THE FUTURE OF COMMUNAL IDENTITIES: INHERENT CONTRADICTION BETWEEN HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES

Abstract

The Human rights framework is presumed to be the most reasonable, workable and institutionally realizable mechanism to protect communal identities in multi-ethnic, religious and culturally diversified societies. Multi-culturalism acknowledges the differences among different cultural, religious and ethnic particularities due to the incommensurability of their comprehensive doctrines. Thus it cannot offer any overriding socio-political mechanism which transcends the sphere of cultural particularity. It is genera& believed that human rights framework provides the basis of a just political order and establishes socio political harmony in a multi-cultural society. Ironically there is an inherent antagonistic relationship between human rights struggles and collective identities of specific communities. Human rights are the rights of individuals and not of the community, therefore communal disintegration is the unintended consequence of the institutionalization of the human rights mechanism. In this paper we will try to explain the inherent contradiction between communal identity and human rights framework.This paper has been divided into two sections. The first section deals with the ontological justification of human fights and the priority of right over good. The second section will try to indentify the inherent contradictions in this prioritization of right over good and also discuss the role of the community and history in the constitution of individual selfhood. In conclusion the implication is that communal disintegration is the unintended consequence of human rights politics.