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Be Human. That's Enough

I have a confession. I have never read the Geneva Convention. Nor have I read a single one of the various treaties -- on torture, child labour, women's rights and the like -- that make up the whole edifice of human rights agreements much of the world has signed. The truth is, I find such agreements, by themselves, somewhat meaningless. I may have won this prize that sent me to Geneva to watch the commemoration of 50 years of the Geneva Convention -- but I am no kind of expert on human rights.

I am, however, human. Like you. That's enough.

For it seems to me that human rights are not defined and embodied in eloquently worded documents drafted in Geneva. No, it is the ways people like you and me find to live together that define human rights. It is the humanity that remains within us all that says how much these rights mean to us.

And in India, there are daily reminders of exactly how much they do mean. Here are three: see if these jog memories for you too.

The carpenter who is doing some work for us, a smiling articulate sort, vanished for a few days last week. When he returned, he was full of apologies. I've been roaming the whole of Gujarat, he told me. We were looking for the son of some relatives of mine. He's just 17, and he has run away with a 16-year-old girl. Hamare khaandaan mein yeh love-marriage sab nahin chalta hai. When we find them, unko maar daalenge. Astonished at these violent words from this always gentle, bantering young man, I stared at him open-mouthed. Yes, sir, he went on. Yeh hamare khaandaan ki izzat ka savaal hai. I asked him: unko maar daalne se kya tumhare khaandaan ki izzat badh jayegi? He only repeated: izzat ka savaal hai.

There was the time I was strolling past a Bombay hotel and saw several scruffy urchins scrabbling and squabbling in the dirt on the pavement. I looked at them, then looked up. Two or three faces on a fourth floor balcony were tossing coins and lumps of sugar at the kids below. The faces were far above, but I could see they were shaking with mirth. They were thoroughly delighted by the way the kids fought over these measly goodies from on high.

Dismayed and outraged and speechless all at the same time, I couldn't help notice the many Bombayites who walked by the scene that evening. Just walked by. They stepped around the urchins and moved on. Not one of them stopped to look. It did not even surprise me that they did not. Innumerable scenes like it had rid this one of any novelty. The obscenity of making a few kids fight over coins flung from a balcony, of laughing at them do it, was not worth even simple curiosity to dozens of fellow Indians.

A few days ago, I saw the man at the traffic signal again. He has no legs, so he sits on a low cart and wheels himself up to each autorickshaw in turn. You feel a light tap at your ankles and look out, look down, at him. His intense, expressionless face stares up at you as he stretches out his arm for a coin or two. Then the lights turn and the cars bear down, drivers honking impatiently for him to roll out of the way so they can get on with getting to those shimmering places. Can't miss this light, oh no. So they honk and curse, irritated with this peculiar obstacle that sits four inches off the ground, irritated that it is not wheeling itself away fast enough for them to speed through the junction. It could be a pig, a human, a bag of trash, anything.

It is, nevertheless, a human.

Tell me these are not common experiences in India, our India. Tell me you have never known anything like them. Go ahead, I dare you.

In our India, many people will agree that the lives of kids doing what comes only naturally to us all -- falling in love -- matter less than something called "khaandaan ki izzat." In our India, we look down at a beggar because he has no legs, because he is a beggar; the only time he gets any attention at all is when he impedes the smooth progress of our cars. In our India, there are not just a few dozen, but tens of millions of little kids hungry enough to fight for crumbs and coins. There are also people who enjoy making them fight.

That these things are familiar is inhumanity. That we accept them, remain indifferent to them, is inhumanity. And when inhumanity flourishes, human rights mean nothing.

Oh yes, there are the figures. Take just one category: deaths in police custody that I've gone on about here before. 888 people died in police custody in 1997, a 100 per cent increase over the 444 of 1996. 200 of those 888 died in Maharashtra's jails, a rise from just 33 the previous year. Compare all this to a study that showed there were 155 such deaths in Maharashtra in the entire period 1981-1989. Then think about the reasons for such deaths, as spelled out by the police. Of those 155, "jumped under autorickshaw" killed 3; "fell on bed" killed 1; "fell on others" killed another. Among many other causes.

Startling numbers, stupefying explanations: but in the end, do they really, I mean really, matter to us? To you? To me? I can quote these figures, somebody else can quote those human rights declarations we have signed, but does it all matter?

In the end, human rights mean humanity. They mean compassion and concern for our fellow humans. They mean these things not for some moral reasons, but because inhumanity only breeds injustice for us all. That's why human rights are, above all, a purely pragmatic device. If you insist on human rights for everyone, you ensure them for yourself.

If you're human, that's enough.

Dilip D'Souza