Fundamental Human Rights: The Right to Life and Personal Liberty

The right to life and personal liberty is the most fundamental of all the fundamental human rights. It is one of the most essential basic human rights in a democratic state. The right to life does not mean a mere physical existence or the right to live a lifeless life. The right to life includes the right to live with human dignity and all that goes alongwith it, namely, the basic necessities of life such as adequate nutrition, clothing and shelter over the head and facilities for reading, writing an expressing oneself in diverse forms, freely moving about and mixing and commingling with fellow human beings. Article 21 has not only ensured right to life but right to personal liberty also; and nobody can be deprived of these except according to the procedure established by law. The creativity of the Indian judicial system has been at its best whenever it was called to interpret article 21, except perhaps during the short interregnum of the emergency rule. Today, article 21 stands out as the beacon light for all freedom lovers promising the development of more rights when needed and ensuring a minimum degree of fairness in all legal proceedings. The Supreme Court played the role of a crusader of people’s liberty and introduced ‘reasonableness, fairness and justness" in the procedure under "procedure established by law". Reasonableness under article 21 widened its scope and provided impetus to bring in fairness in number of fields. Wide dimension given to this right now covers various aspects which the framers of the constitution might or might not visualized e.g. right to : privacy, travel abroad, livelihood, prisoners, health, timely medical aid, free legal aid, speedy trial, live in healthy environment, shelter, education, affirmative action and compensation for violation of right to life and personal liberty. This book covers the entire gamut of the right to life and personal liberty—in its full bloom and would be of great interest to teachers, scholars, students of constitutional law and political science and to all those interested in having knowledge about the scope of the fundamental human rights.