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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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