So abominable is the practice of snooping into people’s private space that it annoys all serious-minded people. Moral limits must be respected even when one is trying to settle political scores with adversaries.

A former Sindh governor has been a recent target of this practice. What he has been shown doing in a video that has been circulating recently is clearly condemnable, but filming him in a private moment is far worse a misconduct.

Snooping into the private space of an individual can hardly be condoned. The sanctity of the private sphere must be safeguarded at all costs.

Who may not have skeletons in their closets? Students of history and politics may not have forgotten the Watergate Scandal that resulted in the ouster of President Richard Nixon of the United States.

The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration’s attempts to cover up its involvement in the June 17, 1972, break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington, DC, Watergate Office Building. That scandal shook the very foundations of the US democracy. Nixon struggled for the rest of his life to erase that stigma. We must learn a few lessons from such events and conduct ourselves accordingly.

In the contemporary world of Machiavellian politics where grabbing and wielding of power is the norm, the politics is restricted to the public arena. Spying on the opponents to gather information to undermine them politically is a felony in states where democratic institutions have taken root.

The ‘inner domain’ - an expression coined by Partha Chatterjee - consists of home, family, etc and is thought to be off limits.

Even the colonial British didn’t lower themselves to the level of invading the private space of their opponents.

It seems appropriate here to shed some light on the public sphere and the private sphere to put our debate in perspective. It may be of benefit to the students of social sciences. Both these spheres will be defined and the differences highlighted, followed by epistemological antecedents.

The private sphere is a sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority, unhampered by interventions from governmental or other institutions. Examples of the private sphere are family and home. In the Pakistani context, I will add the peculiar space that an ‘individual’ ought to be made available as a part of the private sphere.

Public and private spheres are thought of as distinct realms. The basic distinction between them is that the public sphere is the realm of politics where strangers come together to engage in the free exchange of ideas. It is open to everyone whereas the private sphere is a smaller, typically enclosed realm (like a home) that is only open to those who have permission to enter it. We sometimes call it Chadar aur Chardiwari.

I assert that the hotel room where that video was recorded, constituted the private space of the individual.

Greece (Athens) is known to be the wellspring of the concepts under discussion in this column, like a host of other subjects and concepts.

The academic definition of the public and private spheres is largely a result of the work of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who is also a student of critical theory and associated with the Frankfurt School. His 1962 book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, is considered the key text on the matter. He considers the public sphere a place where a free exchange of ideas and debate happen. This is the cornerstone of democracy.

He adds that public sphere is, “made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of the society with the state”. From this public sphere grows a “public authority” that dictates the values, ideals and goals of a given society. The will of the people is expressed within it and emerges from it.

On the flip side, the private sphere is the realm of family and home life, theoretically speaking, free of the influence of government and other social institutions. In this realm, one’s responsibility is to oneself and other members of one’s household. Work and exchange can take place within a home in a way that is separate from the economy of the wider society.

Any ethical code that can transcend the temporal confines strictly enjoins respect for individual space. Spying on people and then divulging negative sides of their personality is destructive for the socio-moral ethos on which the edifice of the society rests.

This can also have perilous psychological fall out. It can curb the aspirations of the youth to express themselves lest they should be caught on the camera and their images photo shopped and made viral. Such apprehensions demoralise people and can have a debilitating affect.

Such demoralised people tend to be secretive and conspiratorial. Thus, private space of an individual, which includes their home and family, must be respected. Threatening people with leaking their videos is abominable to say the least. We ought to be sensitive about how sickening Pakistani politics have become. Making frivolous accusations against one’s opponents and the politics of blackmail are a curse we must do something about.

The writer is a professional historian and an author.   He can be reached at tk393@cam.ac.uk