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Today
on Human Rights day, I remember the speech of advocate, Satish Sonak
at a recent human rights workshop! Like a good mirror, it stripped the
façade of an in-dignified world torn by riots, bloodshed and indifference.
It is necessary for us to repeatedly remind ourselves that other human
beings deserve the same dignity that we appropriate, nay grab, for ourselves.
The human
rights watch word is ‘right to live with dignity ‘. The marginalised,
the ones who toil, the physically and mentally challenged must have
equal claim on opportunities to learn and earn. Discrimination of all
sorts has to be first unlearnt in our attitudes and then in our approaches.
Ironically,
death does not kill the processes of prejudice. We have no respect for
the living. We have no compassion for the dead. The mockery of human
rights continues. We attack their dignity with all the weapons at our
command. Our weapons are religion, caste and regionalism. The ‘ right
to die with dignity’ is compromised by our bigotry and intolerance.
Rightful demand for non-discriminatory cemeteries and burial grounds
are at best ignored.
Human
rights are a much ignored value system in a world that is fuelled by
a malicious hate towards persons who we think are part of the problems
facing us. In fact, we are the problem ourselves. We generate the garbage
and hate the scavenger. We grab the land and get furious when the sons-of-the
soil stake rightful claim to it. We talk about equality irrespective
of gender, caste, class and religion and yet we practice inequality.
The dimensions
of progress cannot be exclusive to some and inaccessible to the others.
We are all guilty of not having a guilty conscious. The world continues
to suffer because we are incomplete human beings. Because the one half
doesn’t do its human duties, the other half doesn’t get human rights.
If we embrace our fundamental human responsibilities, our world will
celebrate its human rights!
Regards Pravin
READ Satish’s speech if you haven’t
done so yet... click following link
http://groups.google.com/group/scientific-temper/browse_thread/thread...
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