best that they can be. If citizens cannot reach their potential, neither can the nation. If they cannot live in accordance with choices they make for themselves, is it even their own life? Often, the tyrant alone is portrayed as the enemy of liberty. But, suffocative public opinion does the job just as well.

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