A series of incidents related to ‘honour killing’ are coming to light with a promptitude that defies logic. The slaying of young couples is based simply on the premise that the family’s honour is sacrosanct and thus, supersedes all forms of attachment to the kin. Then we have had a glut of human rights activists & NGOs filing petitions to introduce new legislations that would curb this burgeoning menace.
What exactly is the sin of the girl or the boy in question to be condemned to eternal perdition? Simply that they undertook a peremptory pledge to spend the rest of their lives together as two like-minded human beings would and justifiably, should with regard to the Universal law of nature. This has set me thinking as to what ideals, morals & ethics fall within the ambit of human survival, which one believed held good so long as you are true to yourself and to the laws of the Universe. Bernard Gert, a philosopher of ethics & utilitarianism had propounded a theory on moral rights based on the hypothesis that every human had a right ‘not to be killed’ inasmuch as ‘not to be deprived of basic freedom’.
In fact, every human faces the ethical dilemma of choosing his or her actions in such a way as would be morally acceptable to everybody and that one’s motives would be constructive rather than exploitative. In that sense, a couple which defies age-old conventions is bound to attract some amount of indignation, yet, the fundamental basis of human rights is that everyone should be treated as a free individual to execute his or her own will within the permissible laws. So, as long as two adults are compatible, it appears quite a travesty that the ruse of ‘family honour’ could be used as a bayonet to fragment their moral & spiritual union.
The Universal declaration of human rights validates what Immanuel Kant in his metaphysical thesis on morality had stated – ‘an action could be deemed morally right for a person if he acts in such a way that the maxim is generalized or becomes universally applicable’. For such families who are fettered by the strongholds of orthodoxy and thus, indulgent in such barbaric acts, the question that needs to be answered is whether they would be accepted unanimously and whether every other person would have acted on similar lines given the exigencies of the same situation.
What exactly is the sin of the girl or the boy in question to be condemned to eternal perdition? Simply that they undertook a peremptory pledge to spend the rest of their lives together as two like-minded human beings would and justifiably, should with regard to the Universal law of nature. This has set me thinking as to what ideals, morals & ethics fall within the ambit of human survival, which one believed held good so long as you are true to yourself and to the laws of the Universe. Bernard Gert, a philosopher of ethics & utilitarianism had propounded a theory on moral rights based on the hypothesis that every human had a right ‘not to be killed’ inasmuch as ‘not to be deprived of basic freedom’.
In fact, every human faces the ethical dilemma of choosing his or her actions in such a way as would be morally acceptable to everybody and that one’s motives would be constructive rather than exploitative. In that sense, a couple which defies age-old conventions is bound to attract some amount of indignation, yet, the fundamental basis of human rights is that everyone should be treated as a free individual to execute his or her own will within the permissible laws. So, as long as two adults are compatible, it appears quite a travesty that the ruse of ‘family honour’ could be used as a bayonet to fragment their moral & spiritual union.
The Universal declaration of human rights validates what Immanuel Kant in his metaphysical thesis on morality had stated – ‘an action could be deemed morally right for a person if he acts in such a way that the maxim is generalized or becomes universally applicable’. For such families who are fettered by the strongholds of orthodoxy and thus, indulgent in such barbaric acts, the question that needs to be answered is whether they would be accepted unanimously and whether every other person would have acted on similar lines given the exigencies of the same situation.
The ambit of the society stretches out to castes and sub-castes so that it often does not result in similar interpretation of moral rules. Yet, in spite of this, nature has bestowed in varying capacities the power to freely choose the aims that each one of us desire to pursue. Thus, ‘honour killings’ committed without a sense of guilt or shame are nothing but transgressions of natural laws beyond acceptable or defensible limits, whereby, a person’s basic rights to live and to co-exist in harmony & peace are being ruthlessly trampled upon.
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