This article is written by Yogesh Singh, a Second Year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at C.M.P. Degree College, University of Allahabad.
ABSTRACT
In the modern age, the state was endowed with divine powers to rule. However, enormous power also entails immense responsibility. The state must be impartial, neutral, and objective in order to establish equilibrium in a society that is dominated by the vices of prejudice and inequity. The State guarantees each person’s inherent human rights in the form of some of the fundamental rights outlined in our Constitution, therefore creating an environment free from such ills. We tend to be connected to one another in ways we never would have thought possible in the age of the global village. Many well-developed grundnorms across the world might serve as inspiration for reducing and eliminating such vices.
Understanding the intersection in India
Imagine something as simple as choosing what to eat, how to pray, or what to dress at home. These decisions seem intimate, even sacred. However, what happens if your society or the state intervenes and declares that your decision violates a law or a custom? Who gets to decide what is your property and what is public property?
This is actually the root of one of the more contentious discussions taking on in India right now. It is a tale about identity, dignity, and the fundamental right to be oneself, not just a constitutional conundrum to be answered on paper.
The Supreme Court has had to protect both the right to privacy and dignity under Article 21 1and the freedom of opinion and religion granted by Articles 25 to 282. Since the concept of “private space” has changed throughout time, the law has been forced to reinterpret long-standing religious customs using a much more modern, rights-centered perspective. This is the reason studying this history is worthwhile.
So what exactly is at stake ?
In this argument, three concepts keep coming up, sometimes supporting one another and other times completely opposing one another:
Individual rights are the constitutional protections that prevent someone from being subjugated by the state or the majority just for being an independent human being.
Freedom of religion, traditionally considered as both an individual and a community entitlement, is the freedom to practice and publicly express one’s beliefs in addition to holding them in private.
The barrier that prevents the government and society from interfering with an individual’s choices, body, identity, and beliefs is the right to privacy3, which is basically the right to be left alone.
Once these three begin to engage, things become ugly. Does a school’s policy prohibiting the wearing of religious apparel still violate a student’s right to privacy? Should a person’s right to dignity be subordinated to a centuries-old custom? What is the exact line separating individual freedom from collective religious authority?
Courts are asked to respond to these concerns in actual cases with actual repercussions; they are not rhetorical inquiries.
The Constitution’s Balancing Act
This is an intriguing historical detail.The framers of the Constitution wanted for India to be a modern, equal nation, even though they were well aware of how deeply religion was embedded in Indian culture. Therefore, they permitted the state to step in and alter religious practices when they clashed with morality, public order, health, or other fundamental rights, as opposed to creating the type of strict church-state barrier found in many Western constitutions.
The “Essential Religious Practices” test, which basically asks if a particular rite is so fundamental to a faith that eliminating it will alter the religion itself, was used by the courts for decades. But a growing emphasis on individual desire over religious obligation has quietly supplanted this tactic.
The Cases that changed the landscape
1 K.S. Puttasawamy v.Union of India (2017)4
This is where it all starts. A nine-judge panel unanimously decided that Article 21 guarantees privacy as a fundamental right, highlighting the fact that privacy is about autonomy rather than just protecting data or keeping people out. It protects an individual’s choices about their religious practice, physical appearance, and interpersonal interactions.
The Court acknowledged that there are times when an individual must have complete control over their own destiny and defined privacy as essential to human dignity. Puttaswamy provided people with a truly potent legal defense against being subjugated by religious or majoritarian pressure by connecting privacy so strongly to dignity.
2 Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017)5
This conflict, also known as the Triple Talaq case, pitted individual rights against an uncodified religious personal-law practice. The petitioner claimed that her rights to equality and dignity were infringed by an immediate divorce. The Supreme Court concurred, overturning the practice and ruling that religious tradition cannot be utilized to avoid upholding constitutional morals. It was a watershed moment when a community’s claim to uphold an arbitrary practice in the name of religious freedom was subordinated to a woman’s right to live in fairness and dignity.
3 The Sabrimala temple case (2018)6
The argument in this instance went directly to the core of religious belief. The question at hand concerned whether women who were menstruation could not visit the Sabarimala shrine. The temple justified this limitation as a necessary, long-standing tradition connected to the deity’s celibate character. The Supreme Court overturned the prohibition, strongly believing that patriarchal tradition must eventually yield to constitutional morality and that women’s rights to equality, dignity, and autonomy cannot be compromised in the name of religious freedom.
4 State of Karnataka v. Aishat Shifa – the Hijab Controversy7
Whether or not Muslim students should wear headscarves in state-run schools was one of the most controversial legal problems of recent years, and it eventually reached the Supreme Court. The other perspective, which saw the issue through the prism of identity and privacy, held that a student’s choice of clothing constitutes an extension of her freedom of conscience and physical autonomy under Article 25. The fundamental conundrum is aptly captured by the Court’s split ruling, with one opinion emphasizing institutional impartiality, conformity, and discipline. It’s a powerful illustration of how hazy the distinction between institutional authority and individual privacy is still.
How the Test Actually Works in practice
Courts don’t settle these disputes by taking sides. According to Puttaswamy, each privacy limitation must pass a rigorous three-part test:
1. Legality: The restriction must to be based on a real, enforceable legislation. Administrative convenience or social pressure are insufficient.
2. Legitimate state goal: The restriction must have a legitimate public purpose, such as safeguarding others’ rights, public health, or law and order.
3. Proportionality: The limitation must be the least invasive means of accomplishing that goal. A scalpel is a better tool than a sledgehammer.
Any government or religious organization that wants to restrict someone’s freedom of choice must demonstrate that the limitation is actually required and should be implemented as seldom as feasible.
Where Does That Leave Us?
When considered collectively, this corpus of case law illustrates the emergence of the contemporary Indian citizen. For centuries, a person’s identity was essentially absorbed into their caste or society, and most choices were made on their behalf by custom.
The Supreme Court’s developing jurisprudence has accomplished something really noteworthy: it has created a barrier that protects the individual and guarantees that they maintain their sovereignty while still being a member of their society.
Still, there is genuine tension. Pushing for individual rights may occasionally feel, to communities, like an assault on collective identity in a nation as culturally varied as India, and the law cannot simply erase the emotional and spiritual burden that faith bears for individuals.
1. Constitutional morality versus social morality: Even in situations when it conflicts with popular or social morality derived from centuries of religious history, courts are increasingly relying on constitutional morality, which includes justice, liberty, equality, and privacy. As a result, society is unable or unwilling to keep up with the laws, creating a sort of cultural lag.
2. The individual vs the group: In the past, religious freedom was primarily viewed in Indian legal theory as a means of defending a community’s right to self-governance. The challenge of how to allow a group to maintain its culture without allowing it to be used as a tool for controlling its own members, particularly women and minorities, is made more difficult by the fact that modern legislation increasingly protects the individual within that society.
3. The judiciary’s burden: For obvious political reasons, Parliament has mostly refrained from codifying or amending delicate personal-law issues, leaving courts to virtually exclusively draw these lines on their own. Instead of clear legislative rules, this leaves the
field to judge-made law, which inevitably leads to inconsistent, case-by-case findings, similar to the debate over passive euthanasia.
4. The dilemma of digital-age privacy: Hyper-surveillance, both from the government and increasingly from community-driven moral policing on social media, poses a severe challenge to this expanding right to privacy. An environment where people may voice their personal preferences or religious disagreements without fear of social boycotts, digital doxxing, or physical threats is necessary for true privacy. This is more than just a written legal assurance.
5. Redefining secularism: India’s traditional model of secularism, which calls for the state to maintain “equal distance” from all religions, is gradually giving way to a more rights-centered version in which the state’s primary duty is to guarantee that no religious practice, no matter how deeply ingrained, is permitted to supersede a citizen’s fundamental rights to privacy, bodily autonomy, and dignity.
Conclusion
India is gradually but clearly redrawing the balance between the state, the temple, and the individual. The freedom to express one’s identity, select one’s religion, and live without arbitrary intervention is currently recognized by the law in rather specific words under Article 21.
A solid paradigm based on autonomy and dignity has been handed down by the courts. To ensure that a person’s peaceful, private liberties are not violated in the guise of upholding tradition, society, educational institutions, and local government must really adopt these ideals. Ultimately, a really free society is determined by how safely its citizens may follow their own path, not by how effectively its majority is obeyed.
References
1. Constitution of India , art 21 https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1199182/
2. Constitution of India ,
https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/19150/1/constitution_of_india.pdf 3. ‘Right to Privacy’(Drishti IAS , 21 October 2022)
https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/right-to-privacy-3 accessed 11 July 2026
4. Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v Union of India (2018) 10 SCC 1
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/127517806
5. Shayara Bano v Union of India (2017) 9 SCC 1 https://indiankanoon.org/doc/115701246/
6. Indian Young Lawyers Association v State of Kerala (2019) 11 SCC 1 https://www.scobserver.in/cases/indian-young-lawyers-association-v-state-of-kerala-sabar imala-temple-entry-background/
7. Aishat Shifa v State of Karnataka (2023) 2 SCC 1
https://clpr.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/72.-Aishat_Shifa_vs_The_State_of_Karna taka_and_Ors_131SC20221310221812541COM495634.pdf
