Examine the nature of the civil liberty movement in India. (UPSC CSE Mains 2020 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 1)
- Civil liberties is associated with basic rights and freedoms that are guaranteed either explicitly identified in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, or deduced through the years by courts and legislators. Civil liberties are personal assurances and freedoms that the government cannot curtail, either by law or by judicial interpretation without due process.
- The evolution of civil liberties movement in India be traced back in pre independence era when the national liberation struggle was stirring up against the British tyranny. Main focus of these movements was on indefinite detention without trial which posed a serious threat to the civil liberties. Hence civil liberty movement got speed as a part of national movement. As a consequence, Indian civil liberty union was established by Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru in 1931.
- Though the range of the term differs amongst various nations, basic Civil liberties include:
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- Freedom of speech
- The right to privacy
- The right to be free from unreasonable searches of your home
- The right to a fair court trial
- The right to marry
- The right to vote
- Other civil liberties include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, and the right to bodily integrity. Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, distinctions exist between positive liberty/positive rights and negative liberty/negative rights.
- The makers of Indian Constitution, despite their many dilemmas and differences, assured citizens civil-political rights in the form of the freedom of expression, association, profess and practice of our faiths including atheism, however limited or restricted those rights may be with provisions for their suspensions on special situations. The Constitution gives us the right to equality before law and justice, irrespective of our racial and religious backgrounds, sex and socio- economic standing.
- The 1970s was the decade when the civil liberties movement took shape in India. The initial trigger was the state’s response to the Naxalite movement (1967 onwards) – torture, fake encounter killings and illegal detentions being the key issues – and later the initiative got momentum with the imposition of the Emergency in 1975. Gradually, nationality struggles in the Northeast and Kashmir too became key issues.
- Of these organisations, APDR, APCLC, PUCL, OPDR, CPDR, AFDR and PUDR are still active and considered among the country’s leading civil liberties/democratic rights organisations.
- Civil rights are the cornerstone of liberal democracy, and they entail a fight against authoritarianism and tyranny, whether domestic or foreign. It was the impacts of Western liberal concepts on India''s educated middle class which grew civil rights demands. The main demands were journalistic freedom, justice, and safety from repression. The fight for civil freedoms was mostly fought along constitutional lines.
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