New Delhi: Human rights in the country needs to be looked at with an “Indian perspective”, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said at an event here on Saturday. There is an essential difference in “human rights” as it should be seen in India and in the rest of the world because of the inherent difference in beliefs and circumstances, added the BJP president.
Shah said schemes by the Narendra Modi-led government to provide toilets, houses and electricity to the poor in his first five years was the biggest effort towards restoring human rights in the world. He was speaking at an event marking the 26th foundation day of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), where he was the chief guest.
“The Modi government has fought successfully against human rights violations. When people don't have access to toilets, is it not a violation of human rights? When people are forced to burn twigs to cook food, is it not a violation of human rights? By providing 13 crore gas connections, 10 crore toilets, 2.5 crore toilets and 3-3.5 crore houses with electricity, the Modi government carried out the biggest exercise towards restoring human rights anywhere in the entire world," Shah said.
The definition of human rights in India should also be expanded, Shah said, citing Kashmir as an example. “More than 40,000 people have been killed because of terrorism in Kashmir since the 1990s. Don't they have human rights? The NHRC should also look into this,” he said.
The practice of human rights in the country has been built into the Indian way of life, Shah said.
“If we go by global parameters [on measuring human rights violations in India and in the rest of the world], it won't be right. As far as the rights of children and women are concerned, those of the poor and underprivileged are concerned… they are inbuilt within the society, within our family, without any intrusion from law,” Shah said.
The BJP leader said thousands of outfits are working on ground to ensure that human rights are enforced there. These too, he argued, should be given space and platform by the NHRC.
“Our saints have written literature that explicitly talks about human rights. They gave us the slogan of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family’. So when we were thinking of the entire world, you can see that concerns like human rights were inbuilt in our system,” he said.
Shah added that there could not be a better charter of human rights than Narsi Mehta's ‘Vaishnava Jana To’, sung and immemorialised by Mahatma Gandhi.
Shah said that those affected by terrorism and Naxalism have also been deprived of their human rights. “I think the time has come to look at human rights from a new dimension,” he added.
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