Human Rights Nature, Concept, Origin and Development

Western view of Human Rights:

Human rights in the West do not enjoy a permanent position. They have no eternal source criteria of a cosmic order. The entire sources are either imaginary or like the Habeas Corpus, Magna Carta, the Bill of rights, the French Charter of Human Rights and the ten amendments to the American constitution, are documents of a regional nature and are the product of the peculiar political and social conditions existing in Britain, France and America. There the concept of the fundamental rights has developed along with human consciousness. And these rights have been born one by one out of the agreements during the protracted struggle between the people and the kind or other rulers, for the division of powers, the decision of the parliament, charter declarations and the theories put up by the political thinkers. As this struggle advanced, the sphere of rights became wider. That is to say, what are being termed as ‘fundamental rights’ today were not there till yesterday, and if it all they were, they were no more that more yearnings which had no sanction at their back. Every one of these rights became a right in the true sense of the word only when the law of land and the constitution recognizing it conferred validity on it[^18] . However, in the Western countries by and large, the real purpose of these rights is to offer protection to the individual against the state. So in the West these rights are given higher position than the common laws framed by the state. By incorporating them in the constitution the legislative powers of the state are limited, and the judiciary is entrusted with enforcement of the fundamental rights[^19] .