Rule of law and human rights education

C. Raj Kumar
The Hindu, 4 February

For human rights to become part of the civil culture in India, awareness needs to be increased. Citizens need to know about their rights and freedoms.

NOTWITHSTANDING THE progress made relating to human rights in India, the area remains one of concern. The contemporary realities of executive governance demonstrate the weaknesses and inadequacy of various measures. Violations continue to be committed by custodial and other law enforcement institutions — the police, and the military, and the paramilitary forces. Accountability enforced by courts or commissions continues to be sporadic.

All forms of victimisation take place on account of abuse of power and arbitrariness and discrimination in decision-making. Corruption is omnipresent in governmental functioning. Institutions that are supposed to uphold the rule of law, like the police and other law enforcement machinery, are no exception.

This underscores the need for developing a culture among law enforcement officials of respecting human rights, as a sine qua non for preserving the rule of law.

Further, the formal mechanisms for protection of human rights through the constitutional apparatus and enforcement by the judiciary may fail, particularly when these institutions operate under limitations. There should be further space provided for democratic dissent and resistance to intrusions on human rights. This space is also typically created by liberal constitutions through rights guarantees and democratic commitments.

It should be an autonomous space for citizens to take upon themselves the task of protecting and promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Resistance from the citizenry can actually serve as a check on the democratic branches of the government. It can ensure human rights are duly protected and violations are met with serious criticism in the form of democratic dissent. Importantly, people's resistance and movements empower the judiciary in performing its constitutional obligation of protecting rights and freedoms.

Civil society movements need to be further galvanised to drive home the idea that India needs a human rights culture. The development of such a culture goes beyond the work and mandate of laws, rules, regulations, work of government departments, functioning of institutions, and the work of the judiciary.

For human rights to become part of the civil culture in India, awareness needs to be inculcated within the social and political psyche of the people. Existing institutions, in particular the judiciary and the human rights commissions, can play a vital role in developing such a culture in India. However, the judiciary, by virtue of its status as an official body involved in developing jurisprudence in all aspects of law, may not be the most effective institution for this. India should continue its work in creating an independent civil society devoted to developing a human rights culture.

The fact that the people of India are increasingly seeking accountability from the government for all its actions is an important step towards promoting a human rights culture, which can flourish only in a society that does not fear dissent.

Human rights education in India needs to go beyond the frontiers of academic learning or, for that matter, professional pursuit. It should aim to forge social transformation and promote a worldview based upon respect for the rights and freedoms of humanity. Thus, the need for empowering the people of India cannot be better achieved than by developing varied components of human rights education. Such sustained development can result in the promotion of a culture of human rights. In the case of India, what needs to be examined is how such education can be promoted and to what extent it can actually facilitate the development of a human rights culture.

Where to start

The starting point can be to impart greater awareness about the Constitution and other domestic and international law relating to human rights. These efforts can be further developed to identify particular groups from different strata of society to develop skills and expertise in pursuing training programmes. This whole process of education can also ignite human rights activism.

Contemporary India has witnessed a particular type of activism that hopes to seek transparency and accountability of the government. This is another facet of accountability-seeking endeavours.

Commenting on the interaction of human rights and politics, Michael Ignatieff has observed, "Human rights activism means taking sides, mobilising constituencies powerful enough to force abusers to stop. As a consequence, effective human rights activism is bound to be partial and political. Yet at the same time, human rights politics is disciplined or constrained by moral universals. The role of moral universalism is not to take activists out of politics but to get activists to discipline their partiality — their conviction that one side is right — with an equal commitment to the rights of the other side."

This is the kind of tolerant conviction that human rights education should promote in India. It is consciously different from dogmatic and fundamentalist viewpoints of values, which are intolerant of other variants and understandings of human rights and values. The culture we are seeking to achieve in India also necessitates awareness of the way governance policies affect human rights and the responses required by civil society to participate in the decision-making process.

While India's legal and human rights frameworks are created by the rights guaranteed under the Constitution and their enforcement by the courts and government processes, it is important for other social control mechanisms to play a role. Media organisations should conduct activities in a free and fair manner.

While the Indian media are by and large fair in their reporting, there are legitimate concerns about their freedom. A society that hopes to promote a human rights culture should ensure its media are given due legal protection for exercising freedom of speech and expression.

Human rights culture means a number of things to different people. The dynamic role the media played in other democracies and societies to develop a human rights culture needs to be borne in mind while determining and assessing the potential in India. It is the social responsibility mandate of the media to promote a human rights culture.

In this regard, it is also useful to refer to the impact of international human rights non-governmental organisations and transnational civil society. It is important for India to develop a transparent and sensible approach for deepening democracy so that the concerns and frustrations of the people are channelled and indeed regulated so that justice is achieved.

This is extremely important in order to protect the rule of law and social stability in India. Promoting a human rights culture is directly related to justice, constitutional empowerment, and development of democracy. Human rights and justice have a profound relationship. They mutually complement each other and support the development of good governance.

In the Indian context, it is important to underline that we cannot wait for one to achieve the other. Hence, efforts ought to be taken, in particular by the media and the wider civil society, to ensure that a human rights culture is promoted and sustained. And this is possible only in a good governance framework that is based on the protection of the rule of law.

The writer is with the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong.