The Gujarat Shift: The Tipping Point in India's Post-Cold War Discourse on Human Rights

Abstract

2012 was a banner year for India’s role in the United Nations. After active campaigns the world’s largest democracy secured terms on the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council (HRC), among other influential committees. India’s zealous pursuit of an HRC seat, a position charged with enforcing universal human rights norms determined by UN bodies, marks a striking departure from its initial post-Cold War rhetoric that adamantly defended culturally relative human rights policies. Behind the departure is a story worth telling. This research endeavors to tell that story through analysis of the past 20 years’ Indo-UN discourse on international human rights norms. Two questions are considered. When did India change its discourse on international human rights norms? And what implications do the nature of that change in rhetoric hold for yet-unseen change in actions?This dissertation asserts that the 2002 Gujarat riots were the tipping point in India’s will to publicly affirm international human rights norms. A critical mass of international responses to the mishandled tragedy made Indian leaders fully aware of human rights’ centrality among liberal, democratic norms; thereby central to India’s aspiration for liberal, democratic status. Indian leaders swiftly changed their rhetoric, affirming the international norms they once denounced as unilaterally defined impositions.