[Reader-list] Human rights: Indifferent to suffering?

[ARNAB CHATTERJEE]

Dear Readers,
             I'm reposting this piece again since I've
been trying since yesterday but this post hasn't gone
through except an empty Forward; apologies.
____________
This might be called conversation 3 which I am
pursuing  in response to a question put by Monica
Narula on Dec. 7 at the SARAI-CSDS IF Coference. I’ve
been pursuing  ( with others)  on the list -- reaction
to Mahmood Faruqui, Shuddhabrata and Aditi Saraf. Next
will come Shri Ravi Kant and priyo Jeebesh Bagchi.
             It is clear by now that dialogue is our
best dope. For me at least I can confess that the
moment I talk to or when am questioned by sincere and
competent people, later I suffer from --what Sadan has
called a ‘critical nostalgia’ ( for example, about the
points not pursued). All these efforts should be seen
in that light and empathised. Apologies if you know
all these arguments already; take it as my learning.
             Now Monica Narula did put a question mark
against my description of pain as personal and invoked
the agenda of human rights. By this I’m willing to
understand she did not throw in the caveat of pain
becoming public but the universal and moral question
of rights--- which was interesting and original in a
very different manner; I’ll try to tell you how. 
            Against Wittgenstein’s description of pain
as private, my correction was—if pain is unknown ( you
don’t know whether I’m in pain or not etc), pain is
personal and not private since I may invite publicity
and thus if I disclose pain ( ritually or really), it
will not remain private anymore. I think Monica is not
disputing this. What she is asking is, how then human
rights will deal with this question of uncertainty
unless there is something stable to reckon with; she
rightly invoked the taxonomy of suffering. In today’s
world ( with a global warNing resounding everywhere),
‘social suffering’ is an accepted and a necessary
jargon. Now, how does human rights then deal with
suffering ?
          The answer I gave then  -- dealt with how
pain could be feigned etc. and suffering could be
forged in terms of the Austinian speech act theory
debate between Derrida and Searle etc. Further I  had
argued the ethical status of human rights as moral
rights which helped me since my paradigmatic examples
–love and friendship ---where in the absence of
operative legal rights, jilted lovers or friends could
claim a moral right not to be betrayed or deceived. (
And the recent incident at Santiniketan is a troubling
case in point.)
This is all ok but having given it a further thought,
today I’ll submit to Monica a peculiar inference:
Human rights is indifferent to suffering. 
This follows from the naturalistic basis and its roots
in the natural law tradition ( human rights are
claimed by the benefit of naturally being human)  to
which I had made a passing reference that day. Now let
me get on with that a bit in this direction. 
          So far suffering is concerned, one of the
primary theorists as you all might be knowing was
Jeremy Bentham ( that utilitarian and legal
philosopher) –who was at the same time furious about
natural law  claims and allegories. Here he was
speaking about  
misery as a virtue in the case of asceticism. While
discussing asceticism (though as a principle of
government) he  makes an interesting point on this
subject : 

“Whatever merit a man may have thought there would be
in making himself miserable, no such notion seems ever
to have occurred to any of them, that it may be a
merit, much less a duty, to make others  miserable:
although it should seem, that if a certain quantity of
misery were a thing so desirable, it would not matter
much whether it were brought by each man upon himself,
or by one man upon another” (Bentham, Jeremy. 2004.
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation. Delhi :Universal Law Publishing Co. Pvt.
Ltd , p.11). 

Displace this ‘misery’ argument for suffering since it
is close and given by the utilitarian calculus of pain
and pleasure, they can even be substituted.The
ascetic, the punisher, the sadist or the masochist
--all suffer or make other people suffer because of
the intrinsic merits of suffering—people are redeemed
or rescued, coerced and corrected and such others.
Then suffering as such is not a signifier that ought
to attract human rights; suffering has positive and
even pleasurable duties it seems. 
Now, if this is so, then human rights and suffering
have to relate to each other in a different manner.
This it does  by striking an attitude :  indifference.
 How? To this end I had just hinted in my deliberation
that day, but could not give the conclusion it
deserved. Today I shall give it; it is simple : if I
suffer I have human rights, if I don’t, still I have
human rights; if I make other people suffer, I have
human rights, if I enjoy suffering, I have them
intact. One for all and all for one. From this, One
can justly infer, human rights is thus indifferent to
suffering. Indifferent because of a structural
indispensability: to deal with the intense
poly-plurality, unknown indeterminacy of the signifier
called suffering. May I now, with the permission of
Monica and all, claim suffering to be personal too?

Yours in discourse and debt
Arnab
               


         






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