Human Rights: Dalit Discourse S. Lourdunathan

7/27/2019 Human Rights: Dalit Discourse S. Lourdunathan

1/15

PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS: FOR OR AGAINST DALITS 1

* Reader & Head, Department of Philosophy, Arul Anandar (Autonomous) College,

Karumathur, Tamilnadu email: [email protected]

Philosophy of Human Rights: For or

Against Dalits

S. Lourdunathan*

The purpose of this paper is (i) to situate and explore the historical

evolution of human rights discourse, (ii) to engage a critique of it in

order (iii) to pave the way for a Dalit Discourse of/for human rightsassertions. Accordingly, the first part of the discussion elicits the human

in the ancient, medieval and modernist human right discourses, in turn

provides the philosophical/theoretical basis for a discussion on human

rights and the second part unveils the non-human in these discourses

as to argue for a Dalit context specific human right discourse i.e.,

inclusive of the legal, social, political and cultural facets of human rights

assertions.

Historical Visual of Human Rights Discourse

Human rights though 20th century cognition has its roots in specific

historical cultural milieu. Historically situated human the rights discourse

can be located and conceptualized within the patterns of Ancient,

Medieval and the Modern civilizations. Hence we need to clarify these

cultural contexts for a proper perspectival understanding of human

rights of/for Dalit human rights discourse. The searching question hence

is to identify the human in the Ancient, Medieval and the Modern

epochs with an incessant question whether such human really represents

the rights of the subjugated human of the periphery.

The Human of the Greek, Roman and the Indian

Aristotle, one of the greatest thinkers, provides premier reflections on

human rights. He speaks of isogoria,or equal freedom of speech, and

isonomia or equality before the law as the fundamental rights andinherent values of the citizen of the Greek city-state. These rights were


2/15

SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 61 JANUARY MARCH 20112

considered to be natural law of governance of the nation on whosefoundation ideal of democracy was conceived. Later the Stoic

philosophers reformulated these principles of governance as natural

rights premised on the belief that all humans are equal and so have

equal rights. The Romans who pioneered in providing a legal system

considered these natural rights as jus gentium or commune omnium

hominum jus meaning common law of all humans which provide the

foremost legal basis for claiming human rights of the individual citizen.1

Within the ancient Indian Vedic literature, the idea of right is inclusive

of the notions of duty (dharma) and obligation (rna). The individual is

predetermined to be born in a specified caste (varna) segment and has

to abide by both self-imposed (svadharma) and socially imposed(visesadharma) duties and obligations of the caste system

(varnashramadharma) in a spirit of detachment (niskamakarma) as

to pass through jivanmukti to attain videhamukti or liberation. The

ethical ideals (purusarthas) of the most orthodox systems of Indian

philosophy insist that it is imperative that s/he performs the duties and

obligations pertaining to his varna as it would promote a cohesive

social order.

The Human in the Medieval England

In Medieval England, within the monarchic rule, the famous Magna

Carta(originally known as The Great Charter of the Liberties of England

and the Liberties of the Forest, signed by King John of England andwas issued on 15 June 1215) first time in history has its legal

pronouncements regarding the rights and liberties of the individual citizens

namely the barons, simultaneously bordering the infringing limits of the

sovereign, the ruler. By the time of the English Civil War, Magna

Cartahad become an important symbol for those who wished to show

that the King was bound by the law.

The Human in the Enlightenment-Modern European Ethos

The period of the modern European that summated in the twentieth

century does provide the recent versions of human rights. John Locke

(1632-1704), the author of several works such as, Second Treatise of

Civil Government (deals with principles of governance), An EssayConcerning Human Understanding (deals with the extent and limits

of human understanding), and Two Treatises of Civil Government


3/15


and the Letters Concerning Toleration (deal with conflicts in Churchand English politics)2etc. have had an enormous impact on our thinking

on human rights in the 20thcentury. Lockes ideas very likely played a

role in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the

Constitution of the United States. He wrote extensively on the right to

life, liberty and property that influenced the English politics to bring

about democracy as against the monarchic of the English rule. The

English Bill of Rights (1689) is yet another major leap in revolutionizing

the ideas of human rights which proclaimed, All men are by nature

equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which,

when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any contract,

deprive or divest their posterity: namely, the enjoyment of life and

liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuingand obtaining happiness.3 The writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau

provided impulse for human right assertions in the West. His Social

Contract, known as the Bible of French revolution, inspired the need

for self governance relying on the ideas that human is autonomous,

rational and hence free to set forth a social contract to establish

democratic governance. In 1789, shortly after the American Revolution,

the French rebelled against the tyranny of King Louis XVI. The rebels

forced the king to sign The Declaration of the Rights of Man. This

statement guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of the press and

basic rights to liberty, property, equality and security and these rights

are inalienable.

4

The United States Constitution (1789) declared abolitionof slavery and pronounced individual right to freedom as birth right,

irrespective of any boundaries of nation, religion, language, colour, etc.

The famous words of the Declaration of Independence reads: We

hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,

that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable

rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness. In the following years many countries adopted human

rights legislation. At the end of World War II, in 1945, the Holocaust

shocked and appalled people all over the world. Regrettably, it resulted

from the loss of millions of lives. In response to this human catastrophe,

45 nations created an international organization that pledged to promote

universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamentalfreedoms. That organization is the United Nations. It was founded in

1945. The chapter of the United Nations, San Francisco on 25 June


4/15


1945, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December1948 adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the two

covenants for the observance of human rights by the General Assembly

in December 1966, that came into force in December 1976 etc. are

notable milestones in the history of human rights assertions. However,

we need to take hold of the truth that human rights discourses in the

Ancient, Medieval and Modern epochs did represent the rights of the

privileged sections only.

Contemporary Developments

There were still many human rights violations around the world. Some

countries had dictators who abused the rights of citizens. Other countries,

such as East Timor, continue to face violence and human rights violationsas they struggle for independence. And long-standing civil wars, such

as the one that continues to plague the Middle East, continue to be the

source of countless human rights violations. In Canada, treatment of

aboriginal people continues to raise many human rights issues as disputes

over things such as treaty rights, taxation, land claims, hunting and

fishing rights. The Sri Lankan vs. Tamil Elam conflict is an ever sorrowful

endemic episode of human tragedy and violations. However, recent

history also provides us with some positive human rights milestones. In

1989 and 1990 the world saw the end of the totalitarian regimes of the

Eastern Bloc, as those countries became open to democracy. The fall

of the Berlin wall was symbolic of this change. Where once citizens of

countries such as Czechoslovakia and the former U.S.S.R. could not

leave their countries, and were subject to arbitrary imprisonment, people

could now move freely across the borders and elect their own

governments. About this time the world also saw the first steps to end

the oppressive apartheid regime in South Africa. In 1995, South Africa

had its first multi-racial election in decades, ending 80 years of white-

only rule.

The Not-So-Human within the Historical Human Rights

Discourse

Having situated ourselves in the evolutionary context of human rights

discourses, we need to ponder on these issues: Whether theses human rights assertions speak about human Rights

of the underprivileged sections of people in the history of humanity?


5/15


To what extent do they historically, conceptually and factuallyinclude/present or represent the Dalit voice against human rights

violations?

This means that Dalit assertion of human rights need to employ a

critical reading of the very human rights discourse itself in order to

hermeneutically render the universal human rights discourse as to present

the Dalit voice in the most specific authentic manner possible. The ideal

of universal human rights is significantly distinguishable from the ideal

of Dalit-specific human rights because the problems and the cultural

context of them are distinct and different. It is too nave to claim or

believe that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a pinnacle of

solution to all human rights violations in the world. In fact, the evolutionaryinference of international human rights never had any Slavery or Dalit-

context addressed by it. Hence a Dalit reading of the history of the

human rights evolution however appreciative and adoptive of it does

take into account a significant question whether the above mentioned

milestones of human rights assertions have anyway represented,

reflected and presented the rights of the subjugated and the oppressed

slave-sections of humanity.

Slavery, not the Address of Human Rights Discourse

Slavery and subjugation of the slaves prevailed in all these civilizations.

Slave-owning was officially institutionalized, justified and sanctified in

most of their philosophies and religious dogmas. The pride of citizenshiplay in the number of the slaves one possessed. Through uncivilized

means such as continuous waging wars against the surrounding nations

and tribes, kidnapping, selling and buying, these civilizations turned the

prisoners and fragile nations people as slaves forever5.

Slavery was a very large institution in ancient Rome. It was a normal

practice of Roman society. It was not unusual for even a home of

moderate means to have slaves. Slaves did all the work that the

Romans did not want to do. They were often captives that were taken

after the Roman army conquered other territories. When they were

being sold, slaves would be displayed at the marketplace with signs

around their necks giving details about them. Slaves had very fewrights, and owners could treat them badly with very little fear of any

legal consequences.6 For Plato and Aristotle, and Alexander, (the

masters and disciples) slavery is the human right of those who are


6/15


mighty. Aristotle, early in the Politicssays: There is a slave or slaveryby law as well as by nature. The law of which I speak is a sort of

convention the law by which whatever is taken in war is supposed

to belong to the victors. But this right many jurists impeach, as they

would an orator who brought forward an unconstitutional measure: they

detest the notion that, because one man has the power of doing violence

and is superior in brute strength, another shall be his slave and subject.7

For the Greeks, men because of their masculinity are superior over

women and hence women are not to be treated with equal rights. They

are to be submissive to the male-owner-partner. Here is what Aristotle

says: Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and

body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose

business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lowersort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors

that they should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be, and

therefore is, anothers and he who participates in rational principle

enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by

nature. It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others

slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right. 8

The caste Indian ethos is textually (Vedic) and socially structured slave-

owning society that excluded the ethnic groups as outcastes and hence

untouchables, (Dalits) relegating them to materiality, menial, manual

and servicing occupations and thereby inhuman ill treatments.

Innumerable Vedic texts and incidents of discrimination against Dalitscould be instantiated to this effect. Slavery in India is historical and

scriptural and what is predominantly historical of India is its ongoing

history of caste-enslavement, the yoke of it falls heavily on the Dalits in

manifold (direct and indirect) ways of inhuman treatment. It is far from

truth if we claim that what is universal and all-unifying factor of Indian

society is not its religion(s) or spirituality but its determined practice of

the violations of the Dalits transcending linguistic and religious borders.

The Medieval and the Modern discussions on human rights mostly

represented the rights of the privileged people. John Locke, the famous

pronouncer of the liberty, freedom and right to property and life, for

example worked as the secretary of the colonial trade and he bargainedand protested for the ruling power of the privileged sections and not

necessarily of the freedom of the English colonial countries. The issue

of Locks resistance to slavery is not necessarily inclusive of the slavery


7/15


of the Africans or African Americans, but against the monarchicalEngland and also Stuarts attempt to enslave the English people. Locke

was up to his neck in the slave trade as a government official, and an

active commercial envoy until a few years before he wrote the Two

Treatises. So, while the chief reason for writing the book may have

been to justify resistance to the King, a subsidiary reason perhaps is to

justify the practices of the Afro-American slave trade, because Locke

viewed it as so important to the national power of England and he

seems to have considered Afro-American slavery justifiable because

Black Africans are not humans or are so subhuman that the theory of

his natural rights and the theory of slavery of the Second Treatisedoes

not apply to them.

In the course of the history of liberal tradition, the slaves, heathens,

barbarians, colonized peoples, nature, indigenous peoples, women, children,

the impoverished and the insane ones, have been thought and relegated

to the sphere of unworthy of being considered human because they

were considered non-rational. The enlightenment discourse on reason,

progress, capitalism, development, etc. are founded on the rationality of

exclusion of the Other. The Rights of Man were applied to those who

are deemed rational, elite, ruling, powerful, and those who possess

autonomous moral will and reason. This is the peculiar ontological

construction that provided the purview of human rights discourse of

modernist paradigm. The net result of such ontological construction is

to accomplish the justification of the unjustifiable: namely, colonialismand imperialism. Such justification inherently remained racist; the superior

race by virtue of it being defined rational-autonomous, pre-supposed the

priority of colonizing the Other. The Other, not being fully human, is

liable to be merchandised and commoditized in the colonial market. The

Other constitutes the raw material to establish my rational supremacy.

The Other is a not-sufficiently human, and therefore does not have any

autonomous rights. The language here is a language of governance of

the Other. The collective human right of the colonizer to keep the

world in order absolutises its power (power of property (economic) and

state rule (political)). The ruled Other is made invisible in the sight of

the ruler. Their suffering was denied of any authentic voice, for it is not

constitutive of human suffering. The rhetoric here of the modernist

versions of human right discourse is universality, indivisibility,

interdependence, inalienability of human rights of the elite few, organic,


8/15


natural etc. Sabine Broeck, in his work on Slavery, Enlightenment,Critical Theory observes: Even though the extent to which Western

economies and societies have profited from the internationally expansive

phenomenon of slave trading; transatlantic modernity was socially,

culturally and economically made and mobilized in crucial ways by the

slave trading economy with its relentless hegemonial insistences. 9

Clarifying Human Rights Perspectives of/for Dalit Human Rights

Discourse

Instead of unwarranted returns to the glorification of human rights as

embedded in the ancient Vedic, Greek, Roman, Medieval and Modern

texts (be it religious or secular) it is worthwhile to consider the different

ways of understanding and perceiving the human rights discourse as toenable a perspective of/for Dalit human rights discourse. By perspective

we mean the way(s) of looking at at a datum for analysis. It is the

foreground that colour, influences ones social attitudes and relations.

Such ways of looking are multiple. Taking into consideration the historical

context of human rights evolution, we need to clarify the different

paradigms in understanding human rights.

Taking the historical context of human rights we may identify

paradigmatic differences of human right approaches/functions for reasons

of clarity and analysis and critique. They may be classified into:

(i) Human rights as a moraldiscourse

(ii) Human rights as a legalgrammar and language of governance

(iii) Human rights as a politically irritant regime

(iv) Human rights as asocially progressive paradigm for insurrectionary

praxis

(v) Human rights as a culturallydiscourse for dalit Assertion

(i) Human Rights as a Moral Discourse

Human rights are conceived to be the ten commandments the moral

principles as an ought to question to be categorically obeyed in the

Kantian spirit of categorical imperative. Such a way of looking at

human rights discourse raises the absolute ethical question, what

individuals and communities ought to desire? Accordingly its response

is that there are ethical values such as human dignity, integrity, and


9/15


well-being and the individual and the State are invoked to be moral.Ones social life is judged from this standpoint. It calls for a common

consensus respect towards other person, as a co-equal considering

that the human is the ground of all ethics. It attempts to provide

universally valid norms for human conduct and structure of society. It

consists of full recognition of the fact that human rights as a sole

source of solidarity among strangers, conceding one another the right

to remain strangers. (Jurgan Habermas). Taking to this perspective,

human rights declarations are treated as providing moral standards to

evaluate the existing state of affairs regarding human rights violations.

It is a call for the State and the individual to be ethical, just-based and

legally-binding, and accountable to the protection of human dignity of its

individual members. The problem in this position is that it remains to bereligious or catechetical with mere moral invocation to be good and

do good in the face of enormous human rights violations and

discriminatory practices. Is human morally binding? If yes, then given

the enormous spiritual and religions assertions of values such as faith,

love, justice, brotherhood, equality, spirituality, etc. why still most humans

are not so human except being proud of belonging to this or that

religion. Humans are more religionists than humanists in ethic and

these means that mere moral invocations do not hold water except the

purpose of examining the conscience with no or little practical intent

and content. The rationale that someone can be religionist without being

ethical and another one can be ethical without being religionist impliesthe inference that mere moral invocations do not suffice to sustainably

respond to human rights violations against the Dalits in the Indian context.

(ii) Human Rights as a Legal Grammar and Language of

Governance

In this perspective, human rights discourse is viewed as providing the

(legal) ground of the grammar and language for national and international

governance. Here the Universal Declarations of Human Rights are

seen as legal standards of law or the rules of law towards which

nations are called upon to ground their governance. It is to see human

rights discourse as legal foundation beyond the territories of nation-

states. International relations and organizations need to be governed bya system of meaning for human rights. It is to develop international

human rights law and legal system. Any State or structural violations of

human rights is seen as inconsistent with the laws of such human


10/15


rights. Most human rights watches thrive upon this perspective of humanrights by keeping watch of any human rights violations for international

representations if not necessarily of the radical critique and questioning

of such violations as to bring about human dignity. Human rights are

seen here as normative for governance. It emphasizes the democratic

rights of the peoples over and against the state violations. The practices

of global governance needs to legitimated in recourse to human rights

languages. In this perspective justice is legal and political not necessarily

moral and social. Human exploitation, rights violation and

discriminations are considered just legal issues rather than a social

shame to be radically questioned. In such a paradigm one can be legally

non-discriminatory but socially discriminatory for the legal governance

is insufficient to look deeply on the social problem of (Dalit)discrimination and its moral dimension. For example, in the Indian social

context a non-Dalit can be a standardised lawyer-professional but socially

caste-constitutive. A Dalit lawyer by profession, even be Supreme

Court judge, but he cannot find exodus to his social status as an

untouchable. This is exactly the problematic of conceiving human rights

discourse purely from a legal point of view as a linguistic grammar of

inter/national governance. The international standards of human rights

often suffer from these local-social intricacies of human rights violations

and discrimination and on the contrary they may tend to be silent over

such local issues on the pretext that the Dalit problem is domestic and

necessarily international. Christopher S. Nwodo cautions that the legalaspect is established by the fact of these rights being incorporated into

some international charter or nations constitution. But legality does not

always imply morality. For the legal to be at the same time moral, it has

to satisfy some conditions that give it a moral status making it more

binding at least in conscience.10

(iii) Human Rights as a Politically and Economically Irritant Regime

Human rights discourse is often seen as a politically irritant regime that

infringes into the national borders of sovereignty and as disturbing the

unfettered expansion of transnational globalization, liberalization and the

communicative sovereignty of the world/trade organisations. Added to

this economic neo-colonialism, human rights discourse is resisted by thepolitical powers because the distinct nation-politics consider human rights

discourse as an infringement into the boundaries of their own territory.


11/15


The nation-politics could consider it as crossing the borders of theirown legal and national territories enforcing into their autonomy and

democratic space and therefore unfriendly. The plea here is that

individual national human rights problems are domestic and not trans-

national and hence such infringement is a matter of irritant regime. For

example, in the recent summit in South Africa on the question of

Casteism vs. Racism, the official-representative version of the Indian

government held that Casteism and Dalit discrimination is a domestic

issue and therefore need not be discussed at the international forum.

(iv) Human Rights as a Socially Progressive Paradigm for

Insurrectionary Praxis

Through struggles and movements against injustice human rightsdiscourse is seen as a fertile arena of transformative social and political

practice that helps to destabilize and disorient the deeply unjust

concentrations of political, social, economic, and technological power

centres (national or transnational). Movements for decolonization, and

self-determination and elimination of apartheid, womens rights as human

rights, some Dalit NGOS, ecological movements, and many non-

governmental organisations, etc. eschew such a perspective of human

rights. For them, human rights assertion is within the paradigms of

modernity (that consider human as rational and autonomous, hence has

an intrinsic right) do believe that human rights practice is an

insurrectionary praxis often forgetting the fact that modernity with all

its claims of human dignity and progress is still a failed or farfetched

narrative. The late modern criticisms against modernity need to be

discussed and responded seriously as they pronounce the erosion and

end of modernity (Lyotard), the death of the centric self (Derrida),

dominance of the metaphysical presence of the Western Self with view

of celebration of the related-plurality of the selves as to present the

voice of the suffering Other (Levinas).11

(v) Human Rights as a Culturally Contested Discourse for Dalit

Assertion

Relying on the insights of post-colonial critique, and post-modern warnings

against modernist-metanarratives, contemporary Dalit human rightsdiscourse needs to consider human rights discourse as a culturally

contested issue augmenting a specific space for Dalit voice of resistance

and reassurance for Dalit rights not only legally but politically and


12/15


socio-culturally. In this discourse, the universality of human rights andthe particularity of human rights, pertaining to each particular social

culture is contested. Every social culture is encapsulated with its own

meanings of human rights violations. Each culture has a specific sense

of what is meant by human and what is meant by inhuman or non-

human. Within this conte(x)st, the questions such as: is human rights

discourse, a discourse of the elite or the upper-class/caste groups

(illustrado)? Or a discourse of the indigenous (indio), namely the

Dalits? In other words Dalit human right discourse attempts to address

the radical evils of historical, practical, ideological and social estrangement

of the Dalits. It is not only a legal issue to be represented by the

unrepresentative non-Dalit speech-acts because often the non-Dalit

discourse on Dalit human rights fall within the techniques of persuasionand as means of creating awareness to the universality of human

rights or as means to veil the Dalit pathos in its specific multitudes.

Most often, the primary voice of the Dalit suffering is turned as raw

material and projected and trans-nationalized for international human

right marketing of universality. The Dalit human rights problem is

repressed and ironically turned into a Dalit Capital through international

communicative affluence for social power and profit interests.Within

this paradigm, prominent issues for a Dalit discourse on human rights

(and for any discriminated sections) may include:

That the universal claim of Human Rights is not really universal

but has always represented and formulated universalized dominant

view of the privileged sections of humanity.

This propels a sense of neo-colonialism in the language of freedom,

liberty, rationality and individuality.

Hence the question is how could it happen that the history of the

inscription, and dissemination of the Enlightenments insistence on

freedom as the human subjects universal right could write the

slave trade out of modernitys self-reflexivityalmost completely,

displacing the issue of human rights violations of the colonized, the

underdogs, the women, and the discriminated sections of the Third

World excluding the Dalit discrimination in the Asian Pacific.

And why and how discourses of liberation such as Dalitism,feminism, etc. fail to contest/debate and expose the ontological,

epistemological and social implications of the European colour

discourse on human rights?


13/15


Does it imply that a Dalit discourse on human rights has to engagean ongoing moment of de-colonizing the universal human rights

discourse?

Since the subject called human in the Ancient, Medieval and Modern

civilization excludes the oppressed (as subhuman, not rational, not moral,

and therefore not rightful) a discourse on Dalit human rights has to

necessarily engage ongoing epistemological suspicion12of the human

subjects and human rights watches pronounced in public discourse.

Dalit disclosure and assertion of human rights imply a serious sense of

deconstruction of the metaphysical presence 13 of the dominant

European (Parmenides Being and Descartes cogito, and Nietzches

superman and the Caste Indian touchable human that have beenhistorically standardized as the only human who are culturally and

philosophically construed to be possessed of rights to social power and

life.

Dalits Rights As

The notion of rights for the Dalits has several inclusive images. It is

basically an existential issue, an argument for Dalit existence in the

face of denials of existence or exclusion. It is but assertive denial of the

exclusion that is perpetuated by caste discriminatory prejudices and

violations. Hence the question of rights for Dalit discourse is inclusive

of the legal standard, but goes beyond it. Dalit human rights discourse

has a wide range of conceptual bearings that need to be actualised bysocial actions depending upon specific contexts of social deprivations.

A cursory directive of the concepts of Dalit rights with its divergent

connotations would include:

Right to be themselves first, (identity issue); Right to self assertion;

Right to certain boundary or social space (the argument of

Ambedkar to dual vote and separate electorate is an instance of

this right);

Right as markers of power; Right as political power by direct

representations; Right as protection; Right as organisation of social

space; Rights as access to (land and property); Right as claims;

Right as defence against any incursion; Right as to cross and

resist the social-custom boundaries;


14/15


Right as articulation; Right as dignified treatment in private andpublic spheres,

Right to worship or restrain in common with other groups of the same

religion. Right to have access to common burial/cremation ground as

against the prevalence of separate burial ground is to be situated in the

illegitimacy of all forms of caste violence individual, social, economic,

political and state-sanctioned cruelty. Central to this discursivity is the

construction of a politics of power for the people, namely the Dalits

who have been historically treated as non-human-other. Alongside the

legal battle for justice and rights, it ought to take stock of the dimensions

of Dalit suffering seriously. It is to evolve a Dalit human rights-based

approach in addressing the question of development as against merewelfare-based approaches.14The question of Dalit human rights is not

just a matter of addressing the atrocities, but at large it corroborates the

affirmation of land rights of Dalits, resisting the forces of globalisation,

communalism, casteism, patriarchy. 15

Dalit human rights discourse does have a prophetic rhetoric, namely the

Affirmation of the Fragmented Universality for the Restoration of

Lives and Dignity. Its discourse is not in favour of the moralization or

naturalization or even universalization of human rights, rather it demands

to unveil the illegitimacy of institutionalized caste-based human rights

violations against them. It is a politics for/against/to power through

empowerment. It arises from the social sensibility and responsiveness

of the presentative face-of-the other16 of the tortured and tormented

Dalits and not necessarily any representative voice for any such

representations could often turn out to repressive of the death cries of

the Dalits. Dalit human right discourse continues to demand institutional,

State cultural, social accountability and action for conditions of injustice

as to pave way for justice.

END NOTES

1. ACPI Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1. Human Rights Varghese Manimala,

pp.633-634

2. John Locke (1632-1704) is known as the father of Liberalism, who influenced

the most influential thinkers of Enlightenment thinkers and social contract theorists

(Voltaire and Rousseau). His works are reflected in the American Declaration ofIndependence.

3. Refer, The English Bill of Rights (1689) for a detailed exposition of rights as

natural and intrinsic.


15/15


4. Human Rights, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 7, (New York: McGrawHill,1967)7:211

5. http://www.crystalinks.com/greekslavery.html

6. http://historylink102.com/Rome/roman-slaves.htm

7. http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/distance_arc/las_casas/Aristotle-slavery.html

8. http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/distance_arc/las_casas/Aristotle-slavery.html

9. trinity.duke.edu/globalstudies/wp.../reflections_broeck_abstract.doc

10. Christopher S. Nwodo, The Philosophical Basis of Human Rights Claims

India Quarterly, 45/2-3 (April-Sept 1989), p.214.

11. Postmodern criticisms such as meta-narrative referred by Lyotard, Deconstruction

by Derrida, the idea of the Other as determinant face of oneself elaborated by

Levinas and others provide rich fertile conceptual grounds for a discourse on

human rights from the perspective of the subjugated people.

12. Epistemological suspicion is the concept employed in Hermeneutics as to enable

the interpreted to situate his her interpretation, rooted in a foreground, bracketing

the dominant interpretations as to enable an ethically responsible interpretation

possibilities.

13. Derrida on metaphysical presence conceives the idea that the European Self

played a dominant role in executing ideological and practical domination of the

rest of the cultures, and hence need to be exposed of its futility by a systemic

mode of deconstruction.

14. In a recent speech at the release of the National Human Rights Commissions

(NHRC) Report on Prevention of Atrocities against Scheduled Castes authored

by K.B. Saxena, Justice A.S. Anand Chairperson of the NHRC, called upon the

government to adopt a rights-based approach and not a welfare-based one in

addressing the condition of the people belonging to the Scheduled Castes (Dalits)

15. Goldy M. George, The Question Of Dalit Human Rights in Counter Currents.

16. Please refer to Levinas writings for his convincing argument that the face of the

other, namely the deprived social other as categorical necessity to affirm ones

identity.

Human Rights: Dalit Discourse S. Lourdunathan

Documents

Transcript of Human Rights: Dalit Discourse S. Lourdunathan