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Savage Victim Savage Reading, Artikel: Matua Reading...

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Mohit Yadav 20120095

IS THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT EUROCENTRIC The structural norms in place today suggests a taint of Eurocentrism in the discourse of Human Rights. Historically, if the force that led the human rights movement was centripetal in nature, of late the movement has become centrifugalised. The Mutua article carefully cherry picks fact so as to create an image that INGOs' essential sole job is to proselytise " Western liberal values, particularly expressive and political participation rights 1." The first dimension of the savages-victims-saviour phenomenon applies to each and every state but the author has developed his own fiction and says if one is to pierce this dimension it is based on the barbarism of "cultural foundation of the state2." Similarly is the accusation of labelling the INGOs as the saviour or the redeemer mentioned in the third dimension. It is true that the "pioneering work of many non-Western activists3" has not been acknowledged by the "contemporary human rights movement4". At the same time, some of the most important contributions to the human rights movement have been of non-Western activists. Some of the reasons for the same to an extent due to the cultural setting of not having documenting everything or perhaps lack of academic culture in its current form that does not in any way underscores the important contribution of Nelson Mandela, Dr. Ambedkar or Gandhi. In fact, the pioneers of studying colonization in its true economic sense was started by Indians such as Dadabhai Nairoji and the same literature and ideas has later formed basis of freedom struggle in various colonized countries, an achievement which arguably stands taller than the UDHR itself around which much of the jurisprudential discussions on human rights takes place. These contributions are perhaps not as popular in the Western world but similar would be the fate when it comes to evaluating as to how much most of the Asians of Africans know about the Holocaust or its impact on the human rights movement. Will the work of Jyotirao Govindrao Phule on Dalit rights be as popular in India as that of William Wilberforce's work on slavery, vice versa is equally likely to be true as well. The cultural, social and political setting also to a large extent determines relevancy and the mere fact that some work in recent years has become more pertinent than others does not necessarily imply negative connotations. Most of the human rights jurisprudence that has evolved in the 'third world' revolves around opposing colonialism and as a result, the intelligentsia was more interested in simplifying issues, publishing short articles in the 1 42 Harv. Int'l L. J. 201 2001, p. 202. 2 Id., p. 203. 3 Id., p. 205. 4 Id.

Mohit Yadav 20120095 newspapers and pamphlets than churning out lengthy reports and journal articles. This, of course, leads to the false impression that voices of the people involved in these countries was deliberately left out as much of the foundation of human rights movement was laid around the time when these countries were yet to become independent. Another criticism of human rights movement in its current form is that it results in an " 'othering' process that imagines the creation of inferior clones, in effect dumb copies of the original5" such as portraying the idea of a political democracy to be quintessential Western. What author has ignored is the fact that the appropriate of cultural norms and ideals is not something that only West is guilty of, all progress that humans have made stands on shoulders of giants that preceded them and not a single civilization exist that can argue that it is the sole contributor to the progress it has made. Another criticism of the movement is that it seeks the transformation of all human societies "to fit a particular blueprint6". If the underlying idea is that all human beings are equal then there should not be any problem with certain universal accepted principles. Even if one is to argue otherwise almost some of the major human rights documents are non-binding declarations and those that are binding often go through a much lengthier negotiated process and even then, in the end, many states only partially ratify them by putting in reservations. There are some misguided conjectures as well such as the one which prophesize that the in the "human rights narrative, savages and victims are generally non-white and non-Western while the saviors are white7". This pattern is not unique to the West, take for example the example of India where even after 60 years of independence one of the prominent woman political leader is vilified as a white outsider bound to take the country and its resources down the drain reflecting upon common Indian mentality to show outsiders as greedy, opportunistic savages. The criticism however tends to take a moral high ground by stating it is not per say levelled against the concept of human right itself rather against the "the globalization of human rights" wherein "all high morality comes from the West as a civilizing agent against lower forms of civilization in the rest of the world 8." It is, of course, cannot be disputed that human rights regime constructed so far tends to displace the local culture but it is not only the 5 Id. 6 Id., p. 207. 7 Id. 8 Id., p. 210

Mohit Yadav 20120095 African/Asian states that have to suffer the brunt of it. Take for example the issue of privacy or torture in the United States, or issue of subjugation of religious rights in France, or the recent refugee crisis in Europe as a result of these institutionalized norms there has been worldwide condemnation of the States that have not acted in consonance with these normative principles. The efficacy of the same can be disputed but that is a different issue altogether, thus, an argument that the human rights seeks to portray the non-West as a lower form of civilization is a fallacy. The issue of "push for free markets, liberal systems of government " as "'civilized'" forms of dress9" does not always fit into the narrow framework of human rights and has to be seen in context of a larger framework where the developed nations with ulterior motives wish to monopolise their control over developing and the developed world, such view however is not in consonance with the established human rights norms and it is incorrect to link the two. Similarly, nowhere the current human rights movement prescribes as to the ways to achieve the set goals as the author thinks so when it advises that while dealing with sensitive issues like FGM (female genital mutilation) one needs to " excavate the social meaning and purposes of the practice " and then "investigate the conflicting positions over the practice in that society10". The movement at its best sets out the agenda and the goals but nowhere it compels the parties involved to adopt a particular methodology to deal with human rights issues. While there may be widespread criticism of FGM in the Western literature similar accounts can be found in the developing world where the Western lifestyle itself is seen as the root cause of all sorts of social evils.

9 Id., p. 234. 10 Id. p. 245...