Human Rights: India and the West

345 Pages·2015·1.399 MB·English

by  Ashwini Peetush, Jay Drydyk

T
P he idea of human rights has raised
Human
e
both hope and concern. The hope
e
Contributors t is for universality, that every person
u
s matters, and matters equally, and therefore
Gordon Davis Shashi Motilal h
that everyone has equal rights. The concern
|

Nigel DeSouza Ashwani Peetush D is that human rights are a Trojan horse
r concealing implicit attacks on non-Western
y
Jay Drydyk Bindu Puri d Rights cultures and values. Even though a delegate
y
k from India was included in the committee
Niraja Gopal Jayal Shyam Ranganathan
that drafted the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, Western thinking was
Amar Khoday Sonia Sikka
regarded as the paradigm, and only a
Ashwani Peetush is Associate Sumi Madhok Gopika Solanki H minority of the countries that now exist
Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier
voted on the Declaration in 1948.
University in Waterloo, Ontario. u
An important contribution to resolving
m
this conflict can be made by exploring the
insights and rich resources offered for an
a IndIa and the West
intercultural understanding of human rights
n
that come from India.

R
This volume offers pioneering essays that
i Edited by Ashwani Peetush | Jay Drydyk approach the question from theoretical,
g
social, legal, and political perspectives,
h contributing to a global understanding of
human rights. The contributors develop
t
new methodologies for examining what
s
all may learn—including the West—from
Jay Drydyk is Professor of Philosophy
Indian articulations of human rights.
at Carleton University, Ottawa.
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www.aratidevasher.com
Jacket image ©istockphoto/ekely 000
Human Rights

Human Rights
INDIA AND THE WEST
edited by
Ashwani Peetush

and
Jay Drydyk
1
1

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
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Published in India by
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© Oxford University Press 2014

Th e moral rights of the author have been asserted

First Edition published in 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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ISBN-13: 978-0-19-945352-8
ISBN-10: 0-19-945352-7

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To our families

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Human Rights India and the West 1
Ashwani Peetush , Jay Drydyk
PART I THEORETICAL ISSUES
1 Rights and Relativity 19
Sonia Sikka
2 Ethical Naturalism and Human Rights 49
Nigel DeSouza
3 Two Concepts of Overlapping Consensus 71
Jay Drydyk
4 Developmentalism, Human Rights, and Gender Politics:
From a Politics of Origins to a Politics of Meanings 95
Sumi Madhok
PART II NORMATIVE SOURCES AND
INTELLECTUAL TRADITIONS
5 Human Moral Obligations, Dharma, and Human Rights 123
Shashi Motilal
6 Autonomy and Human Rights in Ancient and
Modern Indian Buddhism 146
Gordon Davis
viii Contents
7 Human Rights, Indian Philosophy, and Patañjali 172
Shyam Ranganathan
8 Th e Self and Toleration in Indian Traditions 205
Ashwani Peetush
PART III SOCIAL PRACTICES AND APPLIED CONTEXTS
9 Th e Rights of Man: A Gandhian Intervention 231
Bindu Puri
10 Invoking Human Rights: Dalits and the Politics
of Caste Violence in Gujarat 256
Gopika Solanki
11 Th e State as Religious Gatekeeper: Human Rights,
Resistance, and Indian Anti-Conversion Laws 293
Amar Khoday
12 Th e Right to Have Rights: Taking Hannah
Arendt to India 317
Niraja Jayal
Index 335
About the Editors and Contributors 000
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Social Science and Research Council of Canada
for a grant that made possible the workshop in which these papers
were initially presented. We express our appreciation to Carleton
University for hosting the workshop, in particular Dean John Osborne,
for providing fi nancial support through the Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences. We are also thankful to the Council for the Intellectual and
Cultural Development of the Arts at Wilfrid Laurier University for
their grant. In addition, we would like to thank Gordon Davis in
the Department of Philosophy at Carleton for his encouragement
and enthusiasm. We thank Peter Genzinger for his library research
assistance at Laurier along with Darlene Drecun and Peter Ferri for
their assistance at Carleton. We express our deep gratitude to Angela
Brown, our research assistant at Laurier, for her industry and atten-
tion to detail. We express our heartfelt gratitude to our families for
their support and encouragement.