The Rediff Interview/Norman Dorsen

'What is the point of living if you don't have any rights?'

In India 40 per cent of people live below the poverty line. They do not get the basic 2,400 calories of nutrition every day. How do you relate this factor to human rights?

First, you have to get them 2,400 calories per day. Now if you ask me whether we should forget about human rights because there is poverty, then I will say, 'You cannot forget about human rights. Human rights is a very important problem. So you deal with both issues. And do not allow people to die of starvation. But at the same time you cannot forget about human rights.

How can human cruelty be eliminated in our lifetime? Or do you think it is not possible?

(Laughs) You are going to have a longer lifetime than me... In my lifetime, I have seen a lot of change. And my mentor, the man who was my teacher, Roger Baldwin, told me that I would. Baldwin was the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. He was at the head of the civil liberties movement in 1920. And he died in 1984.

I knew him well for the last 22 years of his life. And he used to say, 'Don't get discouraged'. When we started in the 1920s in the US, there were no rights for anybody. Today, we have made lots of progress. Women are in a much better position. Black people too are in a good position. ...Homosexuals -- there was tremendous discrimination against homosexuals. And all this progress has been made, all around the world, since World War II.

There is a long way to go. There is terrible violation. But there is no alternative than to keep trying to make things better...I don't think the problem will be solved even in your lifetime. It will be better than the situation today. But that will happen only if people keep working on it.

Has this been the worst century of human rights violations, considering the situation in Bosnia and Rwanda?

I don't know. A civilisation is a long time. There was terrible violence in the last centuries. We know there was a terrible violence in this century. The Nazis, Stalin's forces, Bosnia and Rwanda. But there also has been improvement. People's lives have improved. The East is comparatively much better than it was before... Less discrimination. Colonialism has ended in this century. So the countries are free. People are telling me that despite the problems in India, there is a flourishing democracy. It had terrible problems during the Emergency. But it came out of that.

We constituted a National Human Rights Commission four years back without any real powers. Do you believe that this is a right step? Or should our country do more?

I think it is a good first step. Having a commission which is doing a serious job, even if it has no power to enforce it. If you have some human right problem, you have to start doing something rather than keeping quiet. So I believe it is a good step.

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