South Asian Human Rights in Global Context

 

Professor Saran:

 

Professor Nanda has traveled all the way from Colorado to be with us. He is such a distinguished figure and I would like you to read his biography to get an idea about his work and contributions. The only thing I want to say is that very recently his students at the university have raised two million dollars to endow a chair and to start a center in Professor Nanda’s name. That is a very big achievement and recognition of his work. I am particularly satisfied that a couple of my students showed up at the conference, that is all I can ask for. (laughter from the viewers) Somebody who can raise two million dollars must have done something wonderful. Without further ado, I am going to invite Professor Nanda to share his thoughts with us and afterwards, members of the panel will have about twelve to fifteen minutes to respond. Thanks very much, Professor Nanda. (applause from the viewers)

 

Professor Nanda:

 

Thank you Professor Saran. I am delighted, honored and privileged to be with you. I have prepared remarks but in this intimate setting, I am not going to read them, but I will share with you some of my thoughts about human rights and primarily the global context of human rights in which our distinguished colleagues will talk about. South Asia presents many challenges, prospects and opportunities around the area of human rights and its concept of human rights is going to get a reality check but at the same time it will probably flourish. To provide a context, many, many years ago, while at Yale Law School, I was privileged to be in the first ever international human rights laws course. At that time, our instructor was Doctor Swor, a distinguished human rights lawyer from New York, who was also the Deputy Director of the United Nations Human Rights Division. He used to come to Yale just to teach the international human rights law course. There was no international human rights law at that time, rather there was only a universal declaration of human rights. In an embryonic kind of stage, human rights law was being developed. And at that time, there was an international interest in civil, economic and cultural rights, all framed in this idea of the international bill of rights. And at the United Nations, at that time, they were simply drafting those laws and they would bring us those drafts and we would study them, and study them and at that time they were ramblings. At that time, at the Genocide Convention, we were talking about creating the international bill of rights and after the convention we also discussed creating a universal declaration of human rights. So as a result of all of this, I decided that when and if I taught in law school, I would begin a human rights course. Indeed, as I began teaching at the University of Denver, I had the great privilege to teach an international human rights law course, which was only the second one in the world. After that we began an international human rights advocacy center and with that advocacy center, we prepared a petition to the United Nations, and specifically, for the United Nation’s Commission on Human Rights. So as you can see, international human rights have been a big part of my life.

 

To look at the global context, you probably know that in the last three days, just next door to you at the United Nations, the General Assembly adopted the UN Commission on Human Rights. The United Nation’s Commission on Human Rights personifies what the United Nation does in the human rights area, but that had been discredited. When the Commission began to criticize countries that were violators of human rights, for example, Liberia and Sudan and Zimbabwe, those countries would then seek to have their representatives on the Commission. This taught us that in order to be a more effective entity, we ought to make sure that the Commission is leaner and not comprised of countries that are known human rights violators. I won’t take too much of your time on it but kindly do look at the new Human Rights Council that the United States had demanded. The United States wanted the council be elected by the general assembly with two-third votes so that many of these violators would not get on it. That did not happened, at the present time, its 191 members are elected by a simple majority (that would be 96 members voting for a country to be elected on the council). This is going to be a limit of two terms and two-thirds of the general assembly can kick out a member elected on the Human Rights Counsel that does not comply with human rights norms and principles. But in any event, what has happened in the global context today is that we can be very proud of the achievements that have occurred in the last 50 or 60 years. You will recall that after the end of the World War II when the United Nation was created, at that time, the international human rights area ought to have played an important role, regardless of sex, geographic location, religion and all of those kinds of categories that give you and me an identity. There were certain inalienable rights that as humans, should be recognized and not only recognized, but secure. But 50 or 60 years ago, you and I could not be in the international arena and demand any of those rights. A country could treat its own citizen anyway it wanted to and the international community could do nothing. In the 19^th century, occasionally western countries would intervene, purportedly on humanitarian grounds, but really they intervene because of their own interests and because they had an axe to grind. But in any event, it is only after World War II when the realization had grown that international human rights and peace and security are closely intertwined and that countries that violate human rights of their own citizens are likely to be acting in a fashion that would not be conducive to international peace and security. That is a setting in which human rights group. There are all kinds of issues. Are they simply civil political rights? Are they economic social and cultural rights? And if you talk about protecting human rights, how many times and how many places has the international community acted in order to protect those rights? What about the Killing Fields? What about the Rowanda? Why can’t the international community act? And here I would simply submit to you and that it is not because the norms are not there, it is not because the institutions are not there, it is not because the procedures are not there, it is because the political will is not there at the present time. But at the same time we do need to make sure that the international human rights norms are strengthened and procedures are adequate, remedies are available and that institutions are strong. And at the present time, I know that I ought to put this in the context of South Asia, but I wanted to provide you broader context of global human rights. We can be very proud these last couple of weeks of what you saw in Chile, a single mother who was tortured and sent into exile and today she is the president of Chile while Pinochet, who was a dictator, is under house arrest. In Liberia, war torn, and again a woman was elected and this president of Chile probably saw that she was talking about the advances that women have made and she said that she had asked many of those colleagues, men if they would accept appointment to her cabinet. And she said in most incidences those men said let me go and talk with my wife (laughter from viewers) and then we will determine if I am, or am not going to accept the job.

 

And so we have made advances but at the same time, we ought to be ashamed for the fact that these hundred of years, gender crimes, mass rapes, they were not even considered as war crimes or crime against humanity. That change occurred after the Rowanda massacres and after we set up those war crimes tribunals in Bosnia and Rowanda. But at the present time, despite all these advances, I would submit to you that a whole lot has to be done and especially in this country because the United States had been in the van guard of all these global human rights advances. We were the ones who set the stage for all these norms to be developed. Who can forget Eleanor Roosevelt’s name? She was the one who was the first president of the UN commission on human rights. She, along with her colleagues, was instrumental in creating the universal declaration of human rights. And today, treaty after treaty, we do not want to sign it, we do not want to ratify it. The treaties that we do ratify, we say they are non-self executing and you cannot invoke them in the court of law. And at the present time, since Professor Saran is looking at his watch (laughter from viewers) I will conclude quickly now that the chair has come but he himself was late so I can take more time. (laughter from viewers) And so what has happened at the present time as you probably know is that we are not part of the international criminal court or the international justice system that we were the ones to help create. We are not a part of it, we do not want to sign, we do not want to ratify treaties. And so today I think for this country, I need to say that you and I, who are in this educational setting, we need to create that kind of awareness in order to be in the culture of peace, it has to be. People who know about human rights, they ought to create awareness, those who don’t know about human rights, they need to think about it, read about it. And from kindergarten on, we need to teach that hate and hatred are not natural part of human being and that human dignity and human rights are to prevail. Going to the South Asian context, we have a whole lot to do, in country after country, there have been excesses of police, and there have been governmental excesses time and again. The reason for these excesses is that despite the human rights advances and although they are part of Asian cultures, they have not been translated into action, they have not be implemented by governments. So on the one hand, you have economic, social and cultural rights, poverty that is dire in many, many parts of the South Asia, civil and political rights that at times are trampled and then here I have to give credit. One of my colleagues is going to be talking about human rights in India. These non-governmental organizations have done humane work. They have been instrumental in creating awareness, they have been instrumental in making governments accountable and transparent and I think in South Asia, the time is going to come when many of those countries will also be leaders of the international human right movements. Thank you very much. (applause from viewers)

 

Manu Bhagavan:

 

Good morning, my apology for being late. I thought I would make a more dramatic entrance. (It sure was: said Professor Nanda) (laughter from viewers) It is my pleasure now to introduce to you, the two respondents on the panel, the first of whom will be Vrinda Grover of the NYU Law School. As you can see in more detail from the biography section of your manual, Professor Grover obtained her law degree from New Delhi University in 1988. She has subsequently risen to become one of the most prominent advocates in India today. Professor Grover has taken on a number of the most controversial cases in the country defending a number of underprivileged and oppressed clients to great success. So please join me in welcoming Professor Grover to the stage. (applause from viewers)

 

Vrinda Grover:

 

Hello and thank you for giving me this opportunity. Just one quick clarification, I am not a professor, I continue to be a student, a student of human rights as Professor Nanda pointed out, which is a subject that has been studied by many and continues to be a major thrust of education both here and in South Asia. I would like build upon the comments made by Professor Nanda and lay out a broader picture regarding this topic of human rights. I would like to jump in very quickly into South Asia and specifically look at India. I think when we talk about human rights, when we talk about peace, we need to understand the relationship of power and politics to all this. Professor Nanda said that we have instruments, we have conventions, we have institutions but the political will is lacking. How did this political will really get formed? Political will is lacking but not for unfashionable reasons, and it will always be lacking unless the will of the people replaces it and that is where human rights come in. When we talk of human rights, I think it is important to understand if are we talking about politics of human rights or politics for human rights. These distinctions are very, very critical if the global discourses as well as the discourse in South Asia both are running on paralleling tracks. In South Asia perhaps the discourse on the politics for humans rights is on the rise and therefore we need to pay a little bit of attention to that and the reason why it is increasing. It is increasing because there is disruption civically, politically, economically, socially however you wish to classify it. And there is suffering and the suffering and disruption is very close to you, it is not far. It is not like being here where your country maybe at war but you have absolutely no relationship. When you wake up in the morning, the war does not have anything to do with you unless you open a newspaper and see that another major offensive has been launched. It does not endanger our daily existence. Perhaps in South Asia that luxury, and the comfort of the distant is not there for us. Yes, there have been excesses and there have been attempts to get those excesses made accountable. And what is the role that we here at the Diaspora can play? I think first we need to understandthe human rights that we are talking about and then we need to place ourselves and locate ourselves at a different point of intervention. Particularly, if I was to talk about India which is where I come from. As was mentioned, the ICC has not been signed by the US, and the ICC has not been signed by India. India signed a bilateral treaty with the US, a form of refusing to sign. So what is the accountability that we are talking of? We have also signed a recent deed, a nuclear deed. What is the direction we are moving in and what about for those of us who live there? For people in the Diaspora? When you are as a citizen of a country, you want your country to be powerful; you want your country to be prominent. But what does power mean and how does power relate to human rights? And where are we going to, that is, what is the vision of the country? are we going to confine our vision to the kind of vision that we have today in the formal and universal paradigm?. Then maybe that is not the vision that most people in India would share either within the elite or within India or with the Diaspora, or at least a preferably prominent part of Diaspora outside of India. Let me just flesh out what it is that I am talking about.

 

There has been a liberalization of the economic policy and a very, very dramatic change had taken place. For example, if you want to visit a city like New Delhi or Bombay, you would not find it very different from New York. You would find perhaps a lot of the restaurants and the coffee shops, which are exactly what you find in the streets of New York. It is not a problem, people enjoy the coffee there if they can afford it. But there is much more happening if you want to travel beyond New Delhi and Bombay and it is important that those incidences reach not only the parliament of India but here too. On the second of January in Orissa, in a place called Kalinga, thirteen tribal people were shot dead by the police firing. Why were they shot? They were protesting. Why were they protesting? The land that they lived and worked on was being taken away for mining. That land is very rich; it is rich in Bauxite. The sale of Bauxite to a national company for preparing aluminum, which is one of the most expensive metals in the global market used to prepare both airplanes and coke cans is lucrative. This would bring in some amount of foreign investment but it would not bring in employment and people who lose their lands would have no where to go. The people who were protesting, the women, children and men said that if you took this land you would kill us anyway so we might as well die now. And they have continued to block the door, day to day and they were not giving up. They will be arrested, the law will be used, and human rights too will frame them as criminals. What is the right to protest? What is my right of resistance? And how does international human rights articulate it? That will have to be found in the universal paradigm, the interpretation of the term international human rights. So will it be my right to life or will it be my right to do business according to the norms that even the United Nations is setting up? So it is time for a lot of questions to be asked at many, many levels. There is a free flow of capital across the globe now. But migrant workers, undocumented workers from Bangladesh cannot cross into India to earn a living; they work as rats because of India. You cannot go further down socially or economically, but those are criminals and they must be shut out without any due process. India does not sign the Migrant Workers Convention, in fact if I am not mistaken, it is probably the only the treaty that has the least number of signatures. What is, what does the international human rights have to offer us? And how are we going to interpret it? There is not a universal interpretation of international human rights today. You would have to develop your own interpretation. It will develop according to your politics and the practice you wish to follow. Professor Nanda pointed out about a NGO having to play a part and I would like to point out that social movements have played a part, a remarkable part. The right information today is law in the country because men and women from the villages demanded accountability. These were uneducated people but they knew when they were being taught. A course on human rights perhaps does not teach you that you have the right to seek accountability and get law made. There is a national employment guarantee act that has come out of people’s starvation and out of people saying we will die in this manner. So, those are the movements that we need to pay attention to and pay respect to.

 

In regard to attempts at creating accountability, just as we mention Rowanda, we mention Sudan, we mention Cambodia, and the list is very long. Unfortunately even for South Asia, we have Burma; we have Gujarat, and attempts at accountability for the state sponsored communal massacres have been very few and whatever accountability has been at a very, very high price. We rejoice in India because in one case we get a conviction but what about those cases which never ever got investigated and what about those people who were sitting as elected democratic political heads who orchestrated the events? When will the law of genocide be incorporated into the domestic jurisdiction of these countries? These are controversial issues but we have to raise this controversy if we want to have the ability to answer reasonably. It will not only be in terms of corruption and getting a man who has taken money from corruption into jail, it will be for those who mastermind genocide. So my last comment is that I think the international human rights paradigm is a very important paradigm but many actors, by many state actors and non-state actors, are using it in many ways. And I think the luxury of saying that we finally have the instruments is over. Those instruments will have to be reread and reinterpreted and the Diaspora will particularly have to decide whether it’s vision for South Asia and its vision for India. Will it be a new vision? Will be a different vision? Will they create allies and alliances with the people of India or with just those who we know personally because they happen to be our relatives, our friends who are getting good jobs in call centers, which is good. It is good that young people are getting employment that is required, but there are many who are not and those many, you don’t know but you will have to get to know them. Thank You. (Applause from viewers)

 

Manu Bhagavan:

 

Thank very much, Vrinda. Our next speaker will be Mallika Dutt. Among Mallika’s many accomplishments, two things in particular stand out. She is the co-founder of Sakhi for South Asian women and she is the executive director of Breakthrough, one of the more prominent human rights organizations in New York City. Mallika, if you would please go on to the stage. And if you would join me in welcoming her please. (applause from viewers)

 

Mallika Dutt:

 

Thank you Manu and thank you inviting me to speak at this event. Addressing human rights in South Asia in this very short time is a little bit like, trying to hammer a nail with an elephant because as you all know, there are many countries with extremely complex geo political situations. So I am going to just really highlight a few things that perhaps the speakers before me have not touched upon just to further complicate the picture for all of you. I find it particularly important for us to do this because with India and the United States, being the world’s two largest democracies and extremely diverse pluralistic democracies, what kinds of vision do we forge for the future? What kind of world do we want to live in? It’s extremely important not just to the fate of the people in our respective countries but really to people around the world. I have always understood human rights at three different levels. I see it as an interplay of norms and a value system that first demands an understanding of human dignity. Dignity that requires food, shelter, clothing, civil and political rights, the right to be free from torture, environmental rights, a whole basket of rights, that make possible the notion of human dignity. That is a values system. That is a values system that has emerged not just in the last 50 or 60 years but a values system that many of us find embedded in the cultural and religious tradition of people around the world. It is a part of the fabric of a culture, if you will, where within cultures, that there are opposing forces and supporting forces around the set of what I called human rights values. The second level in which I understand human rights is that of politics, and the political dimension of human rights has two aspects. One is the use of human rights to advance state political interests. For example Singapore exerting that it should not be held to the same civil and political right standards as other countries because they perhaps have a different cultural norm. I see that as a political use of human rights to evade responsibility, the way in which the United States uses human rights to advance its own geo political agenda. Whether it is the way in which it plays out its relationship with China or the refusal to sign international treaties and then to say that it should be the leaders of human rights around the world even though its own record does not enable it to. So the kind of political use of human rights by state actors and then as well the political use of human rights by non-state actors, in some instances, to organize and mobilize to advance human rights can be through community based organization. Community base organizing is achieved, through mobilizing, through the political engagement process, through civic engagement, through lobbying, through legislation, a whole host of things. And then the third level is the world of the law. And that can include international law, domestic law, and customary law. The interplay of these three levels of human rights if you will, the values, the politics and the law, inform what is happening in any given situation at any given time. It is a simplistic take on human rights but it helps me to understand that human rights is not just about international convention and it is not just about community organizing. That it is a very complex set of factors that is at play at any given point. That complexity in the South Asian context is massive. We have human rights being engaged from as early as the invasion of the region with the creation of the caste system. We have centuries of gender bias discrimination, which in its most current state of manifestation looks at numbers like 10 million females missing in the last two decades because of female feticide. We have historical religious conflicts of oppression of minority groups within each of the South Asian countries. And then we over lay with all these histories the current politics of land, capitalism, liberalization, globalization, and many of the other examples that Vrinda alluded to. We also have histories of struggles for self-determination in the North East, struggles within Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which has seen all kinds of conflicts amongst the different communities. And now the global geo political reality of the quote unquote war on terror playing themselves out, in terms of how alliances get made with the United States or not with the United States. And you see that particularly with George Bush’s recent visit to India and Pakistan in the last few weeks. All of this presents a picture, which illustrates that there is much to be learned, and much to be understood in how we understand human rights in South Asia. But I would like to close with coming back to the question that Vrinda really laid before us and that is the question of our vision. We are at a point now, particularly with the Indian identity, where we are very self-congratulatory. Many of you may have seen the recent Newsweek cover of featuring India which presents a very self-congratulatory image saying that we are one of the most successful communities within the United States of America and we are an emerging power that really needs to be noticed and taken it into account. And finally all these conversations about how China and India are going rule the next layer of Geo political reality in the decades to come. All of that is exciting, all of that has elements of celebration but all of that also has embedded in it the question that Vrinda asked. What is the vision of the future that we want to embrace? Is it a future where economic growth and prosperity, resting hand in hand with insuring that issues like poverty and economic deprivation are addressed and dealt with? Is it a future that insures that call centers do not happen at the expense of the land that is owned by people at the community level, the villages and tribal communities. It is at the expense of forgetting about addressing gender based discrimination or a communal violence or any of these other issues that we have been grappling with for all of these decades and hundreds of years. Or can’t we come up with a vision where in fact leadership can mean that we forge a future with human rights as the bedrock of the world and that democracy means human rights being respected in all of its manifestations. And I think as the diaspora and as members of the United States, citizens, or residents of this country who have an investment in looking at the future of this country and the rest of the world, these are really the critical questions that we need to be grappling with. Thank You so much. (applause from viewers)

 

 

 

Manu Bhagavan:

 

Thank you, Monica and thanks to all of our panelists. We have 15 minutes remaining on for this session and we will now open up to the floor for questions. All of our three panelists may remain at their seats. I believe those microphones are on so they can answer your questions from there. I will field questions from here at the chair.

 

 

 

From Manhattan Community College:

 

Good morning. I am from Manhattan Community College. My name is Auazaque Fewl. I’m from Ghana. I have a question for Mallika. In reference to the existing caste system, how might we go about dismantling it? (laughter from viewers)

 

Mallika Dutt:

 

You know if I could patent the answer to that question, if I had a simple solution, I would be a billionaire. I think with any form of discrimination that is entrenched historically, it is a process and it is a movement. The legal steps as we have all learned are very critical and important but never enough. So simply making untouchability for example, simply abolishing untouchability which the Indian constitution did in 1950, has clearly not been enough. The end of slavery in the United States for example has clearly not been enough to address discrimination against African Americans in this country. Those are for me are very similar situations. It is very important for us however to constantly recognize that this form of discrimination continues to exist. In the United States right now, there is a big tussle going on in California where there is a fight about textbooks and how they teach Hinduism. There are those that believe that this dimension of Hinduism, which is discrimination based on caste, should not be the way in which Hinduism is taught because it misrepresents our religion and our culture. I think that it is very important for any of us, no matter what position we occupy, to always celebrate those things about us that are good and to always name those things about us that are bad or that are disempowering to other people. Understanding that Hinduism has elements of it which are discriminatory, which are based on power relation, does not mean that Hinduism is bad. It simply means that like all world religions, we have dimensions to our identity that are powerful and that also impinge on other communities and other people. So that is a example, I am using for us who are based in the United State to think about. Is our Indian American identity in the United States so weak? Are we so vulnerable that we cannot claim ourselves at all? Can we not assert ourselves as Indian Americans but also take responsibility for those aspects of our history and our culture and our identity that do violate human rights? And bringing those pieces together, I think it is going to be one of the most important steps we can take in addressing things like class and caste discrimination.

 

Professor Nanda:

 

And as a footnote to it, I think, as Mallika pointed out, legislation and decrees will not do it. To answer your question correctly, there are at the present time in India, lots of people in different settings who have been trying to create a culture within which those evils can be eradicated. It is going to take time, it is going to be an evolutionary type of action, but again those who can have an imprint upon the future are going to be members of this civil society and institutions. It is NGOs, educational institutions and I am sure that religious entities can also play an important part, but all of that has to evolve in society in order to get rid of it. Leaders can play a very important role but it has to become a part of the fabric of society in which we can get rid of it.

 

Edward Ma:

 

My name is Edward Ma. Thank you. I was a former Human Rights commissioner in New York City. And at the present time, I am a member of AAARI and I am a Professor and a Psychotherapist. I am very honored to come here to learn and listen. To add to the professor’s comments, two or three months ago, the New York Times had a series of articles on development in India. And back to the gentlemen’s question, the caste, I will say from a strategic point of view, I think we cannot deny what will pass between ourselves. On the other hand, we want immediate, here and now, we need immediate human rights, convictions and the equality democracy. On the other hand, my question to all of the panelists, what are your strategies? How does one build alliances with a current existing human rights groups that are already in existence? Thank you.

 

Manu Bhagavan:

 

You want to… Yes, right? You want to follow up on that.

 

Professor Saran:

 

Yes, just very quickly I would just like to add very briefly in response to your question regarding how to eradicate the caste system in India or for that matter how to get rid of racism in America. These are very old traditions, I don’t think, like Edward was saying, that we can get rid of them through legislation. So you know, it cannot be completely eradicated but just like here we have policies of affirmative actions and in India they have policies of preservation, which means members of the lower caste have certain advantages in terms of getting into school, colleges, and jobs and all that. So while the caste system is still there, particularly when it comes to marriage, and the patriarchy system is not restricted as much but it still is restricted, things are happening and things are changing. So we can hope that not in the near future but in the future, we’ll be able to take care of some of these troubles. Thank You.

 

Manu Bhagavan:

 

With apologizes and due respect, as the chair I would also just like to add one brief comment to the comments that have been made so far and then we will take your questions. With respect to fighting the caste system and various sorts of deals, I think one thing that has not been mentioned is the fact that a number of these NGOs and numbers of political parties today both in India or South Asia more generally, or in the United States in particular, claim to speak in the name of human rights and do not. In fact that they actively advocate things like caste that they deny rights to various communities of various sorts and that they claim to be speaking from a liberal angle or a progressive angle. And I think it is important to confront those forces to openly speak to them and to say that they are denying those spaces. I mean I think that is very important and I think that it is important to understand as to why caste and these problems continue to exist. And it is not as if we are all on the same page saying we really should not, there are people who today continue to advocate this discrimination and that they are very powerful and they speak from within spaces both of political hierarchies and government as well as NGO sectors. So with due respect we will take questions now.

Professor Nanda:

 

I think that the question is really a good comment and that we should be networking. I totally agree with you.

 

Vrinda Grover:

 

I just want to add one thing. I completely agree with you. We need to network, we need to form alliances at all levels but I think we also need to begin a conversation, speaking honestly and saying where do we stand. And as Manu said, so that we are all on the same page. And I think human rights today has become a vague term. For example, when somebody said I stand for human rights, I really do not know what they mean and so when somebody says I want to form an alliance around human rights, I am saying very good lets sit down and lets explain ourselves and I think we need to start doing that.

 

Thomas Abraham:

 

I am Thomas Abraham. I am a technologist but I am here as the chairman of the Global Organization of People of India Origin. The question to Vrinda is: You mentioned that the human rights violations have increased, I think that more of them are being reported and the people Secondly you mentioned about Orissa, about that Bauxite mine, sensitive to the information that is coming out more and more. I think some of our very active human rights violations are also standing against development. Especially the Narmada dam. You can debate back and forth. When Government takes up a project for the larger society and the people come in between the development and eh society. We have to uplift the society.

 

Vrinda Grover:

 

I just want to report two short conversations that I recall with people from that place because this is a very, very large issue regarding whose need and whose development and whose interest is this serving. So I am not going to get into this just now because it will require a seminar by itself. There was a little boy in Orissa where this was happening. He was a tribal boy and of course did not speak English. The boy pointed to his head and he said do you know what this is? This is a skull. And do you know what is inside the skull? Inside this is a brain and this brain can think. And then he pointed to the mountains. The bauxite is in the mountain and he said do you know what those are? Those are the mountains where the bauxite is and this one and this one and this one have all been sold. And in another conversation with an old man from the same region, he said this is a knife and this knife is used to cut the grass and we call that action ‘cutting’. And this knife is used to cut my neck and you will call that action also – verb – ‘cutting’. The verb of cutting, when you can understand the difference between these two cuttings then we will talk about the nation’s good and the people’s good. Thank you. (applause from viewers)

 

Manu

 

Yes, Professor Wallach?

John Wallach:

 

I am John Wallach from Hunter College administration and I direct the human rights program at Hunter. I appreciate all comments that have been made so far by the panelists. One thing I wanted to ask to develop farther has to do with potential differences between Mr. Nanda’s, Mrs. Grover’s and Mr. Bhagavan’s in terms of whether they are rhetorical or whether or not they were substantive. Mrs. Grover talked about the difference between the politics of human rights and you also mentioned that in some ways the institutionalization of current human rights law would make it difficult for people to protest, in which case there might be some actual conflicts between the politics for human rights and the legal enforcement of human rights. I wonder if you could talk about that further and whether or not you think of these two as an actual substantive of conflict between you and Mr. Nanda and whether in fact that the differences simply reflect different rhetorical tendencies in terms of gender and Mr. Nanda can talk about that too.

 

 

Vrinda Grover:

 

Thank you, (laughter from viewers) I think the differences are substantive. I wish they were only instrumental but I don’t think they are instrumental. I think the differences are substantive and that’s where my anxiety lies. Just to share a very personal note, I have been at the NYU since August. I used to call myself a human rights lawyer in India and I called myself a human rights lawyer for two months while I was in NYU.   After two months I dropped that tag because I found that the term is very problematic. I don’t know what somebody means when they are using that term and therefore, I say my differences are substantive. And yes it is because of an ambiguity regarding what exactly are these individual rights. Are we on the same page when it comes to understanding and describing human rights? There are very radical interpretations and there have been scholars who have amazing interpretations of human rights and those can also be adopted. But when I say that the differences are substantive, I mean in the way it is being interpreted both at the level of United Nations and the level of the United States and at the level of the India state. There is a difference that is substantive. Descent today is criminalized; descent of all forms is criminalized. How can a democracy live without descent? According to me descent is the goal element of any democracy, and you know you have in your own state, where in fact I do not know if this is the case in India. Where does human rights fit into this? What about regardless of whether you think X is right or wrong and that we believe that debate is acceptable? But what are the agents of human rights going to do in this climate of fear when the space according to me is closing? Of course, there is a lot of discussion of corporate and social responsibility. The state is accountable and the corporation is responsible. Are those the same term or are those two different terms and how are we going to negotiate with that? Will every form of protest be met with violence and will the violence be use through the domain of law? you can pass laws, which can be freedom of speech of various kinds, and those will come very much within the fame work of human rights. There is a conflict of rights taking place and there is a prioritization of rights taking. To give you another illustration all together, the environment in India, in Delhi. You and I, we both have the right to breathe unpolluted air, and to have garbage remove from the roads. All slums were removed from there and homes of thousands and thousands of poor people will be removed because they were on public ground. Who is this public? Which publics right to clean environment and good healthy un-polluted air was the supreme court of India upholding? And which public was removed from public ground? How do we push people whether in the political domain through terrorism or terrorists or whether in other domains through criminals, through illegal occupants, through encroachers? This is all happening very much within the domain of law and human rights. We can, we need to recover this space, we need to intervene and say this is not what this end purpose is, but it is happening.

 

Professor Nanda:

 

In a very simplistic kind of way, human rights is obvious, when you see it, you know it. At the present time, when we talk about human rights, for example, not to be tortured, there are no two interpretations. In places like Rowanda, Darfur and Cambodia, for example, the state has an obligation to protect its people from massacre. It should be a part of their sovereignty and if the state cannot, then the international community ought to have the obligation to protect human rights. There are no two interpretations of women’s rights and the fact that they ought to have equality in terms of gender. And also there are, obviously as you look into civil and political rights, economic and social and cultural rights. You can find various ways of looking at them but I think instead of just simply looking at differences there are basic human rights that you and I need to have. We are not to be killed indiscriminately and we are not to be tortured. I have got integrity of my own person, I got a right to my own faith, I got a right in order to have any association that I want to have, so I think there are basic issues on which at the present time you can’t just simply look at them and say this is semantics. This is a different space. I think in the human rights discourse, we need to understand that as in every other area of human activity, there are going to be different interpretations but there is a common ground and we need to build upon the common ground instead of simply trying to look at all those differences and accentuating them. Thank you.

 

 

Mallika:

 

I just like to add just one quick thing really the politics of, versus the politics for human rights rest on one thing and that is who has power and in what context. I mean that ultimately the differences in what Vrinda and the professor have just said have to do with the articulation of power. Human rights is like any other frame work, whether it is democracy or equality or social justice or whatever in terms of being a rhetorical device. It is an incredibly important rhetorical device for all of us to hold on to, and how that rhetorical device gets shaped, used, transformed, negotiated, rests on the power struggles that underline who’s using that rhetorical device for what purposes. So I think it is a little bit disingenuous to just lay it out as this or that. It is all things and for that reason, I have chosen in my own work to walk away from the world of law. I was practicing lawyer for many years and since then I have spent many years dealing in a world of global public policy. I have been very involved with the articulation of women’s right as human rights and spent lots of time with UN conventions banging my head around interpretation of various treaties and understanding treaty bodies. I have now moved my work into the domain of media and culture. For me the first strand that I articulated of human rights in terms of values, politics and law, the first strand, the values strand, is where I am putting in my time and energy. If we cannot build an understanding of ownership of human rights amongst broad constituency, then simply talking about treaties and conventions are simply talking about power struggles between people and the state does not give us enough strength to move those agendas forward. In the United States for example we don’t even own a human rights existence domestically. We have a discourse on civil rights as if the rest of the human rights to food, water, shelter, jobs, work, that none of those rights even have any relevant to us so I am involved with a network of human rights organizations domestically. I really push forth US accountability for human rights at home. And right know, we are involved with the ICCPR reporting process. We are going to be reporting on the race convention and the genocide convention which is the only three international conventions that this country has chosen to ratify but beyond that, it is about how one creates a culture of human rights and that is the question that I am grappling with, in my own work and breakthrough.

 

Manu Bhagavan:

 

We actually are going to have to call it there. I’m sorry there but we have already exceeded our time with our panelist so I would like to take this opportunity to thank our three panelists. I hope you will join me. (applause from viewers). We have a ten minute break that will follow. There is coffee in the back door and then we will be here.