Religion and Human Rights: Notes for Hindus and Human Rights

^{Notes for Hindus
and Human Rights}

Robert Traer

¹ Mark Juergensmeyer, "Dharma and the Rights of the Untouchables," unpublished essay, 8 March 1986, 1.

²Ibid.

3 Kana Mitra, "Human Rights in Hinduism," in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, ed. Arlene Swidler (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1982), 79. Raimundo Panikkar argues that the Hindu notion of dharma requires: 1) that human rights are not only the rights of individuals or even humans, 2) that human rights involve duties and relate us to the whole cosmos, and 3) that human rights are not absolute but are relative to each culture. Panikkar, "Is Human Rights a Western Concept? A Hindu/Jain/Buddhist Reflection," Breakthrough 10, nos. 2-3 (Winter/Spring 1989):33-34. An expanded version of this article appeared in the UNESCO publication Diogenes (Winter 1982).

^{4 Ibid., 80-81.
^{5 Ibid., 81.
^{6 Barnett R. Rubin also
argues that respect for human rights in India does not necessarily mean
abolition of the caste system, and that "The plurality of dharmas
can also legitimate rights and social and political pluralism." He claims
that "the biggest obstacle to human rights is not caste itself but
untouchability, which, while outlawed, is still widely practiced and relegates a
whole section of the community to 'unclean' status." Rubin,
"India," in International Handbook of Human Rights, ed. Jack
Donnelly and Rhoda E. Howard (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987), 137.
^{7 Ibid. However, Ralph
Buultjens asserts: "The Western concept of human rights has been advocated
by relatively few leaders of myth-figure stature in Indian history. Two such
recent advocates have been Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru. However,
neither Tagore nor Nehru evokes the passionate fervor that attaches to Krishna-Chaitanya-Bose-Gandhi
and projects them as exemplars." Buultjens, "Human Rights in Indian
Political Culture," in The Moral Imperatives of Human Rights: A World
Survey, ed. Kenneth W. Thompson (Washington, D.C.: University Press of
America, 1980), 116.
^{8 John B. Carmen,
"Duties and Rights in Hindu Society," in Human Rights and the
World's Religions, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1988), 117. The late P. V. Kane writes: "The Constitution
makes a complete break with our traditional ideas. . .. The Constitution
engenders a feeling among common people that they have rights and no obligations
and that the masses have the right to impose their will and to give the force of
law and justice to their own ideas and norms formed in their own cottages and
tea shops. . .. The Constitution of India has no chapter on the duties of the
people to the country or to the people as a whole." Kane, History of
Dharmasastras, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute, 1968), 1664-65. Quoted in Carmen, "Duties in Hindu
Society," 119.
^{9 Ibid., 120.
^{10 Ibid.
¹¹ Barnett R. Rubin,
"India," in International Handbook of Human Rights, 137.
^{12 Ibid.
^{13 Kana Mitra, "Human
Rights in Hinduism," in Human Rights and Religious Traditions, 82.
^{14 Ibid.
^{15 Ibid., 83. Bühler, Laws
of Manu, 2:1.
^{16 Mark Juergensmeyer,
"Dharma and the Rights of the Untouchables," 28. A. Pushparajan, who
argues that both Hindus and Christians have failed miserably to overcome
untouchability in India, supports the program outlined by Gandhi. See his
article, "Harijans and the Prospects of Their Human Rights," Journal
of Dharma 8 (October-December 1983):391-405.
^{17 Quoted in German
Arciniegas, "Culture—A Human Right," in Freedom and Culture,
ed. Julian Huxley (London: Wingate, 1951), 32.
^{18 Gandhi, Young India,
21 August 1924, and Young India, 26 March 1931, in The Essential
Gandhi: His Life, Work, and Ideas, ed. Louis Fischer (New York: Vintage
Books, 1983), 200 and 284.
^{19 Gandhi, Young India,
8 January 1925. Max L. Stackhouse asserts that Gandhi "worked with others
to get socialist as well as Western democratic statements of human rights
included in the constitution." Stackhouse, Creeds, Society, and Human
Rights: A Study in Three Cultures (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1984), 254.
^{20 Barnett R. Rubin,
"India," in International Handbook of Human Rights, 154.
^{21 Ibid., 156.
^{22 R. C. Pandeya,
"Human Rights: An Indian Perspective," in Philosophical Foundations
of Human Rights (Paris: UNESCO, 1986), 274.
^{23 Ibid., 275.
^{24 Ibid., 277. Another
Indian, Prem Kirpal, disagrees. He argues that the Universal Declaration is
largely the result of Western political thought and neglects "the wisdom
and faith" found in "the older experience of Asian civilizations and
several world religions." Kirpal, "The Contemporary
Situation—Looking Ahead," in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights,
280-82.
^{25 Ibid.
^{26 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind
of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA:
The University of California Press, 2000), 95. See also Mohandus Gandhi, Discourses
on the Gita (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1960) (trans. From the
original Gujarati by V. G. Desai) and David Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute:
Kali and Krsna, Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).

^{27 For instance, John Carmen describes a mid-nineteenth century
conflict between Brahmins and a group of outcastes who had become Christian. The
Brahmins asked the British magistrate to require the outcastes to pull a temple
car as part of a traditional festival, claiming that it was the outcastes' dharma.
The magistrate held that, as Christians, the outcastes had a duty not to
participate in the practice of Hindu religion and so upheld their right to
refuse. Carmen, "Duties and Rights in Hindu Society," in Human
Rights and the World's Religions, 115.
^{28 Ibid., 127. Ralph Buultjens suggests: "it may be that the
special accommodative genius of Hindu culture will create a new synthesis and
produce the type of adjustment it has achieved in other areas. Perhaps both
Indian political culture and Western political ideals can transcend their
historical constrictions, taking lessons from the ways in which India has
already adopted and adapted forms of democracy in the past three decades."
Buultjens, "Human Rights in Indian Political Culture," in The Moral
Imperatives of Human Rights: A World Survey, 121.}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}