25) Rights or duties.

Begin with a Charter of Duties of Man and I promise the rights will follow as spring follows winter.

Mahatma Gandhi’s understanding of human rights is based on duty, rather than on rights. He did not stand for rights but for duties. He argued that if all insist simply on rights and not on duties, there will be utter confusion and chaos.

He argued for a “Charter of Duties” when asked for his opinion on what is the golden way to be friend of the world and to regard the whole human family as members of one family.

In the 1940s, when the world was focusing on the emerging ‘rights-discourse,’ Gandhi’s contribution was unique because of its emphasis on duties. Gandhi disagreed with the rhetoric of rights—at a national and international level—and opted for a discourse couched in the language of duties. What is most fascinating is that he went beyond the obvious correlation between human rights and state duties, and emphasized the duties of individuals.

Gandhi’s emphasis on the duties of non-state actors in the context of human rights is becoming more and more relevant. Actually, many people are starting to become more conscious of how close the modern law of human rights came to becoming a law of human rights and human duties. We are hearing more and more noises about corporate accountability for rights violations, individual criminal liability for rights violations, the responsibility of armed groups and ‘belligerents’ in times of war, duties of peacekeepers and human rights defenders.