http://www.indianexpress.com/news/The-rights-choice/605969
The rights choice D. Raja Posted online: Wednesday, Apr 14, 2010 at 0238 hrs Every year, on the 14th of April, thinkers and political activists revisit Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, and each time, return with refreshingly new ideas. Well before many of the world’s nascent democracies could emerge as strong democratic countries, he contributed immensely to the establishment of a democratic polity here, laying the foundation of a democratic republic interlaced with the philosophy of liberty,that has given a true meaning to freedom. Except for a few eccentrics who use communal fanaticism to hound out any creativity, we still hold on to the values of liberty of expression, freedom of speech and above all the freedom to pursue any entrepreneurial venture. Ambedkar’s birthday is not a celebration for only Dalits, tribals and the marginalised, but also for women who crave emancipation, for all those who are fighting for revolutionary change. The people owe the civil rights they access to Ambedkar. And it is not as if, one fine morning after independence. Ambedkar listed all those fundamental rights and incorporated them in the constitution: it was a hard-fought, step-by-step battle, born out of his own life experiences and sufferings that Ambedkar conceptualised the civil rights of every citizen of a nation where everybody is to be equal. But for Ambedkar the accessibility of basic necessities of life namely food, water, shelter and clothing are not the only ones that are needed to survive. It is the right to be treated as an equal, and it is the reclamation of human personality that drove him to push for the civil rights that would allow a fellow human being to be able to walk on the streets with his chin up, to enter any hotel, restaurant, barber shop, cinema hall, bus, train, to be treated as an equal. Such a concept of civil rights is the contribution made by Ambedkar to the nation. The Constitution of India abolished untouchability and passed a law in 1955 to enforce the civil rights of all individuals, including Dalits, called the Untouchability Offences Act — later renamed the Protection of Civil Rights Act. This piece of legislation is an exquisite exposition of what constitutes civil rights, granting access to shops, places of entertainment, restaurants, processions, public conveyances, water. India never needed a Rosa Parks; the freedoms that Ambedkar stealthily integrated into the constitutional conscience of the nation came well before the March to Washington for jobs and freedom in August 1963. In our first three decades, thanks to Ambedkar, our rights used the civil rights concept of equal access. The next two decades, as a nation, we moved to the civil liberties concept, in which the state machinery chose to deny the fundamental freedoms that accrue to every one of us. Very soon, though, access rights began to be demanded by the poor, the disadvantaged and the oppressed of our country — using, now, the human rights perspective under the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act of 1989 were born of this period, an indication of the necessity to have a far more stringent law. Today Dalit human rights organisations use these laws to reassert claims to freedoms for the oppressed. Undoubtedly the existence of the directive principles of state policy in the Constitution allowed many, including the judiciary, to push the modern-day claims of the common man to livelihood and right to life. The country would have been a far better place to live in had the directive principles — some of which Ambedkar wanted to be on par with fundamental rights in the first place — were understood by those in power. Were the realisation to dawn on us, on Ambedkar’s birthday, that civil rights, civil liberties and human rights, despite their nomenclature, are yet to be realised fully, then that would be the greatest tribute we could pay to him. The nation should rededicate itself to providing a reasonable life to every citizen: education for all, employment for all, health care for all, housing and a clean and healthy environment for all. But as the country progresses along the neo-liberal paradigm of development, the oppressive state machinery and the unequal society have more brutal methods to repress demands for rights. The writer is national secretary of the CPI and a Rajya Sabha MP ------------------------------------ ---- INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to zestmedia-dig...@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! 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