‘Take heart! Our vital selves are stored’: The American poet Justice Kaul quoted in right to privacy ruling

Supreme Court said right to privacy was at par with right to life and liberty, and that the verdict will protect citizens’ personal freedom from intrusions by the state.

In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled that individual privacy is a “guaranteed fundamental right”.

Television journalists are seen outside the premises of the Supreme Court in New Delhi, India August 22, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi (REUTERS)

The ruling delivered by a nine-judge bench said right to privacy was at par with right to life and liberty, and that the verdict will protect citizens’ personal freedom from intrusions by the state.

In his part of the judgment, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul quoted lines by American poet and satirist Felicia Lamport which is mentioned in the book “The Assault on Privacy24”.

Here’s the poem:

DEPRIVACY

Although we feel unknown, ignored

As unrecorded blanks,

Take heart! Our vital selves are stored

In giant data banks,

Our childhoods and maturities,

Efficiently compiled,

Our Stocks and insecurities,

All permanently filed,

Our tastes and our proclivities,

In gross and in particular,

Our incomes, our activities

Both extra-and curricular.

And such will be our happy state

Until the day we die

When we’ll be snatched up by the great

Computer in the Sky”