A New Idea of India: Individual Rights in a Civilisational State

by Harsh Gupta 'Madhusudan'

While many intellectuals have long argued for the primacy of group rights over individual rights, and the protection of minority interests, there needs to be a detailed discussion on how this mindset might lead to the withering of individual identity over a period of time. An identity-based special ‘minority group right’ can broadly be of two types. It can either give the group’s members more liberty or enforce more restrictions. Canadian political philosopher Will Kymlicka, a leading proponent of multiculturalism, has developed a similar classification.25 He supports the former, terming them ‘external protections’, and is less enthusiastic about the latter, which he calls ‘internal restrictions’.