Rights vis-à-vis Duties and Contemporary Human Rights Debate

Most of the theories of rights propounded by philosophers, right from the beginning till the twentieth century, conceive rights either as a claim against the state or an obligation upon the state. Certainly such a conception has had something to do with the prevailing social, political and economic systems of the time concerned. Social, political and economic systems also had a particular relationship amongst them. Change in individual and social perspectives, values, priorities and beliefs has affected the philosophy of right. From the ages of Locke and Hobbes when natural right was taken in obvious terms to the times of communitarians like Michael Sandel and thinkers like Ronald Dworkin the term “Right” has earned many dimensions. Progress and changing arrangements of systems complicates the status of a philosophical theory of rights propounded at a particular time, in the sense that its losses its teeth in any new found milieu. This paper evaluates the notion of abstract universalism of individual rights in the light of Gandhian notion of duty.