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

by Harsh Gupta 'Madhusudan'

Lala Lajpat Rai, writing in 1924 from the vantage point of undivided Muslim-majority Punjab, would probably have disagreed with Mookerjee and Vajpayee.150 He believed that ‘unity has a price which they will have to pay before it can be achieved’. Rai was speaking in the context of Hindu-Muslim unity and the price was the compromise that adherents of both the religions needed to make so as to live together peacefully. He wasn’t a votary of absolute rights, be it religious freedom or speech. ‘I contend that there is no such thing as an absolute right vested in any individual or in any community forming part of a nation; that all rights are relative, that no society can remain intact even for twenty-four hours on the basis of absolute rights,’ he wrote.