Collective Rights and the Value of Groups

Collective Rights and the Value ofGroups

1

Vinit Haksar

University of Edinburgh

Two kinds of intrinsically valuable entities are distinguished Ð those that are ends-in-themselves (and therefore sacred) and those that are intrinsically good. It issuggested that it is the individual rather than the group that is sacred in the primarysense. To be sacred or an end-in-itself implies that the sacred entity must not bereplaced by a potential entity even if more good can be promoted by doing so. It issuggested that only entities that have an irreducible consciousness should becandidates for the sacred in the primary sense. If so, it would follow that groups arenot sacred in the primary sense unless perhaps one regards them as unitary beings. Itis argued that though groups have rights that are not reducible to the rights ofindividuals, this is consistent with the view that the ultimate justification of theserights is provided by an appeal to the interests of the relevant individuals; groups canbe derivatively sacred. Activities of collectives can sometimes be intrinsically good,and such considerations, too, would be relevant to deciding upon which collectivesshould be retained and which modified or replaced.

It is assumed that we have at least two main moral concerns, neither of which

is reducible to the other. We should try to achieve a fair or just distribution of

resources and more generally respect the rights of individuals. A weak

version of the rights-based theory is defended. But only a part of our moral

theory appeals to the rights of individuals.2

Another part is concerned with

promoting the Good or with beneficence.

I shall discuss some of the issues that arise in the debate between moral

individualists, i.e. those who argue that the individual is what is ultimately

important, and moral holists, i.e. those who argue that what is ultimately

important is the community .3

In the case of fairness or distributive justice it

is individuals who are the ultimate objects of moral concern, individuals

rather than groups are ends-in-themselves or sacred in the primary sense.

However, in the case of promotion of the Good, group activities, too, can

sometimes be intrinsically valuable.

I. Are Groups Sacred?

Intrinsic goods and ends-in-themselves are each subclasses of the

intrinsically valuable. So it is quite wrong to argue that because group

activities are intrinsically good and have intrinsic value groups are ends-in-

Inquiry, 41, 21±43

themselves. Moore4

used intrinsic goods (or goods-in-themselves) and ends-

in-themselves interchangeably. There is a sense in which these expressions

can be used interchangeably. But there is another sense of ènds-in-

themselves’ which means something quite different from `goods-in-

themselves’ or from ìntrinsically good ’ . Moore neglected this important

distinction because he was a utilitarian and had no room for persons as ends-

in-themselves. Persons (as opposed to the lives of persons) do not contain

intrinsic goods and so have no intrinsic value on Moore’ s account.5

How do

we distinguish Kantian ends-in-themselves from goods-in-themselves or

intrinsic goods or Moorean ends-in-themselves.6

Kantian ends-in-themselves

are sacred in a way in which goods- in-themselves are not. Kant though t that

rational beings are ends-in-themselves and have a dignity ; they have no

equivalent and no price and they are irreplaceable. Goods that contribute to

our needs or to our pleasures, he thought , had a price and an equivalent.

`Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on

the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no

equivalent, has a dignity .’7

I think there is an important sense in which a rational being does have an

equivalent, viz. other rational beings. Other rational beings are also sacred

and egalitarians should stress that all such persons are equally sacred. But

there is also an important sense in which rational beings are not replaceable.

They are all sacred and irreplaceable by equal or better specimens of

humanity that we could create. What is crucial about ends-in-themselves is

that they are sacred in the sense that they are owed respect and are

irreplaceable. They must not be used merely as a means. In a different sense,

intrinsic goods, too, must not be used merely as a means, for we must take

into account their intrinsic goodness in calculating what is good on the

whole. Both ends-in-themselves and intrinsic goods are in different ways

intrinsically valuable. One important difference is that intrinsic goods are

replaceable in a way in which ends-in-themselves and other sacred objects

are not.8

Ìrreplaceable’ has two senses. First, it can mean `cannot be replaced’ , we

shall never see the like of it again. Secondly , it can mean `must not be

replaced’ ; for instance, we must not kill an individual infant even if we can

replace it with another infant.9

It is this second sense that is involved in

understanding what sacredness implies. Of course sometimes if a thing

cannot be replaced then this may make it so valuable and rare that this may

cause a society to declare it sacred. But once it is assumed to be sacred, it

must not be replaced even if it can be. Imagine a society where there is a

shortage of cows and a consequent shortage of milk. This may have caused

that society to regard cows as sacred. But to understand what is implied by

the view that cows are sacred we shall have to appeal to the idea that we

22 Vinit Haksar

must not bump off a sacred cow even when it is possible to replace it with

other cows.

We need to distingu ish things that are sacred in the primary sense from

things that are sacred in the derivative sense. Persons, assuming that they are

Kantian ends-in-themselves, are sacred in the primary sense, so is God if

there is one. Then there are things, such as groups or works of art, that are

sacred in the derivative sense, because of their connection with things that

are sacred in the primary sense. Fairness in the sense of distributive justice is

ultimately due to ends-in-themselves rather than to intrinsic goods. We

should treat persons fairly in the way we distribute resources, but distributive

justice does not apply to groups or to objects of art except in some derivative

sense. Of course we should distribute resources fairly between different

museums but ultimately such fairness cannot be explained without appealing

to ends-in-themselves such as those who created them, or those who

appreciate them, or those individuals of whose heritage the museum forms a

part.

Why should persons, not groups, be regarded as ends-in-themselves? The

important insight of the moral individualists is that each person is a separate

subject (or centre) of consciousness and that this separateness is highly

important morally. It provides a rationale for having constraints of fairness

that any morality must observe. So, for instance, we must not just be content

with maximization of the good, irrespective of how the good is distributed

across different persons. Whether or not it leads to a greater aggregate of

good, a fairer distribution of it across persons is morally desirable in itself,

because each person is a separate moral unit . But this view is based upon a

certain metaphysics. On the Humean view of the self the ultimate unit is the

item of experience rather than the individual person. Again there are views

which regard the community as being like a grand person, individual

members of them are only aspects of the community , and although a part of

the community , they are in principle replaceable by other individuals. Some

people believe in a metaphysics that regards the group as more real and more

important than the individual. For them the group rather than the individual

is the moral unit. Moral individualism needs to deny the metaphysics that

supports moral holism of the kind that denies the intrinsic importance of the

individual. So Rawls is quite wrong in his view that the liberal state can be

neutral between different metaphysics. Rawls10

points out that his political

conception of justice is neutral between different metaphysical conceptions

such as the Kantian, Cartesian, and the Leibnizian. But these examples are

all highly selective, they are all examples of metaphysicians who admit to

the separateness of persons. If one believed in the group as the real moral

unit then the problem will not be what free and equal individuals would

reasonably agree to, but rather what different groups would reasonably agree

to.

Collective Rights and the Value of Groups 23

If we believed, as Plato and Rousseau did, that some groups, too, are

unitary conscious beings, then it would seem reasonable to treat these groups

as ends-in-themselves. But if they are not such beings, why should we try to

promote the welfare of groups or try to minimize their sufferings? Of course

individual members of groups do have joys and sorrows, but this would

suggest that if any one is an end-in-itself here, it is the individual person.

Having irreducible conscious experiences may not be a sufficient condition

of being a Kantian end-in-itself, but it is a necessary condition.11

Modern

communitarians have a problem regarding groups being ends-in-themselves,

for they no longer appeal to a spooky metaphysics and believe, as some of

the older ones did, that the community forms a unitary being, some kind of

super-individual. They, like the moral individualists, admit that the

community consists of individual human beings who are tied together by

shared practices and common forms of life. They attempt, in my view

unsuccessfully, to show that because the community has so much influence

in the formation of the individual the individual is not an end-in-itself. But

even if this argument were successful, it does not even begin to show why

the community should be regarded as an end-in-itself.12

The group does in many respects have interests that are not reducible to

the interests of the individual members. Thus a college has its own financial

interests which are different from the financial interests of its members. And

we shall contend that group activities have their own intrinsic value. But

there is no reason to think that the group has a consciousness which is not

reducible to the consciousness of its members. It is not a unitary conscious

being. It does not have an irreducible phenomenology . Though individuals

when they are in relation to other members of a group may behave and even

feel very differently from the way they would if they were on their own, or in

another group, it is individuals and not the group that have irreducible

consciousness. Though the financial interests of a college may not be

reducible to the financial interests of its members, and though the successes

and failures of a college may not be reducible to the successes and failures of

its members, the joys and sorrows of the college are reducible to the joys and

sorrows of its members.13

According to moral individualism in its full-blooded version, the ultimate

justification of the value of cultural activities is to be found in the lives of

individuals who either appreciate this culture or who express it in the sense

of performing these activities. I do not think this is the whole story. Such

moral individualism needs supplementation; for it neglects the fact that

group activities can be intrinsically good, quite apart from their contribu tion

to the good of the individual participants or spectators.

A cooperative activity like a play or an orchestra requires individuals to

perform in certain relations to each other. The success of the joint activity is

not reducible to the separate successes of the individual members. Indeed,

24 Vinit Haksar

often the success or failure of the individual members is derivative from the

success or failure of the collective to which they belong.1 4

The good of the

community and its interests are not always reducible to the good of its

individual members and their interests, and this is so even if we regard the

community as resulting from social practices and attitudes rather than from a

spooky metaphysics that regards the community as a super-individual. Group

activities often have an intrinsic worth. A university can have a great culture

which is of intrinsic value and is not reducible to the good of its members

taken separately. Group activities can also have an intrinsic disvalue. If a

member of the university, in his capacity as a member of the university, does

something morally shabby, this could be a blot on the integrity of the

university quite apart from being a blot on the individual.

Even though a group is not an irreducible subject of consciousness, its

culture can be of intrinsic value; for the intrinsic value pertains to the

activities of human beings in groups, quite apart from any benefit to the

individuals taken separately. But being intrinsically good, unlike the

possession of sacredness, does not forbid replaceability. A culture may

have a certain amount of intrinsic worth. But this is consistent with the view

that it should be replaced by another culture that has a greater intrinsic

worth, assuming that there is not room for both cultures. Of course the mere

maximization of the aggregate of intrinsic worth is not the only goal; it is

also desirable to have a fair distribution of it. But fairness here ultimately

boils down to fairness to individuals rather than to groups or institutions.

Suppose an institution can be replaced by another without any individuals

being made worse off, then we need not worry about being unfair to the

existing institution. The same applies to cultures, languages, etc. Thus

suppose one language is being gradually replaced by another, and that no

individual is any the worse for it. Do we still need to worry about being fair

to the language that is being replaced? One might of course think the

language is of great value and lament its demise for that reason. But that is

not to do with being fair to the language; unless perhaps one uses fairness in

some derivative sense, e.g. derivative from utility . Some people think there

is value in diversity and so they might want to preserve cultures, institutions,

etc., as a way of preserving diversity. But again this is not to do with being

fair to the cultures.

It is individual persons, not groups, that have an ultimate right to fair

shares of the total resources. A university has a right to the fair share of the

resources. But the ultimate justification of this is to be found in the interests

of the various individuals who were, are, or will be, members of it, as well as

in the promotion of the Good. The same applies to cultures, such as the Urdu

or the Sanskrit culture. Even though such cultures are intrinsically good as

well as instrumentally good, the culture’ s right to exist and flourish is

justified by an appeal to individual interests and by its contribu tion to utility


or the good. Cultural activities and group activities are sometimes

intrinsically good, and this too must be taken into account in making the

relevant calculations. But none of this shows that the group or the culture is

sacred in the sense of being an end-in-itself or in the sense of having ultimate

rights to fair shares.

This is not an academic point. An individual has a right to life, and so it

would be impermissible to destroy it and replace it with another human

being. But in the case of institutions, if they do not have such ultimate rights

then they are in principle replaceable by better ones when that is possible. No

doubt we should be careful not to destroy an institut ion that has a great

culture and tradition, for it may not be possible to create another institution

that has an equally flourishing culture, let alone a better one. Cultures are not

things that can be created easily or transplanted easily from one institution to

another. But this is a pragmatic argument for preserving the existing

institution. Compare the case of the individual human being where, if you

have an infant and want to bump it off in order to replace it with a better one

(suppose you can only afford one), the only problem is not whether you will

succeed in producing a better replacement. The existing person has a

fundamental right to life, the one that is not yet conceived has none. An

institution such as a college or a church, too, can of course have a right to

exist, but such a right is a derivative one. The ultimate justification of this is

to be found, at least partly, in the interests of the relevant individuals. If these

interests can best be furthered by replacing this institution by another one,

then there is a prima facie case for the replacement. We have seen that the

moral individualist position needs to be supplemented Ð we must also take

into account the intrinsic good that group activities promote. But such goods,

too, are in principle replaceable.

On Ronald Dworkin ’ s view,1 5

things are sacred because of their history,

that is, the creative efforts of those who created them. Applied to cultures, it

leads to the proliferation of the sacred to include all kinds of cultures and

groups that we regard as loathsome. Sometimes when we talk of

preservations of cultures we have in mind preserving their forms of craft,

paintings, dances, music, etc. Some of these can even be preserved in

museums. But sometimes when we talk of preservation of a culture we

include things like the preservation of the ways of life of the relevant group.

Such preservation can lead to the violation of fundamental human rights.

Yet, if one goes by Dworkin ’ s test, such cultures, too, must be regarded as

sacred, for there was enormous creative effort that went into the creation of

cultures like that of the Nazis.

It might be objected that groups and their cultures do have the right to

preservation in the same way as the individual person does. In the case of the

individual person, too, there are limits to the rights that he has Ð thus his

rights are limited by the fact that he must respect other people’ s rights. So,

26 Vinit Haksar

too, must groups respect similar rights in other groups. Thus Nazi culture

does not have the right to survive and flourish because it violates similar

rights of other cultures. If it did not violate the rights of other groups then it

would have the right to exist and flourish.1 6

But there is a disanalogy between the individual and the group case.

Groups can do terrible things to their own members without harming other

groups. One solution would be to maintain that group rights also have to be

balanced against individual rights, but even if we take this line it does not

follow that the group is an end-in-itself and therefore sacred (in the primary

sense). It could be that it has a derivative right to exist because it furthers the

interests of its members. And even when a group ’ s cultural activities are

intrinsically good, we have seen that it does not follow that the group culture

has a right not to be replaced by a culture that has greater intrinsic good.

There is also an important disanalogy between the right of a culture to

exist and the right of an individual to exist and flourish. An individual’ s right

to exist and flourish is limited by other people’ s rights, but as long as he does

not violate other rights a person retains his rights. In the case of a culture, the

view that a culture has a right to exist and flourish as long as it respects other

cultures, as well as the rights of other individuals, can in some cases amount

to a denial of its right to survive. Thus if one modified the Nazi culture such

that it respected the rights of other groups and of individuals, what would be

left of the Nazi culture? Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark!

It might be objected that something similar may be true in the case of

individuals. Thus if Hitler was not indulging in anti-Semitism and other

horrid activities, what would be left of Hitler? This raises deep problems in

personal identity. If we adopt something like the Humean view of personal

identity, it would indeed follow that Hitler is to be identified with his

character. Hume of course compared the self to a republic or a

commonwealth, so on his view the analogy between an individual person

and a group is very close. But on the non-reductionist view of personal

identity, which I have defended elsewhere,17

a person is not his character but

rather has his character and could have had a different character. Thus if I

had been brough t up by the Eskimos I would have had a very different

character from what I have now, but in an important sense it would still have

been me. On this view it makes perfectly good sense to say that Hitler as a

person had a right to flourish as a human being as long as he did not violate

the rights of other human beings.

One needs to distingu ish the right of a culture to exist and flourish from

the right of a group to exist and flourish. One may say of a particular tribal

group that it has a right to its culture, for without its culture the group would

be impoverished. To replace their culture by the majority culture may cause

havoc in the lives of its members. The view that the group has a right to a

particular culture is very different from saying that the culture has a right to


survive and flourish. The latter right could be respected even if the particular

tribe is made to give up its culture but the culture spreads over to other

groups.

Although Nazis do not have a right to practice their way of life, it makes

perfectly good sense to say that the group of Germans who were Nazis had a

right to choose their way of life as long as that did not conflict with the rights

of other individuals and groups.

Not all cultures are sacred, as the example of Nazi culture shows. Nor are

all groups sacred. Which are sacred? This again depends to some extent upon

one’ s metaphysics. There are roughly two views of the nature of group

consciousness. On one view there are some groups that are super-individuals,

with a consciousness and some kind of mystical being. Let us call this the

non-reductionist or metaphysical view of groups. On this view the group is

an irreducible subject of consciousness. Then there is the reductionist view,

according to which groups consist of individual human beings in certain

relations to each other. And though this view allows for the importance of

the group in forming and influencing human behaviour, and even the content

of human consciousness, it contends that it is individual human beings, not

groups of human beings, who are the irreducible subjects of consciousness.

We can wonder what it was like to be Adolf Hitler or what it was like to live

under the Third Reich, but not what it was like to be the Third Reich.

Of course, on the reductionist view of persons even an individual person is

not an irreducible subject of consciousness. Some people think that the moral

importance of persons and of groups such as nations is not affected by the

view one takes about the nature of the group or of the individual.1 8

Jonathan

Glover19

has argued that though there may be patriots whose patriotism

depended upon their belief that their nation had a metaphysical soul, there

are also patriots whose patriotism may depend instead on the fact that their

nation is deeply integrated. Metaphysics is not the only basis of integration.

People within a nation can be united by a close bond that they have for each

other and by common forms of life. Similarly in the case of the individual

human being one might regard oneself as a separate unit because one has a

separate ego; without the ego the episodes of one’ s life may seem like a heap

of stones. But they need not. One can give a unity to one’ s life by a process

of self-creation.

But a culture or a nation does not become sacred just because it has arisen

from the creative efforts of human beings. In the case of works of art that

have been created, one can preserve them (for instance in museums and art

galleries) while we move on to new art forms. But in the case of forms of life

there is often no room for the old and the new to co-exist. Suppose the bulk

of the people in a certain area want to give up their tribal life because they

are attracted by modern ways of life. The old life-style may lose its distinct

identity and get merged in the wider culture or lack of culture. The view that

28 Vinit Haksar

the old way of life is sacred would imply that a people have no right to

abandon their old way of life for a new one that they prefer.

Strictly speaking, one might be allowed to abandon it as long as one can

ensure that it could be practised somewhere else. In that way the way of life

would still survive. Thus suppose a tribe worships monkeys but wants to

move on to modern ways of life, it might be allowed to do so if the hippies in

California start worshipping monkeys. For in such circumstances the way of

life has not been destroyed but only exported. But must there be such

constraints upon our right to abandon our inherited ways of life?

The view that an entity is sacred does imply that it must not be replaced by

an entity that does not yet exist. Thus in the case of human beings the rights

of an individual can of course be balanced against the rights of another. But

we must not get rid of a particular human being, e.g. an infant, and replace it

with a better specimen of humanity which does not yet exist. In the case of a

form of life it would be absurd to contend that a people must not be allowed

to give up their way of life for another that has not yet been in operation.

Of course one can warn a people to be cautious about giving up an old

form of life for a new one that has not yet stood the test of time, but to put a

ban on such experiments in living and attempts at change would be the death

of liberalism and of progress. It would be even more conservative than the

Devlin view that a majority have a right to impose their way of life on a

minority. For the view under consideration would imply that if a people in

the whole society wants to move on to a new way of life, it must not do so if

that involves abandoning its culture.

It might be suggested that even if we grant that existing ways of life are

sacred we could still make a case for change when they violate fundamental

human rights. For the individual human beings whose rights are being

violated are also sacred beings. So their rights must be balanced against the

rights of the group or of the culture to survive. But now we shall be left with

a balancing process that is perilously close to the one that utilitarians are

rightly criticized for being committed to. In the case of the Nazi persecution

of the Jews there were the advantages that the Nazis got from this terrible

practice, and such advantages on the utilitarian view must be balanced

against the losses involved in persecuting the Jews. Many of us find such

balancing repulsive even if the result of the balancing is that the Nazi

conduct is condemned. Similarly, there would be something terribly re-

pulsive in balancing the rights of the sacred entity, the Third Reich, against

the interests of the sacred individuals persecuted under the Third Reich.

For Dworkin, sacredness of an entity arises from the creative investment,

human or natural or supernatural, that has gone into it. He contends that if we

destroy the thing, the insult to the creative process is less if the investment

has been substantially fulfilled or as substantially fulfilled as is likely.20

An

adolescent has a greater claim on our resources than an old person because


the latter is more likely to have substantially fulfilled the investment in her

than is the case with the former.

Applied to cultures, the above view would imply that a culture has a

greater claim to survive if the investment in it has not yet been substantially

fulfilled than if it has. So old cultures can be allowed to die out as ways of

life, and their relics be preserved in museums, while relatively recent

cultures must be encouraged to survive as ways of life at least until their

investment has been realized. But this view seems bizarre. If we care for the

flourishing of human beings we should encourage ways of life that are suited

to their flourishing rather than go by how long an innings the ways of life

have had.

It might be suggested that only a subclass of cultures is sacred and has a

right to survive. Cultures that involve violation of the fundamental rights of

individuals or of other groups do not have the right to survive Ð they can

have the right to survive to the extent that they can be modified so that they

do not involve the violation of such rights. But this makes the liberty of

cultures to survive look like a privilege rather than a right.

In the next section we maintain that there are some group rights and

cultural rights that are not reducible to the rights of individual members. But

this view is consistent with the view that it is the individuals who are

ultimately sacred and whose interests form the substantial part of the

ultimate justification of such collective rights. Cultures can at best be

regarded as derivatively sacred. Activities of collectives can also sometimes

be intrinsically good and instrumentally good, and such considerations, too,

would be relevant in our arriving at a decision concerning which should be

retained and which modified. But there is no reason to postulate that they are

ends-in-themselves, or sacred entities in a primary sense, unless perhaps one

reifies them and regards them as unitary (conscious) beings.

II. Collective Rights

There is an important problem of how the group rights relate to individual

rights and individual interests. It is clear that there are some rights that

belong to groups rather than to individuals. For instance, under the Indian

Constitution the reservations of jobs provide certain groups with the relevant

rights. It is not any individual member of the relevant group that has the right

to a job or to a seat in the relevant assembly.21

So in one sense groups do

have at least some legal rights that are not reducible even in principle to the

rights of individuals. Another such example is the right of a minority to

maintain educational institutions Ð it is not any individual member of the

relevant group that has the relevant right.

30 Vinit Haksar

One might also assert that at least in some cases groups have in a sense

moral rights that are not reducible to the rights of the relevant members. We

do think that groups ought to be given certain legal rights, where we do not

mean that individual members of the group ought to be given these rights.

For instance in a country where a minority does not have the legal right to

maintain its educational institutions we may argue that it has a moral right to

maintain them and that this moral right should be translated into a legal right.

We can divide collective (or group) rights into two kinds: those that are

reducible into individual rights (i.e. if a collective has a right to X, then the

members of the collective have a right to X) and those that are not. There are

many examples of irreducible collective rights. In some federations each

state has a right to certain seats in the upper house of Parliament. And it is a

group or a nation that has the right to self-determination. As Raz points out,

it is the people of Palestine that collectively have the right to self-deter-

mination, Yasser Arafat does not. For his interest in the self-determination of

Palestine `by itself does not justify imposing such far-reaching duties on so

many other people’ .22

But even in the case of these irreducible collective rights, the ultimate

justification could be in terms of the interests of individuals. Thus the right

of minorities to have reservations and to conserve their culture and

educational institut ions, language, etc., could be justified in two different

ways, depending on one’ s metaphysics and morality. First, if one regards

groups as ultimate moral beings, then one could justify these practices by

appealing no further than the irreducible rights and interests of the group.

Secondly, if one is sympathetic to moral individualism, then one could try to

justify these group rights by an appeal to the cumulative interests of the

individual members Ð this can happen even when group rights are irreducible

in the sense that they are not reducible to the rights of the individual

members. Thus a particular Urdu-speaking person does not have the right

that Urdu should be taught in any of the state schools;23

he does have an

interest in Urdu being taught, but this interest by itself is not enough to create

in the state a duty that Urdu be taught. But when there are substantial

numbers of Urdu-speaking people in a community then their cumulative

interests may create a duty to have Urdu taught.

Another example would be from reservations of jobs. It is a group, not its

individual members, that has the right to a certain quota of the relevant jobs.

But this is consistent with the view that the justification of giving certain

disadvantaged groups quotas is that this would promote the interests of its

members. The justification we employ is highly relevant for the operation of

the quota system. Thus if the individual is the ultimate moral unit , one

should be more concerned about whether the jobs schemes really benefit the

worst off members of the group. These benefits may take place either

directly by the worst off getting jobs or indirectly by the operation of the


trickle-down effect, i.e. the worst off may gain in self-esteem because other

members of the group they identify with have the jobs; or they may get some

material benefits from those members who now have jobs. If, however, the

group is the ultimate moral unit, then we need not worry much about whether

the trickle-down effect is really taking place or whether the benefits are all

going to the well-off and powerful members, while the weaker and more

vulnerable members are merely in a state of envy at the prosperity of their

former comrades.

In India, if a member of a scheduled caste that has a job quota becomes a

Christian, he is no longer eligible for a job in the quota scheme. An

explanation of this law may be that those who framed it did not approve of

conversions, especially from their own religion to another, competing one.

But that would hardly be a justification. On the view that the group is the

ultimate moral unit, the justification could be that if the individual leaves the

relevant group he could hardly be eligible for the quota, because he is no

longer a member of the group.2 4

But on the moral individualist view, it is the

individual that is ultimately important.

Of course, even on the moral individualist view, the group could have

derivative importance. To go into the details of each case would be too

costly and impractical, and so for pragmatic reasons we select certain

deprived groups who have suffered injustices and compensate these groups

by a policy of reservations (of jobs and seats) and in other ways. The hope on

the moral individualist view is that this would be the most practical and

economical way of helping the deprived members of the group. This would

be justified if certain conditions are satisfied, e.g. the vast majority of the

members of the group should have suffered (either directly or indirectly)

from past discriminations, while those who suffer from a policy of

reservations (such as the Brahmins) should have benefited (either directly

or indirectly) so far to an unfair degree from the privileges enjoyed at the

expense of the deprived group.

On the moral individualist view, whether the convert to Christianity

should cease to be eligible for job reservations may depend on whether he is

still in a very weak position or whether, as a result of his conversion, he is

substantially better off, either materially or in other ways, such as self-

esteem.

All versions of moral individualism recognize the ultimate moral

importance of individual human beings but disagree about how clashes of

interests between different sets of people are to be resolved. On one version

the vital interests of a particular person must never be overridden by the

aggregate of less vital interests of several people, but only by an equally, or

by an even more vital, interest of another. This feature distingu ishes rights-

based theories of the strong kind (e.g. those advocated by Mackie25

and

Dworkin)2 6

from weaker versions of the rights-based theories, as well as

32 Vinit Haksar

from goal-based theories; these last-mentioned theories allow the aggregate

of several people’ s interests, each of which is not so vital, to override the

vital interest of one human being. Thus, on the strong version, if one takes

the right not to be tortured, the interest that one person has in not being

tortured should be enough to create in others the duty not to torture him.

The weak version of a rights-based theory would not forbid the interests of

a particular person to be overridden by the aggregate of less vital interests of

others. This too could be a moral individualist theory, if it maintains that the

individual person is the only thing that has ultimate moral value. One version

of utilitarianism, sometimes called utilitarianism of persons, would fall into

this category. But some theories that stress fairness as an independent value

from utility could also fall into this category. It might be though t that those

who stress fairness as an independent value from utility are committed to a

strong version of the rights-based approach. But this is not so. One can

combine the two, but one may also combine fairness as an independent value

with aggregation of the kind that rights-based theories of the strong kind

forbid. Rawls’ s original position is a position of fairness. Rawls though t that

the parties in the original position would opt for giving top priority to the

interests of the worst off. But critics have argued that this is not obvious. For

it amounts to giving the worst off a veto on the progress of the rest of the

population. In all cases of conflict of interests it would imply that the worst

off should be given priority even if this means dragging down the rest of the

population to the level of the worst off. And this could be unfair on the rest

of the population. Fairness may demand that sometimes a less vital interest

of a lot of people should get priority over slightly more vital interests of the

worst-off person. The following point of Nagel’ s is forceful even from a

fairness point of view: ìf the choice is between preventing severe hardship

for some who are very poor and deprived, and preventing less severe but still

substantial hardship for those who are better off but still struggling for

subsistence, then it is very difficult for me to believe that the numbers do not

count, and that priority of urgency goes to the worse off, however many

more there are of the better off.’27

Such views do not commit one to the excesses of utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism in its most stark form would allow intense suffering of a

person if it caused enormous pleasure to millions. One may reject this on

fairness grounds rather than on the grounds that one should never allow

aggregation of less vital interests to trump a more vital interest.

Amongst the weak versions of the rights-based views there are degrees of

weakness. Thus a very weak version, which many of us would reject, would

allow an aggregate of trivial interests of millions of people to override a vital

interest of a single human being. On a less weak version, which I would

favour, although an aggregate of slightly less vital interests of a number of

human beings could override a vital interest of a single human being, an


aggregate of substantially less vital interests would not. One can reject the

very weak version and yet not embrace the strongest version advocated by

Mackie and Dworkin. All versions of the rights-based approach differ from

utilitarianism. For utilitarianism, persons are not sacred, and so the well-

being of people who do exist or will exist can be replaced by the well-being

of potential people.2 8

A view which stresses fairness as an independent constraint could also be

regarded as a rights-based view. Thus one could argue that each individual

has a right to fair consideration in the design of institut ions and in the

allocation of resources. If one is an egalitarian, one would infer that fair

consideration implies equal consideration. The fairness constraint can also

be combined with unequal rights. Thus one might argue that animals also

have a right to fair treatment but that this does not imply that they are due

equal consideration to human beings. One can combine the view that animals

have rights with the view that they have lower status than human beings.

The view that every person has a right to equal consideration does not

imply that one must not allow the aggregate of less vital interests of several

people to outweigh the more vital interests of one individual. As we said

earlier, it may be unfair to veto such outweighing. Both defenders and critics

of the rights-based approach tend to assume that it commits one to what I

have called the strong version; they assume that a rights-based approach is

not compatible with the aggregation of human interests, which they claim

necessarily goes with a consequentialist or utilitarian approach. Such

assumptions are quite false and dogmatic. One can defend the weak version

by an appeal to fairness rather than to utility. And one can argue that this

version is in harmony with the view that each person has a right to equal

respect and consideration.

The right not to be tortured is often cited as an example of a right where

the interest of one person in not being tortured is sufficient to create a duty in

others not to torture. But if we look at this right in more detail its justification

is more complicated. Suppose we come across a terrorist who has

information about where the bombs are hidden and that, if we tortured

him and got the information, we should save the lives of many people who

would die if the bombs exploded. Torture violates a vital interest of the

terrorist, but if we did not torture him then a person would lose his life,

which is even more vital to him. So why do we not sanction torture? The

case against torture will be stronger when we realize that if we sanctioned

torture in this case the police are likely to use it even in cases where it is not

so necessary. And so, though one case of torture is not as bad as death, one

might argue that the cumulative interest of all those, especially the innocent,

who would be tortured if torture by the police were allowed might be enough

to create a duty not to torture.

34 Vinit Haksar

The weaker sense of rights-based view can make sense of collective

rights. There are examples of group or collective rights. One might try to

justify them in one of two ways. Either one takes what is sometimes called

the organic view of a collective and argues that a collective is a person or a

super-person, and so has the rights of the super-person. Hitler though t of the

Third Reich in this vein, individual Germans could be sacrificed for the

grandeur of the Third Reich. In the case of self-determination one might take

the organic view about nations, such as Palestine, being super-individuals

and with a right to self-determination which corresponds to a person’ s right

to autonomy, only on a much grander scale.

The other way is to appeal to the cumulative interests of the various

members. And this involves aggregation of the kind that the weak rights-

based but not the strong rights-based approach allows. On the weak rights-

based approach, aggregation of individual interests is allowed to show that

there is a collective right but also to show that the collective right is

overridden by the cumulative interests on the other side. Take the case of

self-determination of Kashmir. I do not know what percentage of the people

of Kashmir want self-determination for Kashmir, not just in the sense of

having autonomy within India, but also in the sense which would imply

breaking away from India. Suppose for the sake of illustration that the vast

majority of the people of Kashmir were to want Kashmiri secession, would it

follow that they have a right to it? On the moral individualist view there

would be a prima facie case for answering the question in the affirmative. On

the other side, however, there would also be the cumulative interests of not

only the Kashmiris who do not want secession but also all those individuals

in the rest of India who would be harmed by such secession. Thus it is often

argued that if Kashmir secedes there will be enormous communal rioting in

the rest of India. Of course the probability of such havoc taking place is also

relevant before one decides what morally ought to be done on the moral

individualist view.

Talk of collective rights here can be dangerously misleading, unless one

remembers that the ultimate justification of the relevant policies is found by

appealing to the interests of all the relevant individuals. If one forgets this,

one might be over-impressed by the rights of the collective. There is a

tradition which says that rights are rather grand things, like trumps, that must

not be overcome by the mere aggregation of the interests of a lot of people.

But once one realizes that the ultimate justification of there being collective

rights is the cumulative interests of many individuals, then one cannot lightly

forbid such rights from being overridden by the cumulative interests of

individuals on the other side. Thus the right of a people to self-determination

could be overridden by the cumulative interests of those who are harmed

by it.


Rights do play an important role at the ultimate level, too. For, as we saw

earlier, the individuals have a right to their fair share of consideration. But

when we say that a people such as the Palestinians have a collective right to

self-determination, we are giving the results of our moral deliberation rather

than a reason for reaching our conclusion. Before we reach our conclusion

we should take into account not only the cumulative interests of all those

who will benefit by self-determination but also all those who will be harmed

by it.

Of course, on the organic view of groups the collective may not only have

a right but the ultimate justification of its having the right is something that is

also collectivist in the sense that the collective is a Person, which is why it

has the rights that go with its personhood. But which groups have the grand

rights such as self-determination on this view? Does Kashmir have the right

to self-determination? Or is it parts of Kashmir? Or is it India that is the

ultimate moral entity which has a right to its integrity? Or is it the Indian

sub-continent? These are real problems for all those who regard the group or

the people as the ultimate moral unit.

The Indian Constitution does commend the preservation of the integrity of

India, a view which is not easy to defend on the moral individualist view.

One could argue that the ultimate justification is the cumulative interests of

all the Indians who benefit from preserving India’ s integrity. But then the

sceptic could ask, why should we consider the people of India as the relevant

parties? Why not go by the interests of the individuals who live in a province

of India, so that if they want to secede they should be allowed to do so even

at the cost of the integrity of India?29

Or if it be thought that the wider the

unit the better, why not destroy the integrity and sovereignty of India by

creating a much larger political unit of which India is only a part? The

cumulative interest of the individuals living in this wider area might gain by

the creation of this larger unit; if and when that happens then on the moral

individualist view why not create the wider unit?

Did those such as Gandhi, who was heart-broken when India was

partitioned, perhaps believe in the pre-partition India as some sort of unitary

being? No doubt they were extremely saddened by the terrible effect of the

partition of India upon millions of individual Indians. But quite apart from

this human tragedy they were devastated because their beloved motherland

(Bharat Mata or Mother India) had been dismembered. Can this attitude be

justified on the moral individualist stance? Perhaps the analogy with the

family could be useful. Some of the members of the family can be devastated

by the break-up of their family, even though the various members will

continue to survive after the break-up; they do not have to believe in the

family as a metaphysical entity in order to lament its demise. Similarly,

many people feel devastated when their country is dismembered, even

though they do not regard it as a metaphysical unit. Perhaps Gandhi and

36 Vinit Haksar

others were heart-broken because the events shattered their dreams and

aspirations of a united India where people of different faiths and cultures

could live together as part of one large family.

There are those who argue that whether a people living in a certain region

forms a nation depends not on the nation being some kind of metaphysical

entity, but rather upon whether the relevant individuals living in this region

share certain forms of life and have certain attitudes towards it and a certain

fellow-feeling towards other members of it. Such considerations would show

why India is a nation but Asia is not. This view appears to have an

individualistic component . For the nation exists partly because the relevant

individuals have the required attitudes and feelings. But now some

individuals may have the identifications they have because they regard the

nation as some kind of metaphysical being. They might not feel so strongly

about the division of their country if they took the view that what gives unity

to their nation is how people feel about it.

Perhaps some patriots need to think of their motherland or fatherland as

some beautiful woman or some God-like man. Nehru said: `Bharat Mata,

Mother India, a beautiful lady, very old but ever youthfu l in appearance, sad

eyed and forlorn, cruelly treated by aliens and outsiders, and calling upon her

children to protect her. Some such picture rouses the emotions of thousands

and drives them to action.’3 0

But my guess is that most patriots, even

amongst the uneducated, do not adopt this anthropomorphic view in a literal

sense. They can, as Nehru himself did, love and be roused by the ideals and

aspirations, the culture, traditions, and history that they think are embodied

in their community, without thinking of their community as a unitary being.

This is consistent with the view that if the community is to be an end-in-itself

it must be a unitary (conscious) being.

One needs to distinguish the question whether the group has certain

ultimate rights from whether it or its activities have intrinsic value. One

might regard a particular culture as having intrinsic value. One might think

that a particular language is so fascinating that it should be perpetuated even

if there is not much demand from individual native-speakers for its

preservation. One might want to preserve it in the way one wants to preserve

a wild species in danger of extinction. There are people who care about

preservation of the tiger species not because they care about the rights of

particular tigers, but because they think it would be a great loss if tigers were

to become extinct. This attitude is quite consistent. Similarly, one may want

to preserve a language not because it is in the interests of those who speak it

but because it is in our general interest that such a language should exist

amongst us. It enriches the civilization of which we are all a part. Something

similar applies to other parts of culture, such as music, dance, and works of

art. Their value is not just instrumental in the way that it would be if the

hedonic utilitarian were right.


Collective goods like museums, public libraries, beautiful environments

by themselves are indeed constituent goods (or parts of intrinsic goods) , but

it is quite wrong to infer that they are therefore intrinsic goods in the full

sense. What is intrinsically valuable is the enjoyment or experience of these

goods by individuals. Raz claims that the existence of such collective goods

undermines the view that morality is rights-based. But a modest rights-based

approach can be constructed which only claims to deal with a part of

morality and does not deny the importance of such collective goods. What it

asserts with regard to such goods is that individuals have a right to a fair

share of the enjoyment of these goods.

Of course, it is true that the interest of one person by itself does not create

in others the duty to create or sustain such collective goods, but given that

they exist each of us has a right to their fair share of the enjoyment of them.

This still leaves the question of what creates the duty to create or sustain

such collective goods. On the individualist view one would argue that it is

the cumulative interests of the individuals.

Raz distinguishes collective goods, such as self-determination, which are

justified by an appeal to the collective rights of the relevant group, and

collective goods, such as the institution of marriage, which are justified

without appealing to collective rights.

If we interpret the collective as a person, then the corresponding collective

rights can be justified by an appeal of the vital interests of this grand person.

But if one adopts a moral individualist stance then in the ultimate analysis

both kinds of collective goods are justified by appealing to the cumulative

interests of the various individuals. So where is the difference?

Some groups of individuals are more closely knit; the individuals within it

are united by common language, or culture, or race, and the individuals feel

a sense of identity with each other, while other groups are rather diffuse,

where the individual members do not have close bonds. But even in the case

of closely knit groups not all groups should be given collective rights in law;

for instance, even if all wealthy people in the society identify with each

other, etc., it does not follow that they should be given certain collective

rights, such as job quotas. That would make them even more privileged.

In the case of certain other groups, especially in the case of some

underprivileged groups, it might be desirable to promote the interests of the

relevant individuals by giving the group to which they belong certain

collective rights in law. Thus the Indian Constitution gives certain job quotas

to certain groups, also certain cultural rights. In other cases the legal and

political system responds more directly to individual interests. Thus an

individual has a right not to be tortured, but it is certain groups that have job

quotas allocated. On the moral individualist view, however, the ultimate

justification of both these sorts of rights is given by an appeal to individual

interests.

38 Vinit Haksar

In the case of marriage, every adult should have a right to marry, and there

is no need to give marriage quotas to certain collectives. Of course some

groups are allowed certain forms of marriage that other groups are not

allowed. But here the collective rights of the group are reducible to the rights

of their members, unlike job quotas which as we saw earlier were collective

rights of the group and not of the individuals even if their justification is

given by an appeal to individual interests.

Even when it is the individual that has certain rights, one must not

conclude that it is that individual’ s interests alone that create a duty in others.

We need to distinguish the problem of what justifies the setting up of certain

rights from the question of what the consequences are of having set up a

system of rights. People have certain legal rights which are justified partly by

social circumstances and partly by individual interests. Even some of the so-

called fundamental rights are justified partly by social circumstances. Thus

the right to free speech is justified ultimately by an appeal to the interests of

the various individuals who have it, as well as because it is required in the

interests of democracy. Democracy itself is justified because it is hoped it

promotes the interests of individuals. So it is the cumulative interests of all

these individuals that ultimately explain why we should set up the right of

free speech.3 1

This right is qualified. It has to be restricted by various factors,

e.g. public decency, the law against slander and libel, and so forth. So its

existence and its limitations require an appeal to individual as well as social

interests. One cannot justify the having of such rights in law as well as the

limits of such rights without balancing the interests of the relevant individual

and social interests. One does not just balance the vital interest of one person

against the competing vital interests of another single individual.

Consider for instance the Rushdie case. The Ayatollah’ s fatwa asking

people to kill Rushdie is of course unacceptable to every reasonable person,

at any rate from a secular point of view. The interesting question is whether

Rushdie’ s book The Satanic Verses should have been published without the

parts that are deeply insulting to the practitioners of Islam being censored.

On one interpretation of the doctrine of rights Ð the strong sense of rights Ð a

person’ s right can only be overridden by the more pressing interest of

another single individual, the aggregation of the interests of different

individuals being forbidden. So on this view we balance the interests of

Rushdie, a single individual, against the interests of the single Muslim who is

most insulted by publication of the book; and then see which is the more

pressing interest. But these are not the only two interests we balance. Of

course Rushdie’ s interest in self-expression is important, but in addition

there is the fact that society has some interest in having its sacred cows not

only critically discussed but also debunked, lampooned, satirized, etc.

Relevant, too, is the fact that enormous numbers of Muslims were deeply

hurt by what they perceived as an insult to their prophet. If only one Muslim


was going to be deeply hurt by it, would there really have been a serious case

for banning the offensive passages?

In the case of other rights, too, we go in for the aggregation of interests of

different individuals. Thus the freedom to worship is limited by considera-

tions of public health. So those who worship rats (there are temples where

this takes place) have their freedom restricted by public-health consider-

ations. When the health of a lot of people needs to be protected, these limits

are more severe than when only one person’ s health is in danger. If only one

person’ s health is in danger we might take the line that he or she stays in that

area at his or her peril, especially if offered an alternative livelihood

elsewhere. Also the case for allowing a temple where rats are worshipped

might be greater if there were many devotees of rats than if there were only

one.

So, even in the case of so-called fundamental individual rights like

freedom of expression and freedom of worship, we take into account the

cumulative interests of the relevant individuals in deciding the weight to be

attached to the right. So we should not consider collective rights to be bogus

on the grounds that they allow the aggregation of individual interests.

There is a distinction between what justifies the setting up of a right and

what happens once it is set up. Take the right that the British monarch has to

advise and warn the Prime Minister. This right is set up not for the sake of

the monarch but for the common good; some monarchs may even be better

off if they did not have such a right, since the exercise of this right could

bring them into political controversy. But once a system is set up where the

monarch has such a right, and it is violated, then a wrong is done to her and

her interests are harmed. So here it is not the individual’ s interests that

explain why she has the right, but the fact that she has a right that explains

why his interests are harmed when his right is violated.32

The setting up of

many such rights is justified as we said by an appeal to the common good or

the cumulative interests of the people in society. The setting up of collective

rights (e.g. of disadvantaged groups or minority religions) is justified

normally not by appealing to the common good of the whole of society, but

rather by appealing to the common good, or the cumulative interests, of the

members of the relevant collective. It is this feature that is crucial to

distinguishing collective rights from many concrete individual rights. We

can see that there is nothing very mysterious in admitting collective rights,

even on a moral individualist view.

Once a collective acquires rights, it can be wronged if its rights are

violated; injustices can be done to a group. When an umpire cheats against a

team, the primary injustice could be to the team rather than to the individual

members. This is consistent with the view that the ultimate justification of

conferring rights on a group is the cumulative interests of the relevant

individuals.

40 Vinit Haksar

Groups can have many concrete rights, as do individuals. But do they have

a fundamental right to survive and flourish as do individuals? The answer

depends on what view one takes on the sacredness of groups. Even if groups

have only derivative sacredness, other groups and individuals must respect

their sacredness. This is consistent with the view that the sacredness of other

groups and individuals must also be taken into account before a final

decision is reached about what is just. But if their sacredness is derivative

from the sacredness of their members, then it seems plausible to take the line

that the members collectively have a right to disband the group and replace it

with another group (or groups) and culture that is better and that suits them

better. Things could be different if the sacredness of a people were derived

from some other source. If it were the case that the Jews as a people are

sacred because they are chosen by God, then individual Jews may have a

duty to preserve their culture, whether or not it was in their individual

interests to do so.

Sometimes there are measures that are designed to protect cultures as

opposed to individual interests or individual rights. Hartney gives the

following example: Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and

Freedom ìs intended to ensure the survival of the minority group in each

province. Hence, it must not be understood as conferring on every person

falling within its terms an individual right to education in the minority

language, but rather on the whole minority group a collective right to

sufficient educational establishments to ensure its survival. Certain members

of the minority group can be deprived of the benefit in question (i.e.,

education in their language) without endangering the existence of the whole

group. When this happens the group ’ s survival is not threatened, and so its

right has not been violated, and consequently no violation of the Charter has

occurred’ .3 3

Hartney disapproves of the moral case implicit in section 23. He thinks

that there is nothing to be said for the survival and flourishing of the group or

its culture except as a means to the survival and flourishing of its members. I

would disagree. For just as we can make a case for the survival of a species

without basing it on the rights of individual members of the species, we

might make a case for the survival of a culture or language without basing it

on the rights of those who speak the particular language; the demise of a

language or a culture can be lamented on the grounds that it involves a loss

to civilization.

N O T E S

1 Some of the ideas developed here were presented as the Bose Memorial Lectures, StStephens College, Delhi University, 1995.

2 For the defence of this view, see D. Par® t, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press1986), sec. 124; T. Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York/Oxford: Oxford University


Press), ch. 12; and my Equality, Liberty and Perfectionism (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1979), pp. 137Ð 8.

3 When the dutiful Victorian women thought of England and allowed their husbands to makelove to them, were they being moral holists?

4 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 184.5 G. E. Moore, Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 45.6 Unless otherwise stated, I use ènds-in-themselves’ to refer to Kantian ends-in-themselves.7 I. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1959), p. 53.8 Utilitarianism is often criticized on the grounds that it treats persons merely as a means to

utility. Utilitarians sometimes reply that a person’ s pleasure or well-being is an intrinsicgood and is to be taken into account in the utilitarian calculations. But utilitarianism stillhas the consequence that a person’ s well-being is in principle replaceable by that ofanother. This re¯ ects the fact that for the utilitarian there is nothing sacred except perhapsthe goal of maximization of the good.

9 From the points of view of the infant we cannot replace it. But then from the point of viewof the insect we cannot replace it.

10 J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 29, fn. 31.11 See my entry `Moral Agency’ in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London:

Routledge, 1998).12 I have discussed some of these issues in my Indivisible Selves and Moral Practice

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991). See the index on groups.13 See my Indivisible Selves and Moral Practice , op. cit., ch. 2.14 See R. Dworkin, `Liberal Community’ , California Law Review 17 (1989), pp. 479Ð 89.15 Life’ s Dominion (London: Harper & Collins, 1995), ch. 3.16 But then would it still be Nazi culture?17 See my Indivisible Selves and Moral Practice , op. cit.18 For a different view, see ibid., chs 8Ð 10.19 J. Glover, Ì’ : The Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity (London: The Penguin

Press, 1988), p. 106.20 Life’ s Dominion, op. cit., p. 88.21 Though one might say that when a group has a right to X then the individual members of

the group have an imperfect right to X.22 J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), ch. 8, sec. 4.23 Though he does of course have the right to speak Urdu, in the sense that he should not be

prevented from speaking Urdu, such rights to speak one’ s language have been violated insome states, e.g. Nazi Germany.

24 Some people argue that caste only exists within Hinduism, and so if one leaves Hinduismone automatically ceases to belong to any caste or subcaste. But this holistic view is oftennot borne out by the facts and from time to time the courts in India do allow for thepossibility that one may retain one’ s caste even after leaving Hinduism. The Supreme Courtobserved in the Jasani case, `conversion imports a complex composite composed of manyingredients. Religious belief, spiritual experience and emotion and intellectual convictionmingle with more material considerations such as severence of family and the casting off orretention of old customs and beliefs’ (quoted in M. Galanter, Law and Society in ModernIndia [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 130).

25 J. L. Mackie, `Can There Be a Right Based Moral Theory?’ , in J. Waldron (ed.), Theories ofRights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 168Ð 81.

26 `. . . we must recognise as competing rights only the rights of other members of society asindividuals. . . . The test we must use is this. Someone has a competing right to protection,which must be weighed against an individual right to act, if that person would be entitled todemand that protection from his government on his own as an individual without regard towhether a majority of his fellow citizens joined in the demand’ , Taking Rights Seriously(London: Duckworth, 1977), p. 194.

27 T. Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 125.28 See my Equality, Liberty and Perfectionism , op. cit., ch. 8.29 Does the integrity of a country admit of degrees or is it a matter of all or nothing?

Presumably only some of the integrity of India was destroyed by the partition of India. If all

42 Vinit Haksar

of it had been destroyed then one could not contend, as the present constitution of Indiadoes, that the integrity of India should be preserved.

30 J. Nehru, An Autobiography (London: John Lane/Bodley Head, 1938), p. 431.31 See my Equality, Liberty and Perfectionism , op. cit., ch. 13.32 See my `Nature Of Rights’ , Archiv fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 64 (1979), pp.

183Ð 204.33 M. Hartney, `Some Confusions Concerning Collective Rights’ , in W. Kymlicka (ed.), The

Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 202Ð 27.

Received 4 December 1997

Vinit Haksar, Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, David Hume Tower,George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JX, Scotland, UK


Documents

Collective Rights and the Value of Groups