- Ancient India, Islamic Era, British India
RIGHTS: MEANING AND NATURE
Rights are rightly called social claims which help individuals attain their best selves and help
them develop their personalities. If democracy is to be government of the people, it has to exist
for them. Such a democratic government can best serve the people if it maintains a system of
rights for its people. States never give rights, they only recognise them; governments never grant
rights, they only protect them. Rights emanate from society, from peculiar social conditions,
and, therefore, they are always social. Rights are individuals’ rights; they belong to the
individuals; they exist for the individuals; they are exercised by them so as to enable them to
attain the full development of their personalities.
The individuals have rights, is a phenomenon of modern age as it began in the 15th-16th
centuries’ Europe. That these rights are guarantees against state absolutism and, therefore, they
have their origin in society, are things that became known in the modern age alone. Rights belong
to the individuals, and therefore, they are not of the state. Rights are the products of our social
nature, and as such, the result of our membership of the society.
Rights are indeed claims, but every claim is not a right. A claim is not a right if it is not
recognised; it is not a right if it is not enforced. Claims which are not recognised are empty
claims; claims not enforced are powerless claims. Claims become rights when they are
recognised by society; they become rights when they are maintained and enforced by the
state.
Rights are not merely claims, they are social claims. They are not claims, but they are in the
nature of claims. What this means is that claims which are social in nature, alone are rights.
Rights as social claims presuppose the existence of the society. There are no rights where there is
no society. Rights as social claims have to have another requisite. They are to be maintained,
enforced and protected. It is here that the institution of the state has a definite role to play. It is
society and not the state, that rewards individuals after their having performed their duties, with
their rights. The state maintains the framework of rights in the society by providing them to one and all; the state protects individuals’ rights in their interests and for them against encroachments
by executive authorities, other individuals and/or groups of individuals.
Rights are social claims; they are not powers. Rights and powers have to be distinguished. Nature
has bestowed every individual with a certain amount of power to satisfy his/her needs. Power is a
physical force; it is sheer energy. On the basis of mere force, no system of rights can be
established. If a person has power, it does not necessarily mean that he has a right. He/ she has a
right as a member of the society – as a social being. An isolated person has no rights; what he/she
has is energy, physical force, and process. As individuals, we have powers; as social beings, i.e.
as members of society, we have rights. Likewise, as isolated individuals, we have no rights, and
as social beings, we have no powers – no right to say or do or act the way we want.
Our existence as members of society alone ensures us rights. Rights are rights when they are
recognized by others as such. They are, then, the powers recognized as being socially necessary
for the individuals. To quote Hobhouse: “Rights are what we may expect from others and others
from us, and all genuine rights are conditions of social welfare. Thus, the rights anyone may claim
are partly those which are necessary for the fulfillment of the function that society expects from
him. They are conditioned by, correlative to, his social responsibilities.”
In ancient and medieval times, some people were entitled to enjoy privileges. But to these
privileges nobody could give the name of rights. Rights are not privileges because they are not
entitlements. There is a difference between rights and privileges; rights are our claims on others
as are others’ claims on us; entitlements on the other hand are privileges granted to some and
denied to others. Rights are universal in the sense that they are assured to all; privileges are not
universal because they are possessed by few. Rights are given to all without any discrimination;
privileges are given to some, the selected few. Rights are obtained as a matter of right; privileges
as a matter of patronage. Rights emanate in democratic societies; privileges are features of
undemocratic systems.
Holland defines rights as “one man’s capacity of influencing the act of others, not by his own
strength but by the strength of the society.” His definition describes rights, as a man’s activities blessed by the society which means that Holland is describing rights only as a social claim.
Wilde, in his definition of rights gives a casual treatment to the social claim aspect when he says:
“A right is a reasonable claim to freedom in the exercise of certain activities.” Bosanquet
says: “A right is a claim recognized by society and enforced by the state”. According to
Laski, “Rights are those conditions of social life without which no man can seek, in general,
to be himself at his best.” Bosanquet and Laski, in their definitions of rights, include the
positions of society, and state and man’s personality, but they too ignore the important aspect of
‘duty’ as a part of ‘rights’.
A working definition of rights should involve certain aspects. Among these, the social claim
aspect is one which means that rights originate in the society and, therefore, there are no rights
prior to the society, above society and against society. Another aspect of rights is ‘the
development of personality’ aspect which means that rights belong to the individual and they are
an important ingredient which help promote one’s personality – this aspect includes the
individual’sright to oppose the government if the latter’s action is contrary to the individual’s
personality.The definition of rights, furthermore, must include the state’s role in the framework of
rights. This aspect lays emphasis on the fact that the state does not grant rights, it only maintains
them. Laski said that a state is known by the rights it maintains.
Rights are socially sanctioned claims in so far as they are preceded by It is, in this sense that
duties are prior to rights and it is what makes rights limited in their nature and in their exercise.
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