Privacy in present day

Privacy in today’s age cannot be absolute, but one can define its limits, writes AJIT KUMAR BISHNOI

This must be a joke when people are so eager to share their private details with just about everyone. Some well known personalities have millions of followers. Even lesser known persons manage to form their own little groups. Social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram keep on buzzing literally all 24 hours with some even getting up in the night to check what has been posted. Then, there is Twitter where people are forever sending messages to whoever cares to read them.

All of the above is private but officially also, we are laid bare with rules and regulations, which leave almost no privacy, and surprisingly we submit to them willingly. How will you explain being eager to travel to the USA where personal dignity is heavily compromised with body scanners, intense questioning, etc. This is after so many details about our personal lives have already been submitted in the visa application forms. We are frisked these days almost everywhere and our belongings are scanned routinely. And if a suspected terrorist is anywhere in our vicinity, authorities have licence to search our vehicles, houses, etc. In case of a medical checkup, we are sometimes required to open ourselves to be examined thoroughly.

Before I go any further, let us define the word privacy with the help of an English dictionary. There are two definitions given in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. These are: the state of being alone and not watched or disturbed by other people, and the state of being free from the attention of the public. None of these two are adequate in the context of what is being debated presently. Free will, which is defined as the power to make your own decisions without being controlled by God or fate is closer to understand the word privacy and its implications.

As soul — part of God (The Bhagavad Gita 15.7) has freewill but this is not absolute, because it is neither possible nor desirable. Do we decide in what kind of bodies we take birth? No, it is decided by many factors. Once the baby is born, his parents have the freewill to decide on many matters like whether the child is to be inoculated or not. But what do they mostly do? Let us go further. The child has reached the age five, and is sent to school. Now the child has freewill to decide whether he wishes to apply himself or just while away his time in school.

He grows up and attains adulthood. Now he has many choices like whether to get married or not, take up a job or do business, etc. By this time he is already part of a family, a society, a nation and of the world. And for that he is supposed to surrender a lot of his freewill — he must fall in line, like you cannot drive on the right side of the road in India.

Yes, there may be good justification for surrendering our privacy voluntarily or being required to do so by law but no one has a right to cheat us of our possessions in the name of legal requirements or post our personal details on the internet without permission. Sufficient checks have to be put in place in order to protect us and heavy punishment is given to offenders. Surrendering our privacy is one thing but being taken advantage of just because we are cooperating with the law is completely unacceptable.

What is the conclusion? Privacy or freewill is not absolute; this is surrendered or taken away because that is the only way we can exist in this world. Families, societies, nations and the world decide how much liberty or privacy we can have. Within that we can have some privacy. We just need sufficient laws and guidelines in order that no one crosses the limit that is set by us.

Bishnoi is a spiritual writer and can be reached at spiritual@ajitbishnoi.com