Indian court rulings on the ‘right to be forgotten’ will dent our collective memory

They say that the first draft of history is written by journalists. This is mostly true, except perhaps in the case of legal history where the first draft is written in the records of the courts by its stenographers and judges. It is these records which capture the present and preserve it for posterity in public and private archives for historians of the future.

As the world moved into the digital age, the information technology revolution promised to make it easier than ever to store, index and organise records. The information revolution also converted much of the internet into an archive which was meticulously indexed by search engines for the common citizen to use for free. So much so that the first draft of history today depends upon the first page of search results displayed by Google’s algorithm.

All of this is at risk today because of a string of judgements tumbling out of the High Courts across India which have weaponised the fundamental right to privacy against journalism, databases and search engines. Two recent judgments on the right to be forgotten from the Delhi High Court and Bombay High Court present the dangers of this approach. The judgement of the Delhi High Court...

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