Reconceptualising Rights in Creative Society

Abstract

Challenging the traditional notion of rights as claims recognised by law, the article argues that the history of social movements suggests a different concept of rights. It shows that rights are political affirmations of a desirable human condition in course of struggle and the constitutional and legal embodiment of a claim is only one stage of the process of political affirmation. Rights should be delinked from duties as the two are important on their own and one should not be seen as a condition for the other. As human consciousness grows about what are desirable human conditions at a new stage of the human civilisation, the realm of rights as human rights continues to expand in a dynamic, contested and inter-dependent process.