The six words in the Constitution that grew bigger than anyone planned

Article 21 began as a short constitutional protection for life and personal liberty. In today's YOUR INDIA column, Santosh Nair looks at how Supreme Court rulings expanded those words to include fairness, livelihood, privacy, dignity and other protections that shape everyday life today.

Article 21 of the Indian Constitution contains just six words that matter most: “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.” Read quickly, it sounds almost narrow, a promise mainly about not being arbitrarily arrested or executed. For the first three decades after Independence, courts largely read it that way too.

Then, in 1978, a case involving a woman denied a passport without explanation changed what those six words meant for every Indian citizen, permanently.

Maneka Gandhi, a journalist, had her passport impounded by the government with no reasons given and no chance to respond. She challenged this before the Supreme Court. The Court’s ruling, Maneka Gandhi v Union of India, did something the Constitution’s own text had not explicitly demanded until then. It said that any law depriving someone of life or liberty could not simply exist on paper, it had to be fair, just, and reasonable in how it actually worked. A technically legal procedure that behaved arbitrarily was no longer good enough.

Read more: How much does the family you’re born into decide your future?

How one passport........

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