Author Name – Mohammad Taha Amir (B.Sc., LL.B., LL.M., (B.H.U.))
I am a rights lover person in a much broader sense than those who claim the name. The fundamental concepts of rights are based on the cardinal principles of intrinsic human natural values. Hence, the rights of humans must be held sacred, however great sacrifice the ruling power may have to make it and it can’t be discarded at any cost. The hue and cry which, we are seeing continuously within the educational institutions and out of the street in the State of Karnataka, really it melted me out to express my academic views through writings. We ask substantially an inter-related question from the different disciplines of academia about the existence of corporeal or incorporeal things in the World. Then the answer came as usual as that everything came into existence with the concept of birth and death. It is right to be mentioned here that birth is a matter of joy and celebration but death is a matter of mourning and unhappiness.
It is also to be noted that we Indians are very keen on the celebration of birth date on the date or in the month when anything came into existence. This is the hypothesis of my academic writing and the same case is to be found with the rights of the women. I believe in the concept that women’s rights are also a result of pregnancy, in a sense that it took birth from nature as values, morality, and the necessity for the common existence and finally recognized by the adoption of a holy-book which is, of course, the Constitution of India.
The argument on which I rely is that pregnancy is good news whether it is about rights, privileges, affirmative action or discriminatory laws but no delivery is bad news. If the pregnancy of rights crossed the period of gestation without its delivery, miscarriage of rights is bound to happen.
As to my mind all politics must bend the knee before the right because it can’t be compromised. Once President Jefferson quoted that “the greatest danger to the American freedom is a government that ignores the common rights of the people” so far we can understand the concept more easily.
In legal philosophy, Immanuel Kant argues for a case of rights in contrast to the world celebrated Benthamite doctrine based on pleasure and pain.
Let me tell you in the words of Kant if you believe in human rights, you are probably not a utilitarian. If all human being are worthy of respect, regardless of who they are or where they live, then it is wrong to treat them as mere instruments of collective happiness. Immanuel Kant argues that we are rational beings and worthy of dignity and respect.
Kant’s work laid the foundation of modern liberalism. It is to be noted that five years after Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Legislations Kant’s groundwork launched a devastating critique of utilitarianism. It argues that morality is not about maximizing happiness or any other end. Instead, it is about respecting persons as ends in themselves. Kant’s emphasis on human dignity informs present-day notions of universal human rights. More important, his account of freedom figures in many of our contemporary debates about justice.
Now I will look after three parallel arguments of the present day, among all three, one approach that is Benthamite talking about maximizing the collective happiness of society as a whole and the second approach connects justice to freedom. Libertarians offer an argument of this approach.
A third approach says that justice means giving people what they morally deserve. Kant rejects approaches one (maximizing welfare) and three (promoting value). Both of them neither respect human freedom. So Kant is a powerful advocate for approach two —the one that connects justice and morality to freedom. Kant rejects utilitarianism. By resting rights on a calculation about what will produce the greatest happiness, he argues, utilitarianism leaves rights vulnerable.
There is also a deeper problem: trying to derive moral principles from the desire we happen to have is the wrong way to think about morality Just because something gives many people pleasure doesn’t make it right.. The mere fact that the majority, however big favours a certain law, however, intensely does not make the law just. Kant further argues that utilitarianism does not teach us how to distinguish right from wrong, but only to become better at calculation. Kant concedes that every person is worthy of respect, not because we own ourselves but because we are rational beings, capable of reason; we are also autonomous beings, capable of acting and choosing freely.
Conclusion: In brief, I will submit that living persons neither they are the property of State nor bound by the whims of the State. They have been granted freedom as fundamental right under Indian Constitution and its enforcement after the violation is both a fundamental right and constitutional rights as well.
