Rights of the weak, Duties of the powerful

Rights and duties are conceptually related to each other. There are no rights without duties. If one person has a right to something, it essentially means that someone else has a similar duty to ensure that it is not violated. For example, if a person has the right to freedom of expression, it is the duty of the state to prevent its violation. Or take the right to religious freedom of American Hindus. Other groups, regardless of numbers or social power, have a duty not to violate it. If they ever run short of a place for worship, the government should help rectify that problem, by facilitating its occupation or use by Hindus. Isn’t it a shame that only Sikhs in Gurugram felt duty bound to help common Muslims to offer Namaz?

If I have rights that impose duties on others, then others have rights that impose duties on me. Individuals have as many duties as rights. Any person who solicits a right and expects others to allow or facilitate its exercise must also expect that he or she is equally mutually duty-bound. This is because everyone else has rights like them. We are all rights- as well as persons performing duties.

I hope it is quite clear that rights consist of duties, that rights cannot be exercised without the simultaneous performance of duties. Being based on rights, these (rights-based) duties cannot be pitted against rights. No conflict exists between them. here to say that we should pay attention to the duties instead of this Rights have no meaning. What then could mean the proposition that we should move from a rights-based to a duty-based approach?

duty against rights

It should be clear that the rights and duties outlined above are based on egalitarian beliefs. However, the moment we drop this notion, this whole picture of rights and duties changes. To be sure, the ideological link between rights and duties remains unbroken. Rights continue to perform duties, but in deeply hierarchical, egalitarian societies, only a few have rights, while many have duties to ensure the proper exercise of the rights of these few.

In patriarchal families, the father has the right to make decisions. It binds all other members to abide by its decision. Remember Amrish Puri The brave hearted will take away the bride, He decides without consulting that Simran, played by Kajol, is to be married to his friend’s son in a Punjabi village. And Simran has no choice but to obey, leave her home in London and settle in India. The mother who is sympathetic to Simran is also obliged not to object to the father’s decision.

The same is true of caste-ridden societies. It is a misconception that ancient Hindus Character system: There are only duties and not rights. The duties of Shudras and Ati-Shudras especially arise from the rights of the upper castes to serve the people of high rank. A hierarchical caste system unequally distributes rights and duties. Only a few have the most important rights—for example, the right to be served; The larger population has similar duties to ensure that these rights are exercised without hindrance. Any violation of the rights of the upper caste, especially the Brahmin, inflicts heavy punishment, sometimes even death, on the violator. Similarly, in many Islamic societies, rights and duties are gender-specific and unequal. Men have the right to bear twice the weight of their testimony in court than women who are duty-bound to obey.

In an absolute monarchy, the king has unrestricted rights and the same duties as everyone else which increases as one moves down the ladder of the political hierarchy. Those at the bottom have the maximum number of duties per maximum number of people, with everyone ranked higher than them. The priority of duties over rights is prevalent in heterogeneous societies. When people are asked to forget about rights and think more about duties, the subtext is that they should forget to take care of themselves. Our Concentrate on rights and your duties for some. In hierarchical, egalitarian societies, where power is unequally distributed, duties are often seen in opposition to rights.

Careful attention to the structure of rights and duties in heterogeneous societies reveals its deep association with social and political power. Those in power have rights; without which it has duties. A change from a hierarchy to an egalitarian order does not produce a power-free order. Instead, at least in theory, such a change generates a democratic distribution of power. It is the equality of power that ensures the system of equal rights and duties. In fact, in egalitarian politics, more power means more duties. The powerless have rights, the powerful have duties. For example, it is the duty of the state to ensure that there is no poverty, disease or unemployment. In this context, any move to shift the focus from rights to duties, complaining of undue emphasis on rights, raises suspicions that democracy is being undermined and hierarchy is being reintroduced through the backdoor. has gone.

duty beyond rights

However, one cannot completely deny the importance of moral discourse that asks people to engage in duties. Because, quite simply, there exist duties that do not contradict rights and do not proceed from rights but go beyond them. Let us take an example. A surgeon performs an operation. He does his job efficiently and believes that once done, he is not obliged to be present in the hospital or speak to the patient’s family. Now, consider another surgeon who, after performing the operation, feels compelled to interact with the patient, allaying his family’s concerns. Leaving an impersonal stance, he brings warmth to his conversation. His work flows from duties that are integral to his character, to the goodness of his heart, to his personal qualities, to his commitment to warm social interactions, and to does not flow from any right side of the patient. To be sure, the patient and family have the right to the surgeon’s full attention while he or she is operating. Failure to do so would mean a clear infringement of the patient’s right. But no rights of the patient or his family are infringed if the surgeon does not go the extra mile to personally reassure the patient and his family.

A society with people who take such virtue-based, solidarity-affirming duties seriously is far better off than a society where such duties are not valued. If so, then it is good to ask people to go beyond rights and think about their duties towards others, and to society in general. We all have a duty to build a tolerant society, or to be alert to the possible mistakes of our elected rulers. These duties are not antithetical to rights; They are moral, not just. Many such duties have been mentioned in our constitution: to preserve the overall culture, not to destroy the natural environment, to develop scientific temper, to protect public property, to protect the sovereignty and integrity of India. None of them are legally enforceable, but they do impose an obligation on all citizens, especially those in public office, to go beyond the invocation of rights-based duties.

Rajeev Bhargava is a political philosopher and director, Parekh Institute of Indian Thought, Center for the Study of Developing Societies