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. (cid:13)(cid:15)(cid:12)(cid:14)(cid:1)(cid:3)(cid:2)(cid:4)(cid:11)(cid:2)(cid:11)(cid:7)(cid:8)(cid:6)(cid:8)(cid:5)(cid:2)(cid:9) Jacket Design: Arati Devasher, (cid:11) (cid:9)(cid:10)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:11)(cid:11) (cid:7)(cid:8)(cid:6)(cid:8)(cid:5)(cid:10) 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. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries. Published in India by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001, India © 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 a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN-13: 978-0-19-945352-8 ISBN-10: 0-19-945352-7 Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro 11/13 by SPEX Infotech, Puducherry 605 005, India Printed in India at 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.