Negotiating the spaces: exploring issues of human rights in an Indian text

This article is an attempt to negotiate the spaces between a number of problematic positions concerning Hinduism and human rights through the close study of one particular text, the Rājadharmaparvan of the Mahābhārata. By examining safeguards and provisions for subjects articulated in the text’s discourse of kingly duty, it engages with some of the arguments forwarded in the theoretical literature on human rights. Here it interrogates, in particular, the idea that Hinduism is distinctively incompatible with these norms in a way other historical or cultural traditions are not. The article concludes by asking whether it is possible to counter Eurocentric tendencies in global debates without furthering illiberal agendas within local ones. Discussing the appropriation of ‘Raj dharma,’ and the texts that deal with it, by the Hindu Right, it briefly outlines some recent moves in human rights theory that help facilitate the reclamation of a rich and plural textual heritage.