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Rights and Resolution

Rights and Resolution

Sub-title: In this world national rights are as important as human rights
Author: Editorial
Publications: India Today
Dated: September 3, 2001

The subjects are too sensitive to be generalised-one moral, the other national.  But the face-off between human rights and national security has taken a kind of political turn.  Human rights, as they are being practised anywhere in this big bad world, are all about politically convenient idealism-ask the Chinese.  But India is a different country, with a genuine terrorist problem that continues to challenge its patience as well as national well-being.  So Home Minister L K Advani has a point, rather a national point, when he proposes amnesty to security personnel accused of, well, human-rights violations.  The interesting thing is, his detractors too have a point: national duty doesn't mean you are above the law.  These are incompatible positions. The human-rights activists, however, should not make their position so absolute.

The term "human rights" lost its absolute status long ago with all those Rwandas and Bosnias and Gazas.  The struggle between national determination and the rights, the combat between national resolution and the liberation struggle .... and there is bound to be a victim, always, and it is not all that easy to reach an absolute conclusion through a morality test.  And don't overlook a stark reality: in every struggle there is one recurring adjective-national.  That was a very serious issue in Punjab once.  Take Kashmir, and who can deny that out there the security forces are involved in a life-threatening battle against religious terrorists? It is easy to caricature every nationalist as a mad Milosevic.  But it is not so easy to keep the nation free of its enemies.  In a world where somebody's right is somebody else's denial, please remember that national rights are as important as human rights.
 


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