Human Rights Issues and Other Radical Essays

The dismal state of human rights and the surrounding political environment in India cannot be emphasized enough. The writings collected here are meant to raise the general level of awareness about the issues concerning human rights. Linked with these issues is also the painful subject of the partition of India.

Many of the conflicts one sees today are a result of this shattering event in India’s history. The two essays that deal with this subject are included in the volume.

Human rights in India are linked to the twin menaces of caste and communalism. Both these issues and their various aspects have been addressed in the sections on ‘Dalits, Reservation & Caste’ and ‘Hindutva & Communalism’.

The writer’s close relationship with one of the leading political thinkers of the twentieth century in India, M.N. Roy, forms the subject of the section ‘M.N. Roy, Gandhi and Partition’. The difference in Roy and Gandhi’s approach to important matters concerning India has been scrutinised in the essay ‘Opinion of Political Scientists on M.N. Roy and Gandhi’.

This book is meant as much for the lay reader as for a serious researcher into human rights in India.

Rai Mohan Pal, a well-known human rights activist, is editor of PUCL Bulletin and former editor of The Radical Humanist. Dr. Pal has lectured on human rights issues at universities in India and abroad. He is the author of Protection of Human Rights Act: A Critique and co-editor with G.S. Bhargava of Human Rights of Dalits, and with Meera Varma of Power to the People.