Punjab Research Group

The Tribune 10 April 2011

Human rights issues in India might be perceived as “ivory tower intellectualism.” However, that didn’t deter India-born Oxford Brooks University reader Pritam Singh from exploring the same in his latest book, Economy, Culture and Human Rights: Turbulence in Punjab, India and Beyond.

The trigger for the book, he recalls, lay in a personal experience. Sympathetic to the Naxal cause, he remembered the days when he was picked up by the police and tortured. The book, however, only takes off from that personal suffering and soon spawns into a deeper analysis of the significance of human rights in today’s economic order.

First and foremost, he describes two kinds of approach to human rights, the intrinsic worth and the instrumentalist. While the first one focuses on human rights as an end it itself the other approach he asserts uses human rights as a means, as an instrument towards another end. The ends could vary from secession to national causes to military conflict or suppression of an armed struggle. Predictably, he favours the first approach but adds that sadly, there are a few humans right groups, which have no other axe to grind and have only one mission: to ensure human rights for people.

Read full interview: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110410/spectrum/book9.htm

If you would like to buy a copy of the book please find details on attached flyer:Pritam Flyer non-Indian, pb