{"title":"Cow Vigilantism and India’s Evolving Human Rights Framework","authors":"R. Pratap","doi":"10.1515/mwjhr-2019-0019","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper seeks to understand India’s evolving rights framework in the backdrop of cow vigilantism. To that end it discusses the human right to food and nutrition, international discussion on minority rights issues in India and the relevant legal and constitutional discussion in India. It finds that India’s rights framework has evolved since proclamation of India as a Republic in 1950 based on the supremacy of its written constitution containing fundamental rights and directive principles of state policy interpreted finally by its Supreme Court. The government took a wise step by not challenging a judicial rebalancing of the rights framework in response to certain executive measures and the Supreme Court interpreted the right to life to include not only the right to the choice of food but also the right to privacy and thereby underscored the obligation of the State to compensate the victims of cow vigilante violence. However, a constitutional polity and secular state would do all well if it did any further necessary to better guard against any recurrence of the breach of civil peace, much less violence, on purely secular issues, including by strengthening and increasing dialogue with all representative communities in all its decision-making on such matters.","PeriodicalId":35445,"journal":{"name":"Muslim World Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/mwjhr-2019-0019","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Muslim World Journal of Human Rights","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mwjhr-2019-0019","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The paper seeks to understand India’s evolving rights framework in the backdrop of cow vigilantism. To that end it discusses the human right to food and nutrition, international discussion on minority rights issues in India and the relevant legal and constitutional discussion in India. It finds that India’s rights framework has evolved since proclamation of India as a Republic in 1950 based on the supremacy of its written constitution containing fundamental rights and directive principles of state policy interpreted finally by its Supreme Court. The government took a wise step by not challenging a judicial rebalancing of the rights framework in response to certain executive measures and the Supreme Court interpreted the right to life to include not only the right to the choice of food but also the right to privacy and thereby underscored the obligation of the State to compensate the victims of cow vigilante violence. However, a constitutional polity and secular state would do all well if it did any further necessary to better guard against any recurrence of the breach of civil peace, much less violence, on purely secular issues, including by strengthening and increasing dialogue with all representative communities in all its decision-making on such matters.
期刊介绍:
Muslim World Journal of Human Rights promises to serve as a forum in which barriers are bridged (or at least, addressed), and human rights are finally discussed with an eye on the Muslim world, in an open and creative manner. The choice to name the journal, Muslim World Journal of Human Rights reflects a desire to examine human rights issues related not only to Islam and Islamic law, but equally those human rights issues found in Muslim societies that stem from various other sources such as socio-economic and political factors, as well the interaction and intersections of the two areas. MWJHR welcomes submissions that apply the traditional human right framework in their analysis as well as those that transcend the boundaries of contemporary scholarship in this regard. Further, the journal also welcomes inter-disciplinary and/or comparative approaches to the study of human rights in the Muslim world in an effort to encourage the emergence of new methodologies in the field. Muslim World Journal of Human Rights recognizes that several highly contested debates in the field of human rights have been reflected in the Muslim world but have frequently taken on their own particular manifestation in accordance with the varying contexts of contemporary Muslim societies.