By M Abdul Fathah
A plethora of human rights rulings came out of the Indian supreme court has been a tonal material for many a recent vitriolic slogans aired in Indian streets and a charged deliberation in academic circles This obsession with a pro western liberal thought current , precisely in transplanting religious values to private sphere, has increasingly bought it into conflict with long cherished diverse cultural matrix of multifaceted Indian society. liberal knowledge tradition as a dominant impulse of 21st century played a decisive role in harvesting public consent for these lopsided rulings. Though this western export with a veil of universalism has become a leitmotif of modern values, the appalling ill fate of them insist us to contemplate on immanent loopholes and seek viable lieu for the same.
Theoretical underpinning and dilemmas
The historical roots of modern day human rights theories reach to Latin Christian natural laws and precisely how this medieval notion of human rights employed Aristotelian thought paradigms. In the later years, Protestant Reformation and enlightenment tendencies engendered by thinkers such as John Locke and Jean Jacques Burlamaqui rendered human rights theories with multifaceted meaning and were profoundly conceived and diffused through ventures such as French declaration and American bill of rights. Though modern view presupposes a state conception of human rights , Western human rights with so call inevitability is too inextricably interwoven with feudal lineage and religious institutions of medieval Europe. The same premise facilitated the 17th century theorists like John Locke to employ natural resource rights to wage intellectual debate against the medieval nations.
Notwithstanding the Christian underpinnings at the out set, the enlightenment period with the cumulative weight of epistemological break and obscure moral legitimacy of church due to concocted values and draconian practices , marked a shift from revealed religious to theoretical and metaphysical premises. American declaration, for instance, take a stand greatly committed to laws of nature and nature’s god, and cite self evident truths as references, rather than the textual evidences. Nevertheless, since contemporary secular theorists like Nietzsche and the like vilifies any genre of divine and metaphysical orders, the theoretical mosaic of modern day human rights are characterized with outright denial of any of that sort and are captive to practical wisdom.
As a result of this flexibility and materiality, the western human rights concepts invited bitter criticisms and repudiation from the enlightenment circles itself. While Edmund Burke and Jeremy Bentham sued the concept of inalienability , Karl Marx considered liberal inspired individual rights as rights of bourgeois and aristocrats who reined the production and natural resources. In his reasoning, they court market value than the much vaulted human dignity. In Arthur Dyke’s evaluations , duty free rights of Hobbesian model would end up in social polarization and disintegration of human relationships. However , seventeenth and eighteenth century Western human rights alluded to the limited territory of nations and lacked a universal legitimacy. Post Second World War era consensus among a couple of pro western minds and consequent declaration of human rights in 1948 played a cosmic significance in rendering it a universal character. Now one cannot but showcase them as moral language of universal justice. In the post World War era, much of the critique against those secular interpretation of Judeo Christian heritage loomed as debates and reciprocities between moral relativists and moral universalists. As cultural relativists such as Chris Brown and Makau Mutua put it, UDHR propound a human right theory completely alien to many a indigenous parameters closely intertwined with political, social and epistemological institutions immanent in the local tradition. Besides, the so fashioned universalism conducts the political, economical and cultural imperialism waged in east as residues of White men’s burden and Civilizing mission. This moral universalism which undermined the very edifice of international trade and war laws has been receiving stiff opposition from Asian countries, who have been reiterating the same in UN General Assembly from 1980s. Mahathir Muhammed and Lee Juan Yu , prime ministers of Malaysia and Singapore respectively, to name a few, claimed long before in 1990s that relevance ascribed to loyalty and forgoing personal freedom for the sake of social stability in Eastern values validate authoritarian regimes than democracy.
However those like Abdullahi Naeem who stand at the forefront of challenging and constructive exchange taking place today between European and Islamic traditions, take a blow upon them to give precedence to internal interpretations within Islam to bring those indigenous cultures in conformity with western yardsticks, taking for granted the dynamic nature of cultures and centuries of relentless efforts beyond human rights. In the decolonial period, especially with religious symbols and sentiments fortifying their places in the societal mores, many a scholars have embarked upon criticizing it’s secular flavours while at the same time acknowledging the imperative of conforming with modern tendencies. Hannah Arendt , Talal Asad and John Milbank to name a few have all perceived it as a secular notion and criticized it from distinct intellectual heritage and social settings.
In the western secular reasoning , though the material world has no ultimate meaning or transcendent value, it has relative meaning .Since individual is the source of meaning in the material world , the only value would be the meaning and value that man bestows on things. This as affirmation grounds the special morality that in turn grounds western human rights theories .The corner stone of the theory is that man himself finds the necessity of being moral. Since the source of men’s inherent dignity is himself, he too have too find the means to meet the requisite requirements of his well being. He too requires a measure of inviolability to him well being and sometimes , something that outlast his lifetime to include legacies .Often, his well being necessitate even the well being of others since their uneasiness would have an opposite reaction on him. Thus what dictates and even entails a moral community has nothing to do with fear of divine retribution and divine intentions in creating humans, rather an inducement dictated by ones own existence and security.
In the western secular reasoning , though the material world has no ultimate meaning or transcendent value, it has a relative meaning. Since individuals are the source of meaning in the material world, the only value would be the meaning and value that men bestow upon things. This is the affirmation that grounds the secular morality which in turn surfaces western human rights theories .The corner stone of this theory is that man himself finds the necessity of being moral. Since the source of men’s inherent dignity is he himself, he too have to find the means to meet the requisite requirements of his well being. He too requires a measure of inviolability to his well being and sometimes , something that outlast his lifetime to include legacies .Often, his well being necessitates even the well being of others since their uneasiness would have detrimental effects on him. Thus what entails, and even dictates a moral community has nothing to do with fear of divine retribution or divine intentions in human creation, rather they are induced by ones own existence and security.
In a sense, this secular project feeding on largely secular notions of scientific rationalism, natural rights, individualism and social contract is a superficial construct. Moreover, the critiques for the same from the enlightenment circle too presupposes a God free world of same enlightenment diction.
Scientific rationalism deemed scientific world view and scientific truths as only confidential ways of acquiring knowledge and showcased other metaphysical knowledge’s to be outside of human sphere. It envisaged human reason to encompass all realms of human life and thus, human rights to narrow to human rationales. Human rights thus, came to be understood as alien to religious understandings and teachings which are ostensibly considered beyond reason.
Most of these human rights declarations like UDHR presume human rights to be distanced from the questions of ideology i.e, philosophical questions that define the approach to man and universe. Thinkers of French revolution, for instance, saw religions and human rights to be concepts that had sole social significance and devoid of any truth value . They never attended to the philosophical questions of what does right mean? , who is the human being talked about? or what’s men’s intrinsic dignity? .etc
In addition, enlightenment thought currents that has been acknowledged as congruent point for all these declarations relegate men to be formed by the nature and shaped on the whole by social circumstances .Emily Durkheim, for instance, consider humanity to be products of social reflection. While Sigmund Freud portrays them as a contractual form, Berkeley consider them to be mental products. The men molded up in these definitions, reaching up to even socio economic principles of Marx, is a material being that cannot possess any human rights. Moreover, most of the Western thinkers such as Immanuel Kant forged natural rights from the individualistic notions derived from the scientific rationalism. Alongside Frederick Nietzsche considered an individual engendered by individualism as subject to values.
John Milbank who formulated a critique of secular from the Judeo Christian tradition had contended this unwarranted human sovereignty without any external influences or constraints. Though liberal view showcases the inalienable rights molded out of individualism as detrimental to the sovereignty of nation states, and a major milestone for human rights , it goes without saying that in an alternative reading , they poses a grace threat to the individual rights of humanity. This is because much of the self restriction maintained for the sovereign’s human right is more or less lost in the face of stiff pressure generated by same liberal thoughts. Though Francis Hutchison who for the first time distinguished alienable and inalienable rights in his book Inquiry into origin of our idea of beauty and virtue conceives the same paradox, he seems to take on those that went against the public consensus premised upon Reformation principle of liberty of conscience. With such an ambiguity centering around it, UDHR along with other international war accords are constructed upon such public interests and secular commitment between states .
Verily, though wars of that intensity and causality as first and second world war were kept at bay, ruthless violation of human rights, gathering momentum through neo colonialism and neo liberal economic strategies expose inherent loopholes of UDHR and a serious catastrophe. Even now, lives lost in aerial bombardment carried out pervasively in Middle East and Africa are subsided to the peripheral of human rights violations. Since an individual encounter and annihilation is tactically avoided, these are counted as collateral damage in the course of securing a constructed political good. Apart from American hypocrisy or stake of western countries to float international conventions unabashedly, they give hints to inherent limitations in this secular project.
As an antidote to the loose walls of secular commitment, Islam, for instance, proposes a comprehensive and all encompassing idea about human rights. It envisages a worldview that transcends man and his needs and accommodate an ultimate meaning for the universe and everything encompassing rather than clamouring for a moral project premised upon ones own well being.
Islam embodies human rights in the context of accountability to one god, and generate a compelling motivation for a deeper commitment of rights of fellow human beings who too are created equal to him. Muslim, as a firm believer in the primacy of oneness of God who is the creator of universe and everything encompassing it, believes that there exist a logical relationship between social and philosophical questions. This all knowing God , the exalted, is the only one who profoundly understands man’s inherent dignity, and thus derives the genuine rights and duties of man on earth. The pretext and intrinsic drives for his right would be then his relationship to God and his viceregency on earth. Thus the liberal tendency to regard the human rights out of religious sphere is completely alien to Islamic world view .Moreover, as a envoy of god on earth, Islam endows no rights without responsibilities and duties which are to be duly fulfilled to avoid infringement. This accountability through duties is not only a key to spiritual confinement, but also serve as a crux to relationship with other par beings.
From this premise, Islam bestows more of such on wealthy and maintains that these duties progress not out of compassion, but need to be discharged as a duty. However, natural rights, the corner stone of western human rights more or less keep duties at bay. Taking it for granted, declaration such as UDHR followed the same pattern .Verily, this has a direct bearing on the gruesome infringement of rights under sovereign regimes during the early 1900s which reined the undercurrents for the formulation of UDHR. The duties and obligation of UDHR thus, narrows to article 29.
Modern state as a harbinger of human rights : how state violence nullifies human rights
Talal Asad, a renowned anthropologist who launched a harsh critique on secular projects and precisely on western human right seeks to unfold such loopholes of UDHR in his book The formation of secular. The declaration of 1948, though commences by stating the equal and inalienable rights of human family, it immediately turns to state, bestowing the responsibility for the same upon the sovereign state. H Marshal in his account of the development of citizenship in Britain , for instance, notes how derisively, the centuries of seventeenth ,eighteenth and nineteenth when the modern state was , played a definite role in the formation of human rights.
Moreover, as Hannah Arendt put it, the same enlightenment principles of human individuality and sovereignty in the matter of rights was a driving force behind narrowing human rights to the concept of state, resulting from a pretext that man is the only sovereign in the matters of authority and alienating any external forces such as religion from claiming authority. Even with a surge of declarations of rights , the rights authority still pertain within the circumference of state owing to the social contract tradition of French Revolution. However John Locke, hailing from the same revolutionary tradition and presenting natural rights as counterpoised to the despotism of autocratic regimes had long before contended this over sovereignty we have come to confront in the modern times. Consequently, the modern nation states employed human rights to an unscrupulous advantage in line with colonial government’s treatment of its subjects. Modern world is replete with wars and conflicts between political structures such as nations and states , but they are not for and against the inherent worth of humanity, but solely over political settings this idea entails and their existence.
Thus, modern human rights depend and pledge obedience to national rights that punish, protects and formulate one as citizen of a state. Even UDHR legitimizes rebellions against despotic regimes only when rights remain unprotected by rule of law. Whence, rebellions against the violation of rule of law and those against the curtailment of traditional moral justice are demarcated differently to provide only the former with legitimacy, what is deliberative ignored is that what may be lawful too can be unjust and intolerable. The fate of countries like Greece to themselves forcefully freed their official identities from long cherished traditional religious values and symbols as an implausible consequence of having been joined European charter of rights points to this paradox. The Greek govt at time opined that the legitimacy of institutional western human rights in a state could not be contested even by referendum of people.
In fact, as Asad elucidates, this equalization of justice with law and privileging of state’s norm defining function looms as an irony before the underpinnings that led to human right’s universal inception in 1948.It was the moral revulsion against the legalized terror of Nazi state that necessitated the invoking of medieval natural rights and thus, to frame UDHR. However, this has not led not to a recognition for the authority of non state laws, But to a formation of human rights laws that must ultimately depend on recognition by states. Moreover the popular convention that dignity of human being is not violated as a result of any genre of military actions or market restrictions perpetrated from powers beyond the state jeopardize the very notion of human rights.
For instance, the dominant global order never take into account the human rights violations perpetrated through financial pressures by World Bank and IMF , leading to economic decadence of a large number of south Asian countries apart from the compromise of certain human rights. Here, the cruelties the individuals suffer as human and as citizens of particular state are separately dealt with. Since natural rights relates only with a state nature, these are often not applicable for members of political society, or citizens of modern state as in modern perception.
These disillusionments and reservations in the secular modern human rights and state as it’s harbinger denotes neither our antagonism nor our intolerance in being a part of this persisting world order. Neither is it extreme fanatic tendency considering modem state and parallel secular constructs as Darul Harb (abode of war) for Muslims and jihad as the only response. Rather we seek a lieu to this retrogressive secular human rights from within the system itself. In addition, those dogmatic affirmation like those of Jack Donnelly that imbibing non western elements into the paradigm of human rights would further undermine it and that, oriental practices have a complete vacuum of any attempts at human rights formation, need to be problematized. This perception regards that human rights are alien to east and that it have always remained as a secular solution to a set of secular problems. However, a cast into the oriental tapestry unambiguously shows that those human rights were better protected through distinct theoretical frameworks other than the western oriented.
Moreover, in the postmodern social milieu devoid of absolute truth, mirroring this as a logical necessity for even the people of alien culture brings forth an interesting paradox. What can be concluded is not that the culture and religion are immune from any critique , but rather than the liberal appeal to reinterpret fundamental principles of those like Islam in line with western human rights parameters, the self sustainability of various societies need to be recognized and their comprehensiveness mattered. Islam for instance has projected a comprehensive and coherent outline for human rights theory and had profoundly pragmatized them fully during the region of four Khalifas and Prophet PBUH himself. In seeking a lieu to modern concocted parameters of human rights, these rich flavours and experiences need to be fruitfully employed rather than the other way round.
M Abdul Fathah is a research intern at Madeenathunnoor college of Islamic science, Calicut, Kerala. He is currently pursuing graduation from University of Calicut . His areas of interest includes Indian Muslims, Transnational Islam, Subaltern studies, Anthropology etc. He has presented two academic research papers at Markaz Knowledge City and Darul Huda Islamic University.He has penned articles in English and Malayalam portals such as Café Dissensus New York, The Companion, Risala Weekly, Tibaq.in, WFP.etc. He could be contacted through [email protected]