نشریه مطالعات بین المللی
سال نهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 36، بهار 1392)

India is a land of myriad ethnic, religious, caste and linguistic minorities affiliated to distinct belief systems, sub-cultures and regions. If one goes in deep down in understanding diverse aspects of Indian cultural and social ethos, one realizes that the Indian society comprises of an extremely differentiated structure with a huge diversity in its cultural ethos. Integration of these diverse communities, some large enough to aspire to a regional homeland and others content to remain as part of the Indian state has been a central preoccupation of Indian governments since 1947.India’s Constitution was drafted during Partition, which had a profound effect on the Constitutional provisions dealing with minorities. The preamble to the Indian Constitution says that India is a secular state. Right to freedom of religion is guaranteed under fundamental rights and Indians of all religious persuasions have the freedom to profess, practice and propagate their religion. India's freedom movement provides insights into how the main pillars of the Indian Constitution - democracy, secularism, social justice and fundamental rights were forged over a period of time.The Constitution also recognises the need for affirmative action provisions for socially and educationally disadvantaged groups is also significant. The Directive Principle of State Policy in Article 49 obligates the State to protect every monument or place or object of artistic or historic interest from spoliation, disfigurement, destruction, removal, disposal and export. It is a unique scheme of the Constitution that in addition to a detailed set of rules on fair State-religion relationship, egalitarian approach towards all religions is embedded in it as citizen’s duty (Article 51-A (e) and (f).The challenges in the protection of cultural rights arises when Equality as a guaranteed right is applied to different cultural groups. India adopted the scheme of non-discrimination, minority rights, reservation and affirmative action with varying degrees of success. Despite the several efforts by the government to improve the condition of the minority, constitutional guaranteed rights, different institution and commission established to monitor, failed. Minority faces discrimination, violence and atrocities. It has created a lot of tensions including communal conflicts and security challenges taking governance difficult. The article will explore to what an extent the institutional mechanism established under the Constitution and various other statutes protect the minorities ‘identity’, recognizing their distinctive character while managing diversity?

This paper examines and analyzes fundamental arguments regarding the credibility and valuation of the cultural rights of children, as part of a larger debate on the universality of human rights, and the framework of my approach is delimited by the following questions: (I) How do we research and illustrate the complex relation between children´s cultural rights and the cultural diversity of the world today? (II) What position and function does the – formal and informal – education of children have regarding the knowledge on and respect of cultures and humanity in the world today? And finally, (III) what can be done – on local, national and international levels – in order to improve the general understanding of children and human right issues across ethnic, religious and national borders? The main aim of the paper is, through the ethnographic lens, and with the children´s `own viewpoints´ in focus, to outline children´s core position in any reasoning about the value of humanity. The paper´s imperative is the potential dangers of e.g. cultural commercialization, cultural `racism´and `ethnocide´ in a globalized world characterized by economic and political competition, as well as xenophobia. Using empirical data from different parts of the world, the paper presents cases of violations of human rights – e.g. to use own language and rights to a (home)land – with focus on the negative consequences it has on children, hence also on their culture´s viability and future; this discussion leads to the domain of human rights ethics that is connected to the question of education and pedagogy. What to teach the children – and in which way? The paper, in summary, concludes that culture is a capital that empowers people so that they protect and support humanity.

The concept of migration even if old it has added different dimensions to it due to the changing socio-economic and political situations more popularly called as neo liberal era or globalization. Globalization created the situation of marginalization, exclusion and social disintegration. (Sinha Manoj, 2004) Because of urban centric model of developments, many rural people are forced to migrate to cities in search of employment and better living. According to the Census 2001, among the population of 9.69 crore of Maharashtra, 32.32 lakh persons (3.34 per cent) were in-migrants from other states in India, out of which more than 40 percent were north Indian, particularly from UP and Bihar. These migrants are the most exploited people; they suffer from insecurity and social exclusion leading to the gross violation of their fundamental and Human rights.City of Pune being an Industrial hub and its connectivity to all parts of the country attracts people from all over India. But the treatments offered to the north Indians from UP and Bihar is discriminatory owing to the sons of soil politics being practiced by the regional political parties like MNS (Maharshtra Navnirman Sena) and Shiv Sena. This has occasionally resulted in violence against the north Indian labor force employed in Pune city and suburbs areas. Many times they had to run away in overnight so as to save their lives. These people despites of being citizens of India could not enjoy their basic fundamental rights and are constantly subjected to discrimination, conflicts and violence as a part of vote bank politics. The present paper is an attempt to throw new lights on the issues of migrants and human rights violation in India. The paper will be based on the analysis of primary data (personnel interviews, and discussions) collected from north Indians living in Pune City either singly or with families.

An exegetical tradition (tafsir) played an important role in Islamic religious outlook since the times of the early Muslims. Despite the complex changes in social, political and, to some extent, religious life in the Muslim countries during the colonial and post-colonial era, tafsir still represents the main trends of how the Qur’an is reflecting in the cultural context. In our study, which is based on the Arabic texts of the commentaries of XX-century authors (Rashid Ridha, Mustafa al-Maraghi, Said Hawwa, Muhammad al-Ghazali, ayatollah at-Tabatabai and others), we considered tafsir as a mirror, in which the modern Islamic culture shows its relation to the principles of Qur’an. A mutual influence of the modernity and Islamic religious tradition can be described as a complex system of values, which rooted in both Western and Eastern cultures. Comparing the modern Western understanding of the freedom of religion with the statements of contemporary exegetes, our study showed the inner evolution of tafsir and its evaluation of the new issues of public and private law.The research provides in-depth understanding of how the Islamic culture benefits through tafsir relations between modern law principles and Qu’anic teachings. We suppose that both traditional views as well as its modern interpretation supports a wide understanding of religious freedom and proposes a new solutions for the widespread problems of this field. Finally, the critical analysis of the text of the contemporary tafsirs gives us a great chance to enrich our cultural experience in a way of serving the humanity.

This paper’s overall goal is to search for human dignity and tolerance, as cross-cultural values of human rights and a contribution of East Asian Culture to the Evolution of Universal Human Rights through examining the traditional Vietnamese legal culture and its influences on modern Vietnam. The paper explores Vietnam’s traditional values of humanism, humanitarianism and human rights which were exposed through the lenses of Feudalism and flowered from the presence of Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Vietnamese belief (animism) from 10th century onwards, until 1858 at which Vietnam began to fall into the French rule while still remained semi-Feudalism. By looking at the Vietnamese Imperial dynasties, especially from the Ly, Tran, Le and Nguyen, the paper seeks for solid proofs demonstrating traditional Vietnamese legal culture did exist the ideas of human rights as enshrined in international human rights treaties and that the East Asian Culture, embraced by Confucianism, by which Vietnamese legal culture had received, significantly contributed to the evolution of universal human rights. The paper is also based on the argument that Vietnamese traditional culture, as well as the East Asian Culture, is embraced by both negative and positive elements that affect, either sides, the evolution of human rights in Vietnam and East Asia, as well as to the emergence of universal human rights. The transcendent values constituting that culture are human dignity, tolerance and endless compassion; they were rich in Vietnamese traditional the legal culture and Vietnamese traditional society still significantly influencing on present-day Vietnam. The arguments brought to some key conclusions that as part of East Asian Culture, regardless of containing some conservative viewpoints negatively affecting the ways in which the individuals’ human rights have been respected, protected and fulfilled, such as women’s rights, Vietnamese culture embraces a lot of values supportive for humanity and humanitarianism and entirely compatible with universal human rights.

It is more often than not that we accord immense significance to objective region-wide universalizable conclusions collected from field or otherwise research but discard accounts of subjective individual experiences, which normally bedeck the library-shelves accommodating anything but not the place designated for accepted academic research literature. This paper seeks to be an unconventional endeavour at understanding fresher interpretations of the terms “justice” and “freedom” through a 60:40 mixture of moving accounts of subjective experiences and existent crystallized generalizations in the sociological, economical, psychoanalytical, legal, feminist, transgender and policy study discourses so that these terms can be made “Human-Rights-Friendly” and more humanitarian. Through this paper, I make a humble attempt at providing a platform to few unsung marginalized women, “Others” and men from India whose voices have always been marred, suppressed and completely ignored. This paper will be a novel and most likely the only one importing a gender-mainstreamed, tribal and transgendered perspectiveWomen, as usual, continue to be the lesser mortals sometimes because of non-friendly laws and at other times due to prevalent social codes. This paper suggests how legal literacy can empower such people to enjoy their human rights and be well protected during disasters and during peace.

Based on an assessment of contemporary practices of dealing juridically with large-scale human rights violations, this paper argues that there is a need for updating important aspects of transitional justice theory. The field of transitional justice emerged around the so-called third wave of democratization, most notably the transitions from military rule in Latin America in the 1980s and the transitions in Central and Eastern Europe following the fall of communist governments. However, though institutionalized responses to mass violence and state-sponsored repression now take place in highly diverse cases, transitional justice theory remains dominated by the claim that law and justice should primarily promote liberal democratic values. This paper argues that it is useful to operate with a differentiated normative framework, thereby endorsing a more nuanced understanding of the interests that transitional justice in fact serves as well as the legitimacy of these. In doing so, this paper distinguishes between transitional justice in cases of liberal transitions, non-liberal transitions, deeply conflicted societies that have not seen a fundamental regime change, and consolidated democracies. Though rejecting one consistent normative framework, which prioritizes liberalization and democratization as the end product of transitional justice, the present paper concludes that it is possible to establish some overall positive goals of transitional justice, namely attending to the needs of victims, preventing the recurrence of large-scale violence and, finally, creating a more just society.