Emergence
of new and very powerful
movements like feminist
movement, movement for
environmental protection and
sustainable development,
movement for protection of
minorities and indigenous people
and their culture, movement for
abolishing of child labour and
all forms of exploitation
contributed to taking recourse
to human rights concept and its
language more frequently. In
fact, these movements have
contributed in great measure to
the increasing reliance on human
rights concept in national
contexts. All these developments
lead us to believe that in the
centuries to come the extent of
human development, prosperity
and peace would largely depend
on the degree or realization of
these rights in different
communities on one hand and
global community on the other.
Respect
and realization of human rights
requires evolving a culture that
is more sensitive to the basic
needs of every human being. It
respects the need for ensuring,
to everyone, justice social,
economic and political, and
provides fair and equal
opportunities for growth and
development to every individual
and group of people. It protects
everyone from being subjected to
the whims of State and its
arbitrary exercise of power and
use of force by its agencies. In
fact the Founding Fathers while
aiming at this goal gave a
detailed constitutional scheme.
Unfortunately, despite more than
five decades of its operation
the goal of ushering in human
rights – culture has still
remained a distant reality.
Amongst other causes, lack of
recognizing the significance and
importance of education as a key
instrument for bringing changes
in social and cultural attitudes
and that too in a country like
India, which has a history of
feudal and colonial past, and
where impoverishment, ignorance
and illiteracy pervade all
around, is perhaps the most
important reason responsible for
this situation. It is only in
the last few years that the
importance of education in
relation to human rights has
attracted the attention of
national policy-makers,
educationists and education
planners.
However,
respect for human rights as a
part of its social philosophy
has existed in the Indian ethos
for a long time-despite its
aberration intermittently.
The goal of evolving human rights
culture requires operating at
various levels such as (a)
spreading awareness, amongst
masses, of and about these
rights and also their duty for
respecting the rights of others,
(b) not only creating awareness
amongst masses particularly
amongst weaker, poor, and
vulnerable groups but also
imparting capacities and
confidence in them to stand for
protection and preservation of
their rights, (c) requiring many
to shed away some of their
prejudices and reforms some of
the attitudes which are
derogatory to others' dignity,
(d) creating different kind of
knowledge, innovating or
reforming structures,
methodologies and normative
regimes, and imparting new
skills and competencies so that
policy making, its enforcement
and realization become more
sensitive to the demands of
human rights culture, (e)
establishing new structures of
accountability and making
existing modes of accountability
more effective so that the
State, its agencies and its
personnel can be easily,
effectively and meaningfully
made responsible for human
rights violation on one hand and
can be made to internalize
respect for these rights on the
other.
It hardly
needs stressing that the
activity called 'education' - an
exercise in assimilating,
creating and disseminating
knowledge is a powerful means of
influencing and bringing
attitudinal change in the
citizens in general as well as
professional groups in
particular. Being a tool to
spread awareness, information
and knowledge amongst its
recipients education can play a
crucial role at each of the
levels mentioned above for the
promotion of human rights
culture. But, unfortunately, the
education system and more so the
higher education system in
India, except in the last few
years, has hardly shown any
credible signs of being a
partner in the efforts of
evolving human rights culture in
the country.
