Recent litigation has seen personality rights jump to the forefront of legal debates. With no Supreme Court judgment on the same, the landscape is in the fray with several High Court decisions. The theoretical debate is where to ground the right — in privacy or in property. Some have argued that the courts in India have held personality rights to be part of privacy. This paper shows that the Indian doctrine is best explained as a functionalist approach —  neither grounding it exclusively on privacy, nor on property. It shows that Indian courts have based the right in privacy only when the context permitted the same. Therefore, it cannot be read to have grounded personality rights solely on privacy. The paper defends this approach and argues for a structured analysis of the same. Further, the paper highlights the erroneous expansion of personality rights in India by not following the ‘confusion’ test. It critiques the reasoning of the Court and its misunderstanding of the seminal American case of Haelan v. Topps, which has led to the expansion of the right. Finally, it suggests an additional layer of intentional analysis to refine application in an attempt to prevent over-inclusivity.