Category: Principle Of Rights

Looking at the array of rights provided by the Constitution of India under Part III and the desirable moral, social and welfare commitments under Part IV, we can but agree with Granville Austin that ‘Indian Constitution is first and foremost a social document.’94 Austin describes these two parts as ‘the conscience of the Constitution.’ In a…

The Constitution of India provides Fundamental Rights as a charter of not only individual rights but also of group rights. This could be obvious from the dimensions and types of rights provided by the Constitution. Rights for religious, cultural and linguistic groups have been provided. Secondly, rights given to individuals also fall under two categories…

A socialist system provides for particular rights such as right to work, education, social security, rest, wage, vote, membership of social organization, etc. Heywood points that ‘The Soviet Constitutions of 1936 and 1977 … established a truly impressive array of individual rights.’92 However, these rights could not be realized because of the overwhelming presence of the…

Having achieved the end of a system that protects bourgeois rights, what rights are admissible in a system or society that the Marxian perspective treats as its own? Three considerations are important in a socialist system so far as rights are concerned. Firstly, inequality of rights is done away with and equality of rights is…

Under the capitalist system there is inequality of rights as well as alienation. This be so, the Marxian perspective seeks the end of both. But it is also true that neither is possible under the capitalist system. As a result, revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system is the slogan that comes into play. Till that happens, we may ask…

In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscript (1844), Marx says ‘Man is a species-being … also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being.’90 The import of this idea of Marx is that human being is, what John Plamenatz in his Karl Marx’s Philosophy of Man says, a ‘self-creating being’.91 This…

It is understood that Marx neither concentrated on formulation of a theory of state nor of rights. Rights, as claims of individuals to be recognized by the state or the society, need special scrutiny if we have to construct any Marxian position on rights. Unlike the Liberal framework, which is based on individual as the…

Based on the grounds of human rights and the specific challenges to the universality claim of human rights, we can list the perspectives or theories of human rights as follows:

Insistence on universality of the contents of human rights and their being applicable to all, irrespective of social, cultural and religious context, has led to controversy. Firstly, the evolution of human rights in terms of content has led to the debate on values and culture specific rights versus universal rights. Secondly, there may be contradiction…