Human Rights, Pluralism and Civil Society

Pluralism Working Paper no.6

Reflecting on contemporary challenges in India. By Sitharamam Kakarala.

In this paper, Human Rights, Pluralism and Civil Society – Reflecting on contemporary challenges in India, Prof. Sitharamam Kakarala, coordinator of the Pluralism program in India, presents an interesting review of the conceptual approaches and strategic actions of human rights - and secular action groups in complex plural societies. His analysis particularly refers to the context of communal violence and conflict issues in contemporary India. It explores salient concerns around religious pluralism and relates them to issues of caste, gender and ethnicity.

Respectfully, Kakarala stresses that this paper does not intend to judge civil society organisations or make a categorical statement about their work in extremely complicated situations, for instance after the demolition of the Babri Masjid or in the aftermath of the violence in Gujarat in 2002. Rather, the paper wants to help reframe the debate on pluralism concerns in ways that allow us to go beyond communal violence and constitutional governance questions, and thus help us to rethink ways and means of strengthening the pluricultural societal fabric.

Kakarala insightfully identifies a number of key challenges to pluralism concerns from a civil society vantage point. He argues that present-day challenges emerged when existing - tried and tested - strategies of political protest by civil society organisations as well as efforts to address matters through constitutional and human rights mechanisms, seem to have become increasingly inadequate in a (global) context in which people’s engagement with social change is changing.

The paper shows that the inadequacy problem is not confined to civil society practice. Similar struggles can be identified in the realm of social theory development. Concisely the paper explores recent theoretical challenges to the “too simplistic dichotomy between the universal and the particular in understanding the ideals of democracy, human rights” and other core concepts which are closely related to pluralism.

The paper goes on to identify a number of key lessons and emerging scenarios which creatively challenge our thinking about social theory and social action for pluralism.

Dr. Caroline Suransky,
Chief editor of the Pluralism Working Paper series for the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme