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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2016
Besides stating that global or cosmopolitan citizenship is an incoherent concept in the absence of a global state, some critics assert that it represents a form of Western-centric moral neoimperialism. This article develops some responses to such objections through examining the efforts of Indian activists who have undertaken intensive international engagement in their struggles against caste discrimination. The National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights has sought to close domestic rights-implementation gaps for Dalits (formerly called untouchables) in part through vertical outreach to United Nations human rights bodies. This mode of outreach is shown to represent an important practice of global citizenship, and to challenge a view of South agent as primarily passive recipients of moral goods within a global citizenship frame. Further, the Dalit activists’ global citizenship practice is shown to be significantly ‘institutionally developmental’, in that it highlights implementation gaps in the global human rights regime and can contribute to pressures for suprastate institutional transformation and development to address them. NCDHR actions are, for example, highly salient to the recently renewed dialogue on creating a World Court of Human Rights.
1 Ambedkar, B. R., ‘Waiting for a visa’, in Vasant Moon (ed.), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Volume 12 (Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1993 [orig. pub. 1936]), pp. 661–691 Google Scholar.
2 Author interview, August 2013. The author conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with more than thirty leaders and numerous other supporters of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, at its New Delhi headquarters and at ten cities or villages in seven Indian states, from 2010 to 2016. Also interviewed from 2014–16 were 25 officials of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which headed the governing coalition from 1998–2004. The Party had a sole majority in the lower house Lok Sabha and thus was independently the national ruling party from May 2014.
3 Author interview, March 2016.
4 India’s caste system is comprised of four main groupings or varnas: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras, the latter traditionally found in service occupations. Below these varnas, and formerly marked as ‘untouchable’, are Dalits. Extensive codes of conduct for members of the various groupings are found in the canonical Laws of Manu (c. 200 bce). See Doniger, Wendy and Smith, Brian K. (eds), The Laws of Manu (London: Penguin, 1991)Google Scholar.
5 See Irudayam, A., Mangubhai, A. J. P., and Lee, J. G., Dalit Women Speak Out: Violence Against Dalit Women in India, Volumes 1–2 (New Delhi: National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, 2006)Google Scholar.
6 Numerous Dalit activists interviewed noted their debt to Ambedkar, whose image is a permanent fixture atop the home page of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights web site {http://www.ncdhr.org.in/} as well as that of the Asia Dalit Rights Forum: {http://asiadalitrightsforum.org/}. On Ambedkar’s work and significance generally, see Jaffrelot, Christophe, Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005)Google Scholar.
7 Keck, Margaret and Sikkink, Kathryn, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 13–14 Google Scholar; see also Bob, Clifford, ‘Dalit rights are human rights: Untouchables, NGOs and the Indian State’, in Clifford Bob (ed.), The International Struggle for New Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 30–51 Google Scholar (p. 31); Lerche, Jens, ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks and affirmative action for Dalits in India’, Development and Change, 39:2 (2008), pp. 239–261 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 See Tarrow, Sidney, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 151–154 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Those working through the European Court of Justice to secure equal pay for women within European Union member states are held up as exemplars of the process.
9 Panel on Human Dignity, ‘Protecting Dignity: An Agenda for Human Rights’ (2011), available at: {www.Panel%20on%20Human%20Dignity/GB-ADH%20Brochure%20Agenda%20Human%20Rights-17x17.pdf}; see Alston, Philip, ‘Against a World Court for Human Rights’, Ethics & International Affairs, 28:2 (2014), pp. 197–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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12 Cabrera, Luis, The Practice of Global Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 1.
13 On distinctions between individual, moral, and institutional cosmopolitanism, see Beitz, Charles, ‘International liberalism and distributive justice: a survey of recent thought’, World Politics, 51:2 (1999), pp. 269–296 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 129). For a treatment of ways in which Ambedkar’s own thought connects to and can inform cosmopolitan theory, see Cabrera, Luis, ‘“Gandhiji, I Have No Homeland”: Cosmopolitan insights from B. R. Ambedkar, India’s anti-caste campaigner and constitutional architect’, Political Studies Google Scholar (forthcoming).
14 For a useful elaboration of rights and duties elements, see Dalton, Russell, ‘Citizenship norms and the expansion of political participation’, Political Studies, 56:1 (2008), pp. 76–98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 See also Bańkowski, Zenon and Christodoulidis, Emilios, ‘Citizenship bound and citizenship unbound’, in Kimberly Hutchings and Roland Dannreuther (eds), Cosmopolitan Citizenship (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 83–104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 88–9).
16 Fund for Peace, ‘Fragile States Index 2015’, available at: {http://fsi.fundforpeace.org/}.
17 Miller, ‘The idea of global citizenship’, pp. 232–3.
18 Miller, David, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), p. 89 Google Scholar.
19 Mason, Living Together, p. 36; see also Dalton, ‘Citizenship norms’. He defines citizenship as ‘a set of norms of what people think people should do as good citizens’, but which they often fail to do themselves, p. 78.
20 Cabrera, Practice.
21 Isin, Engin F., ‘Claiming European citizenship’, in Engin F. Isin and Michael Saward (eds), Enacting European Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 19–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 27); Isin, Engin F., Citizens Without Frontiers (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012)Google Scholar; see also Tully, James, ‘On global citizenship’, On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 3–102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Tully similarly focuses on struggles over the meaning of citizenship and memberships, though with more emphasis on domestic citizenship struggles in the context of a globalised system.
22 See Jaffrelot, Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability, ch. 2.
23 Notably Jotirao Phule (1827–90). See Doctor, Adi H., Political Thinkers of Modern India (New Delhi: Mittal, 1997), pp. 115–120 Google Scholar; Jaffrelot, Dr. Ambedkar, pp. 15–17.
24 Ambedkar, B. R., ‘The untouchables and the Pax Brittanica’, in Valerian Rodrigues (ed.), The Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 351–358 Google Scholar (p. 357).
25 See Cabrera, ‘“Gandhiji, I Have No Homeland”’.
26 Ambedkar, B. R., Mr. Gandhi and the Emancipation of the Untouchables (Delhi: Siddharth Books, 2009 [orig. pub. 1943])Google Scholar, Preface.
27 Ambedkar, B. R., Swaraj and the Depressed Classes: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Presidential Address at the All India Depressed Classes Congress, Nagpur, August 8, 1930 (New Delhi: Critical Quest, 2010 [orig. pub. 1930]), p. 10 Google Scholar; see also Cabrera, ‘“Gandhiji, I Have No Homeland”’.
28 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, ‘An Appeal to the World: A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress’ (1947), available at: {http://www.blackpast.org/1947-w-e-b-Du Bois-appeal-world-statement-denial-human-rights-minorities-case-citizens-n}.
29 W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, ‘Letter from B. R. Ambedkar to W. E. B. Du Bois’, available at: {https://www.saada.org/item/20140415-3544}. Du Bois sent the petition in July of the same year, with a letter to Ambedkar stating that ‘I have often heard of your name and work and of course have every sympathy with the Untouchables of India.’ W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, ‘Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to B. R. Ambedkar’, 31 July 1946, available at: {https://www.saada.org/item/20140415-3544}.
30 In his resignation speech, Ambedkar expressed bitter disappointment that the Constitution had not brought major improvements for Dalits. Ambedkar, B. R., ‘Statement by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in explanation of his resignation’, in Vasant Moon (ed.), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Volume 14, Part 2 (Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1995 [orig. pub. 1951]), pp. 1317–1327 Google Scholar, available at: {http://mea.gov.in/Images/attach/amb/Volume_14_02.pdf}.
31 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ‘Status of Ratification: Interactive Dashboard’ (2015), available at: {http://indicators.ohchr.org/}.
32 See Bob, ‘Dalit rights’, pp. 37–8; Waughray, Annapurna, ‘Caste discrimination and minority rights: the case of India’s Dalits’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 17:2 (2010), pp. 327–353 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 335–7).
33 Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, ‘Fourteenth Periodic Reports of State Parties Due in 1996: India’, CERD/C/299/Add.3 (State Party Report, 1996a), p. 3.
34 Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, ‘Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, India’, CERD/C/304/Add.13 (1996b), para. 32.
35 Narula, Smita, Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s ‘Untouchables’ (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 201 Google Scholar; for a critical view of the UN bodies’ conclusions, see Keane, David, ‘Descent-based discrimination in international law: a legal history’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 11 (2005), pp. 93–116 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Keane argues that there is actually little evidence in the travaux preparatoires of the ICERD, or body of work related to its development and negotiation, supporting the inclusion of caste within descent-based discrimination.
36 ‘About NCDHR: Phase III: (Holding State Accountable)’, available at: {http://www.ncdhr.org.in/aboutncdhr}.
37 Quoted in Bob, ‘Dalit rights’, p. 39.
38 Hardtmann, Eva-Maria, The Dalit Movement in India: Local Practices, Global Connections (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 233–239 Google Scholar; see Smith, Peter Jay, ‘Going global: the transnational politics of the Dalit movement’, Globalizations, 5:1 (2008), pp. 13–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 International Dalit Solidarity Network, ‘About Us’ (2015), available at: {http://idsn.org/about-us/} accessed 1 September 2015.
40 Lennox, Corinne, ‘Reviewing Durban: Examining the outputs and review of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism’, Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 27:2 (2009), pp. 191–235 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 213–16).
41 Bob, ‘Dalit rights’, pp. 183–4.
42 See European Parliament, ‘European Parliament Resolution of 13 December 2012 on Caste Discrimination in India’, 2012/2909 (RSP).
43 H.Con.Res.139 – ‘Expressing the Sense of the Congress that the United States Should Address the Ongoing Problem of Untouchability in India’ (2007), available at: {https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/139}; H.Res.158 – ‘Condemning Dalit Untouchability, the Practice of Birth-Descent Discrimination against Dalit People …’ (2015), available at: {https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-resolution/158}.
44 United Nations Human Rights Council, ‘Final Report of Mr. Yozo Yokota and Ms. Chin-Sung Chung, Special Rapporteurs on the Topic of Discrimination Based on Work and Descent’, A/HRC/11/CRP.3 (18 May 2009).
45 United Nations, ‘Addressing Indian Council of World Affairs, Secretary-General Urges India to Be “Driver” in Transformative Push towards Peace, Human Rights, Clean Development’, Press Release (12 January 2015), available at: {http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sgsm16459.doc.htm}.
46 Navi Pillay, ‘Just another kind of bigotry’, Hindustan Times (13 October 2009), available at: {http://www.hindustantimes.com/editorials/just-another-kind-of-bigotry/article1-464927.aspx}.
47 Some individual leaders have indicated less resistance publicly. In 2006, the then Congress Party Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (2004–14) gained attention for comparing discrimination against Dalits to South African apartheid. ‘Indian leader likens caste system to apartheid regime’, The Guardian (28 December 2006).
48 United Nations, ‘Report of the Durban Review Conference’, A/CONF.211/8 (2009).
49 United Nations Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review: India’, A/HRC/21/10 (9 July 2012).
50 IDSN noted that none of the 18 other member states on the Committee had posed a question.
International Dalit Solidarity Network, ‘IDSN Application for General Consultative Status with ECOSOC Overview and Status Quo’ (June 2015), available at: {http://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Note-on-IDSN-ECOSOC-application.pdf}.
51 The Asia Dalit Rights Forum brings together Dalit rights activists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Available at: {http://asiadalitrightsforum.org/}.
52 United Nations, ‘Acknowledgment of Past, Compensation Urged by Many Leaders in Continuing Debate at Racism Conference’ (Remarks by Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Omar Abdullah), RD/492 (4 September 2001), available at: {http://www.un.org/press/en/2001/rd942.doc.htm}. See also Hardtmann, The Dalit Movement, pp. 6–8.
53 Ambedkar had similarly chastised Left liberals in the UK and United States for offering uncritical support to the independence struggle of Gandhi’s Congress Party, which he saw as perpetuating Dalit exclusion. Ambedkar, B. R., What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (New Delhi: Gautam, 2009 [orig. pub. 1945]), p. 229 Google Scholar.
54 See also Isin, ‘Claiming European citizenship’, pp. 39–40.
55 Author interview, August 2013. Dalit activists are not named in this article, given the specific government criticisms of their actions.
56 Author interview, August 2013.
57 Author interview, August 2013. Manual scavenging involves the removal by hand of excrement from dry toilets, an occupation typically imposed on lower-caste persons. It is barred by law in India, but the 2011 Census of India recorded more than 700,000 persons still engaged in the practice. See United Nations in India, ‘Breaking Free: Rehabilitating Manual Scavengers’ (2016), available at: {http://in.one.un.org/page/breaking-free-rehabilitating-manual-scavengers}.
58 Author interview, September 2013.
59 An honorific for Ambedkar.
60 Author interview, September 2013. Manusmriti is another name for the Laws of Manu. See fn. 3.
61 Author interview, August 2013.
62 Author interview, August 2013.
63 Author interview, September 2013.
64 Author interview, R. Balashankar, New Delhi, India, February 2014.
65 Author interview, Prabhat Jha, New Delhi, March 2016.
66 Author interview, Yashwant Sinha, Noida, National Capital Region, India, March 2014.
67 Author interview, Sambit Patra, New Delhi, India, March 2016.
68 Author interview, Nalin Kohli, New Delhi, India, February 2014.
69 Author interview, Chandan Mitra, New Delhi, India, March 2014.
70 Author interview, Vijendra Gupta, New Delhi, India, March 2016.
71 Malhotra, Rajiv and Neelakandan, Aravindan, Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines (New Delhi: Amaryllis, 2011)Google Scholar. Malhotra is a prominent Indian expatriate in the United States who founded the Infinity Foundation, which funds research and community advocacy work on Hinduism and Buddhism. Available at: {http://infinityfoundation.com/index.shtml}.
72 Bowden, Brett, ‘The perils of global citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 7 (2003), pp. 349–362 Google Scholar; Jefferess, David, ‘Global citizenship and the cultural politics of benevolence’, Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, 2:1 (2008), pp. 27–36 Google Scholar.
73 See Mutua, Makau W., ‘Savages, victims, and saviors: the metaphor of human rights’, Harvard International Law Journal, 42:1 (2001), pp. 201–245 Google Scholar, for salient claims in the context of rights universalism.
74 For an account challenging such suppositions about South actors, see Deveaux, Monique, ‘The global poor as agents of justice’, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 12:2 (2013), pp. 125–150 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schweiger, Gottfried, ‘Recognition theory and global poverty’, Journal of Global Ethics, 10:3 (2014), pp. 267–273 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Dunford, Robin, ‘Human rights and collective emancipation: the politics of food sovereignty’, Review of International Studies, 41:2 (2015), pp. 239–261 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dunford critically engages some recent ‘interventionist’ accounts in critical security studies, which he sees as implying that emancipation of vulnerable persons in South countries must depend on aid from transnational associations of lawyers and humanitarian agencies. He focuses instead on domestic activist agents ‘who pursue emancipation on their own behalf’, within a human rights frame, p. 241.
75 Deveaux, ‘The global poor’, p. 9; Cabrera, Practice, pp. 157–64; see also Schattle, Hans, The Practices of Global Citizenship (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar. Schattle sought out for interviews dozens of people in North and South countries who had declared themselves to be global citizens; and see Ypi, Lea, Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.
76 Cabrera, Practice, ch. 5; Smith, William and Cabrera, Luis, ‘Critical exchange: the morality of border crossing’, Contemporary Political Theory, 14:1 (2015), pp. 90–99 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Allen, Michael, ‘Civil disobedience, transnational’, in Deen K. Chatterjee (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Justice (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. 133–135 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ogunye, Temi, ‘Global justice and transnational civil disobedience’, Ethics & Global Politics, 8 (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available at: {http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/egp.v8.27217}; and see Isin, Citizens Without Frontiers, pp. 20–1, for an instructive discussion of how disobedience such as domestic conscientious objection in Turkey, where laws do not permit such action, ‘traverse frontiers’, or have implications for trans-state citizenship practices.
77 See Bob, ‘Dalit rights’, p. 176; author interviews.
78 Author interview August 2013; on Dalit activists’ sometimes-assertive tactics at the WCAR Durban meeting, see Davinder Kumar, ‘Grumble of distant drums’, Outlook (17 September, 2001), available at: {http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/grumble-of-distant-drums/213165}.
79 Author interview, August 2013.
80 See Dutta, Amrita, ‘A is for anti-national: In two years of the Modi government, a vocabulary reconfigured and routinised, that threatens to pit Indian against Indian – till the last election is won’, The Indian Express (15 June 2016)Google Scholar, available at: {http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/narendra-modi-nda-government-two-years-bharatiya-janata-party-bpp-muzaffarnagar-dadri-2853149/}.
81 Author interview, March 2016.
82 Author interview, March 2016.
83 Author interview, August 2013.
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85 Author interview, August 2013.
86 Author interview, August 2013.
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90 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ‘Human Rights Council Advisory Committee Discusses New Priorities and Research Initiatives’ (15 August 2013), available at: {http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13633&LangID=E}.
91 Panel on Human Dignity, ‘Protecting Dignity’.
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