HUMAN RIGHTS

Today on Human Rights day, I remember the speech of advocate, Satish Sonak at a recent human rights workshop! Like a good mirror, it stripped the façade of an in-dignified world torn by riots, bloodshed and indifference. It is necessary for us to repeatedly remind ourselves that other human beings deserve the same dignity that we appropriate, nay grab, for ourselves.

The human rights watch word is 'right to live with dignity'. The marginalised, the ones who toil, the physically and mentally challenged must have equal claim on opportunities to learn and earn. Discrimination of all sorts has to be first unlearnt in our attitudes and then in our approaches.

Ironically, death does not kill the processes of prejudice. We have no respect for the living. We have no compassion for the dead. The mockery of human rights continues. We attack their dignity with all the weapons at our command. Our weapons are religion, caste and regionalism. The ‘right to die with dignity’ is compromised by our bigotry and intolerance. Rightful demand for non-discriminatory cemeteries and burial grounds are at best ignored.

Human rights are a much ignored value system in a world that is fuelled by a malicious hate towards persons who we think are part of the problems facing us. In fact, we are the problem ourselves. We generate the garbage and hate the scavenger. We grab the land and get furious when the sons-of-the soil stake rightful claim to it. We talk about equality irrespective of gender, caste, class and religion and yet we practice inequality.

The dimensions of progress cannot be exclusive to some and inaccessible to the others. We are all guilty of not having a guilty conscious. The world continues to suffer because we are incomplete human beings. Because the one half doesn't do its human duties, the other half doesn't get human rights. If we embrace our fundamental human responsibilities, our world will celebrate its human rights!

The right to dignity is not just about permitting free thought and expression
‘Develop new dimensions’ to restore natural Human Rights with compassion!

Regards
Pravin