My comments on the idea of human rights of Amartya Sen and Nicholas Wolterstorff

In his chapter on Human Rights and Global Imperatives, Prof. Amartya Sen did not attempt to spend considerable time to ground the foundation for human right. He compared importance of the assertion of human right to the importance of happiness. But for a country like India, where discourse on human right has not be a part of the intellectual tradition, I would want that Prof. Sen goes further. Had the conviction that all humans are equal is not grounded sturdily, and therefore if certain members of the society are considered as lesser human, human right would not become such a pervasive quest.

Prof. Sen did comment that not all rights are part of human right. But in the endorsement of the inclusion of  "second generation" rights in UN declaration on Human Right, he did include right which should have not been part of human right. For example,"right to join trade union" should not have been part of human right, though such right is an important right. Though one would wish to see nation-states legislating such right as part of legal right, including such right in the sanctum of human right could open the door for all sort of rights to come under human right, and thus makes human right lose its steam. 

Prof. Wolterstorff's cogently argued that theistic grounding of human right is more plausible than secular grounding. Besides providing grounding for human right on theistic foundation, I wish that he would go on to address some contemporary relevant cases. The most common cases of human right violation takes place in the context of state maintaining its national security. But maintaining national security can take place in diverse ways. For example, the Burmese government's crackdown on civil right activist in the name of maintaining national security is different from that of Colombo's crackdown on Tamil Tigers, and these are different from operation on Al-Qaeda is being conducted. These are thorny issues, but they are live issues that need global debates. Whether it's Sen or Wolterstorff, I find some very important human right issues being skipped in the book. 

As an agnostic Prof. Sen may be reluctant to ground human right on theistic foundation. However, if that is the only intellectually compelling reason, I see no reason why one must not endorse the approach. Some of the points Wolterstorff left out, Sen included them in his essay. Taking Wolterstorff theistic grounding, and enfleshing it with Sen's material would make a book complete.One line of endorsement in favour of Wolterstorff's says, " Justice is the most impressive book on justice since Rawl's A Theory of Justice." Similar line is found in Sen's work too-- I believe that Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice is the most important contribution to the subject since John Rawl's A Theory of Justice..." Well, I do endorse the books too. Both the authors have very important words for those who are concerned for human flourishing.