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Document Details :

Title: Hindu Discourse and Human Rights Discourse
Author(s): MINNEMA, Lourens
Journal: Studies in Interreligious Dialogue
Volume: 16    Issue: 2   Date: 2006   
Pages: 133-147
DOI: 10.2143/SID.16.2.2017805

Abstract :
This article tries to answer the question of whether traditional and modern Hindu discourse has the potential to approve, support and legitimize human rights discourse. It begins with the structural bipolarity of
Hinduism and addresses the relationship between society and religion, society and the individual, religion and politics, and rights and duties. It comes to the conclusion that traditional Hinduism offers grounds of justification for rejecting Human Rights but no grounds for promoting them, that Neo-Hinduism explicitly offers grounds of justification for promoting Human Rights but grounds which have a universal, cosmic tenor not focusing on humanity specifically, and that Hindu nationalism explicitly offers grounds of justification for combatting human rights but grounds which have an exclusively Hindu nationalistic tenor meant for internal political purposes.


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