Almost every email in today’s world comes with a statement
of use:
This e-mail is
confidential. It may also be legally privileged. If you are not the addressee
you may not copy, forward, disclose or use any part of it. If you have received
this message in error, please delete it and all copies from your system and
notify the sender immediately by return e-mail.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 12, states:
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with
his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and
reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such
interference or attacks.”
Gandhi-Kallenbach letters,
BBC News, 02 July 2012
“Thousands
of letters, papers and photographs relating to Gandhi, belonging to the
Kallenbach family, are due to be auctioned by Sotheby's in England next
Tuesday. The auction house estimates the collection, which is arranged in 18
files, is expected to fetch between £500,000-£700,000 ($777,000-$1.1m). The
selection contains five decades of correspondence, much of it unpublished,
between Gandhi and Kallenbach dating between 1905 and 1945.They talk about
legal cases, their mutual interest in Tolstoy, and their time together on a
eponymous communal settlement called Tolstoy Farm.
“Privacy is a fundamental human right, whose social value
is an essential component in the functioning of democratic societies”
On
reading the above news and statements, a fundamental question comes to my mind. Are we valuing,
Mahatam's personal items of use, writings, speeches and even his private correspondence
purely from their economic values. While his speeches and writings are in
public domain, had either Mahatma Gandhi or any of those who corresponded with
him privately on personal issues given their sanction to publish them. Are not Mahatma or Kallenbagh entitled to
their privacy?
In
today's Internet and E-mail era, every letter comes with a caution that if the
recipient has received an Email not intended for him , he is obliged to destroy
the same. When that is the norm in today's
civilized soceity, are we not infringing on the privacy of Gandhi's
personal life and his dealings with his wife, sons and friends by publishing
his private correspondence? Who have given us that right? Surely not Gandhi nor
Kallenbagh.
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