The reason for focusing on rights is because of their being integral to human existence. Here my views converge with Nagel (1991:139), when he writes that in contrast to the difficulties faced by the pursuit of equality, the protection of each individual’s sphere of personal autonomy is the object of a well developed and effective tradition of ethical and institutional design. This tradition is accepted in only minorities of cultures, but where it is accepted it works very well, and its main resource is the definition and protection of individual rights¹.

Individuals require a zone of non interference and autonomy in which their growth (not in physical terms) can take place that does not imply an arbitrary life but one which is properly balanced and regulated by some internal forces. According to Nagel (1991:139) this point becomes clearer when he writes 'The design of conditions of political associations acceptable from this point of view requires certain well defined degrees of freedom for individuals, knowable in advance and not subject to limitations or interference except for exceptional clauses, most of which are avoidable by the individual himself with sufficient care . Seen in this context, we find that the minorities are alien to the concept of rights. To have a clear idea of the rights aspect with regard to the affirmative action policies, we first need to understand how rights originated and what is meant by holding a right.

As far as the genesis of rights is concerned there is no particular and specific mention. Alasdair Macintyre states, “that there is no expression in any ancient or medieval language correctly translated by our expression a ‘right’ until near the close of the middle ages, the concept lacks any means of expression in Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Arabic, classical or medieval, before about 1400, let alone in old English or in Japanese even as late as the mid nineteenth century. Edmundson states that according to Macintyre, the language lacked an expression for rights. Rights were not found among the conceptual resources of all people at all times². William A Edmundson in order to make clear the historical circumstances which encouraged rights mentions two expansionary periods. The first period he referred to as the period between the American declaration of independence in 1776 and the end of the French terror in 1794. The second period began with the Universal declaration of human rights in 1948, in the aftermath of the second war. During the first expansionary period there was close to Universal agreement that there was some moral order to the universe and there was dispute about whether and how rights fit into that order. During the second period however there was increasing doubts that if there was any cosmic moral order, and secondly the difficulty of reaching agreement about whether there are rights and about how are they distributed. Edmundson has given two differences of the two periods, the first is that the second period has relatively seen lesser bloodshed as compared to the French terror. The second difference between the two periods is in the underlying intellectual and cultural background of rights, moral skepticism and nihilism are today eminently thinkable, alternatives to moral theories of any sort(Edmundson :2004:12-13)

Coming to thinkers, primarily the social contractualists have stressed on rights, but Grotius before them had also contributed. Grotius analysed the whole subject of justice as a matter of rights. He gave a very pessimist view of state of nature and how every individual had the power to rob the other of his rights and how the life was under constant threat. Edmundson states, Samuel Pufendorf challenged Hobbes with regard to his careless attribution of rights to men in a state of nature, he argued that it must be recognized that not every natural faculty to do something is properly a right, but only that which concerns some moral effect. It was Pufendorf who characterized rights with respect to duties. In Locke's account the state of nature involved much greater moral complexity than what Hobbes recognized. For Hobbes the inhabitants of the state of nature had the right to do whatever they judged to be necessary for their individual survival. Locke's state was based on "reciprocal liberty" yet not a state of licence(Edmundson 2004:15-27)

The intent behind mentioning this brief history of rights is to show how rights acquire different meaning and forms in the hands of different philosophers and events, which simultaneously leads to the changing role of state.

NORMATIVE ASPECT OF BEING A RIGHT HOLDER

Rights are in the form of claims, which have been sanctioned by society and state, but not all claims can be categorized as rights. Rights are only those claims which are deemed necessary for leading a life where basic needs are fulfilled and there is self worth and dignity of individuals.

To be a right bearer does not warrant the individual to act arbitrarily or to do anything and everything one wishes to do Goldman (1979 :149) has made the meaning of being a rights bearer more clear he states "that a person has a right to X (to do Y) when it’s not generally wrong for him to have Y (to do Y), certain considerations like the interest of others and consequences of the action will not be relevant in the context or for the type of object or action stipulated in the recognition of the right and a person need not as act the permission or consent or benevolence of others to take or hold X. One can have rights without exercising it, certain rights are symbolically exercised, and are seen to be active all the time, the way in which man interacts and conducts himself, that also is a form in which rights are being exercised. Here can be included the passive or negative rights, such as the rights not be treated cruelly, without such rights we would we living in the anarchic and Hobbesian state of nature. Goldman particularly made it clear that the ‘others’ in this clause may be specific individuals or society at large, that is certain rights ought to be recognized simply by virtue of their possessors being human or having interests, while others arise consequent upon individuals satisfying certain social rules or entering into certain specific relations with others governed by those rules. To make it more clear Goldman states, a person’s right to the parts of his property derives from his having acquired it in a way that accords with specific rules for property acquisition and it is held against everyone³.

Rights can be categorized on the basis of grounds on which they are sanctioned. Laws are the customs and conventions which eventually get state sanction and legitimacy and are backed by coercion, similarly all legal rights had evolved from some basic moral rights, hence moral rights are to be seen prior to legal aspect both in form and spirit. The moral aspect of rights and legal sanction is one complicated feature of affirmative action policies. This becomes all the more important when the society is divided. Often the moral rights are not given legal importance and sanction because of which they are openly flouted. Why moral rights are more important, Judith Wagner Decew answers it and states, “that the individual moral rights have special significance which is captured by the ideas that, firstly rights are not the ordinary sorts of moral reasons for treating persons in particular ways, they carry special weight in moral arguments, since they are not merely considerations to be dumped into even balance with heterogeneous others. Secondly, persons do in some important sense retain their rights when those rights are legitimately infringed or overridden as well, by non rights considerations⁴.

Moral rights are not the rights in the strict sense of the term, Andrew Fagan writes, that moral rights are moral claims, which may or may not eventually be assimilated within national or international law. Moral rights do not need any legal sanction for example, many people argued that the black majority in apartheid South Africa possessed a moral right to full political participation in that country's political system, even though there existed no such legal right. Fagan further states that legal rights refer to all those rights which are found within the legal codes. It enjoys the recognition and protection of the law⁵.

The reason behind the affirmative action policies had been the denial of moral rights of minorities including the right not to be discriminated on irrational grounds. This line of argument was not given importance as there was no legal support until many years. Jeremy Waldron categorized these minority rights as third generation rights, these included minority languages rights, national right to self determination and the right of such diffuse goods such as peace, environment integrity and economic development. These rights tend to become controversial as they involve goods on which there is a collective claim of all. In such situations the game is won by those who had been able to complete in a relatively advantaged position and the thus the weaker ones are left behind⁶.

What is the role of rights what is the purpose of having rights, this will bring in the discussion the will or choice theory and the interest theory perspective, as they would enable to map out clearly its function. To start with the interest theory of rights, the core idea behind this theory is the protection of interests. Interests is a very delicate term, it could range from some very basic and fundamental interest to malicious and selfish motives such as imperialism and colonialism. The interest theory accepts the inevitability and pervasiveness of conflicts between interests, and rather than pinning its hope upon the organic development of rationalistic private law, the theory emphasizes the capacity of positive law to choose and demarcate the boundaries between the conflicting interests. The interest theory of rights has a natural tendency to convert 'rights' into interests even when it does not simply equate rights with interests. An interest theorist will view rights with regard to corrective goals and it sees any legislation in terms of aggregative or distributive project⁷. Raz (1986) gave his views on the interest theory of rights and stated, “ 'X' has a right if and only if X ‘can’ have rights, and other things being equal, an aspect of X's well being (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other persons to be under a duty. Sometimes the interests of the majorities tend to overshadow that of minorities and the capability to assert their rights tend to push the minorities back”.Erick J Mitnick (1966) commenting on the definition of Raz states, that the first position of the definition is intended broadly to incorporate an extensive range of views on the capacity of different types of entities to hold rights. The second portion of Raz’s definition is possessed of more substantive content. It suggests that rights are correlative of duties and that rights fundamentally protect interests⁸.

The interest theory is fundamentally trying to link duty and interests, and explains the rationale behind the rights. The rights according to it exists in the nature of directives, focusing on the laws which impose duty and there is a need to be quite cautions about the groups to be targeted, and efforts should be made to look for those persons who would be benefited by the performance of the relevant duty (in this context the duty of the state to safeguard the interest of minorities).

The need for finding a genuine purpose where the duty should be directed is mandatory as per the interest theory in order to avoid the limitless proliferation of rights, as any duty is bound to give rise to a set of interrelated rights thus creating a vicious web and spoiling the whole situation⁹. The interest theory emphasizes on interest thus it would be more instrumental in facilitating the rights of the minorities against discrimination and would foster their interest. At times it involves an active role of some external agency to look after and protect the interest of the minorities. The state and state actors are bound by a duty to work on behalf of the weak when the protection of interests comes into the scene.

The will or choice theory maintains that all rights consist in the enjoyment of opportunities for individual or corporate choices. Rather than to see rights as tied to sundry facets of the well being of the right holders the will theory submits that each right invests its holder with some degree of control over his or her situation. To ascribe a right to someone is to say that person is empowered to make a choice about the fulfillment of someone else's duty, such an ascription does not perforce suggest that any other aspect of the right holder’s well being is legally or morally protected(Kramer,Simmonds,Steiner :1998 :2) Rights which embody the will of the individual are the source of legitimacy of the laws, Simmonds states that, “the will theory emphasizes the mutual consistency of rights and the absence of conflict between them, since the rights are derived from the notion of a universal law of freedom describing the conditions under which the autonomous choices of a multiplicity of individuals may be jointly possible” (Kramer, Simmonds, Steiner :1998 :135-138)Mathew H. Kramer writes that the basic idea underlying the will theory or (choice theory) is that every right is a vehicle or some aspect of an individual’s self determination or initiative. The following three principles are integral to the choice theory. Firstly, sufficient and necessary for X's holding of a right is, that X is competent and authorized to demand or waive the enforcement of the right. Secondly X's holding of a right does not necessarily involve the protection of one or more of X's interests. Thirdly, a rights potential to protect one or more of X's interests is not sufficient per se for X's actual possession of that right (Kramer, Simmonds, Steiner :1998:62)

Seen from the will theory lens, the minorities or those who are in need of some sort of action do not fit in this category. They are neither so powerful that they can fight long and financially drawing battles to get their rights enforced, nor do they posses autonomy in the sense of freedom. The shackles of discrimination have incapacitated the victims to act as autonomous beings and hence they are left at the mercy of fate. The choice theory runs counter to the issue of rights with regard to policies as what Hillel Steiner writes that “there are moral reasons which make the will/ choice theory not everyone's cup of tea, the reason for this varies, a very silent reason 'moral' in nature which poses objections to the will theory on the ground of the implied impossibility of certain sorts of creatures having rights. Such creatures are the ones who are undisputedly incapable of exercising powers and, therefore of possessing them, according to the will theory they cannot be right holders”(Kramer, Simmonds, Steiner :1998:248)

TO SEE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICIES FROM THE RIGHTS BASED APPROACH:

The intent to understand affirmative action from rights view is with a special emphasis on the social and economic rights of the victims. The rights based understanding is based on a framework of rights. The rights based approach to development is based on a framework of rights and obligations. What does a human right based approach means¹⁰. The U.N. development program issued a ‘statement of common understanding’ in May 2003, explaining that in a human rights – based approach human rights determine the relationship between individuals and groups with valid claims (right holders) and state and non state actors with correlative obligations (duty bearers). It works towards strengthening the capacities of right holders to make their claims and of duty bearers to meet their obligations"(Duvvury, Kapoor: 2006).

Rights based approach reinforces the human aspect of individuals, i.e. by virtue of being human beings, they are entitled to certain basic rights. It’s founded on the conviction that each and every human being by virtue of being human is a holder of rights. A right entails an obligation on the part of the government to respect, promote, protect and fulfill it. The rights based approach involves not charity, or simple economic development but a process of enabling and empowering those not enjoying their economic, social and cultural rights to claim their rights (Duvvury, Kapoor: 2006).

To elaborate more extensively on the rights approach I would like to add some more views offered by different theorist and activists, as per human rights activist Ligia Bolivar, the rights approach refers to clearly understanding the difference between a right and a need. A right is something to which I am entitled solely by virtue of being a person. It’s that which enables me to live with dignity. Moreover, a right can be enforced before the government and entails an obligation on the part of the government to honour it. A need on the other hand is an aspiration which can be quite legitimate, but is not necessarily associated with an obligation on the part of the government to cater to it, satisfaction of a need cannot be enforced. Rights are associated with "being" whereas needs are associated with "having" ¹¹.

Secondly, according to her, rights approach cannot focus on defending or attacking the form of government, on making statements for or against the victim's political inclination, or on the motivations – alleged or actual of those violating human rights, but rather on the rights being violated themselves and the apparatus that makes the violations possible. In other words, a rights approach cannot attack or support a particular type of political system, even though it cannot ignore its resistance as a factor which blocks or favors the effective exercise of human rights (Boliver : IHRIP :1998: 29-30)

Thirdly, a right is defined on the basis of dignity that is to say on the basis of “being “not” having or the social or economic program of a party or a government. A political program can and should be negotiated where dignity is non negotiable. Political programs are necessary to honour human rights, but they cannot be substituted for them. Political programs are subject to change in social and economic dynamics, and what is important today might not be important tomorrow, it is the same all times and in all places, and its essence transcends cultural particularities (Boliver : IHRIP :1998: 29-30)

The need for a rights based approach and its subsequent importance with regard to minority rights can also be gauged from the international support and recognition which had been accorded to them. The declaration on the rights of persons, belonging to national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, reaffirmed that one of the basic aims of the United Nations, as proclaimed in the charter is to promote and encourage the respect for human rights and for the fundamental freedoms for all, without the distinction as to of race, sex, language or religion. The United Nations has an important role to play regarding the protection of minorities; the Article 1 of this declaration emphasizes that the states shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their representative territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity and the states shall adopt appropriate legislative and other measures to achieve those ends. The other articles of the declaration also emphasizes on the ‘rights’ of the minorities, such as the right to enjoy their own culture, to participate effectively in cultural, religious, social, economic and public life, the right to establish and maintain ,without any discrimination ,free and peaceful contacts with other members of their groups along with states.

Article four is of primary importance as according to it. Firstly, the states shall take measures where required to ensure that persons belonging to minorities may exercise fully and effectively all their human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination and in full equality before the law.

Secondly, the states shall take measures to create favorable conditions to enable persons belonging to minorities to express their characteristics and to develop their culture, language, religion, traditions and customs, except where specific practices are in violation of national law and contrary to international standards.

Thirdly, the States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible, persons belonging to minorities may have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue.

Fourthly, States should, where appropriate, take measures in the field of education in order to encourage knowledge of the history, traditions, language and culture of the minorities existing within their territory. Persons belonging to minorities should have adequate opportunities to gain knowledge of the society as a whole.

Fifthly, States should consider appropriate measures so that persons belonging to minorities may participate fully in the economic progress and development in their country¹². These highlight the fact, that yes the rights of minorities had been a matter of both domestic and international concern. Minorities had been consistently struggling to question the status that the state and the government has granted to it, these questionings are based on the apathy they experience, especially in the context of inclusion and exclusion as for instance with regard to India.

Emanuel Nahan writes, today minority rights have introduced two new dimensions with regard to democracy, firstly they made community a legitimate subject of political discourse, and secondly they placed the issue of inter-group equality on the agenda .The Indian experience also reveals that the minority rights present two important problems for a democratic polity. Firstly the minority rights privilege the community’s cultural practices over the principle of equal rights for all citizens. Secondly, recognized minorities are not always sensitive to the plight of internal minorities, thus while special safeguards are provided to identified minorities curb the hegemony of any one community, or the nation state, they do not guarantee free and equal status to all groups and communities in society. The extent of discrimination being meted out to the minorities is a matter of concern and demands considerable attention¹³.

There at times is a need to protect certain 'specific interests', while disregarding some other utility maximizing goals or additive calculations. Some rights are morally more important than the others. The whole justification of recognizing rights revolves around the interests of the individual, as Goldman (1979:152:153) recognizes a twofold distinction between the types of interest, some generate rights, others remain mere interests or utilities(when satisfied).At times one is considered more important than the other, after balancing one against the other, as for instance, the rights to equal opportunity is considered more basic or more important than the right of corporations to disburse their assets as they please. In the moral ordering of the rights, the maximization of rights satisfaction is an important goal, which amounts to the satisfaction of higher order rights at the expense of lower order ones, and regarding the same rights of different individual’s simple maximization of satisfactions. Some rights will always take precedence over the others, such as according to some libertarians, freedom from harms take precedence over positive liberties, which in turn take precedence over all other rights and interests.

Goldman states that a much heralded value in the recognition of rights is their implicit assertion of the dignity or inviolability of the individual as against the single minded concentration upon collective interests of a morality without rights. Rights free us from dependence upon the benevolence of others and allow us to assert certain claims on the basis of our humanity, our relations to others, or our achievements. A person with rights can demand satisfaction of certain interests; he is a person to be reckoned with and respected. Hence, if self esteem is based upon being shown respect by others, it depends in part upon the possibility of asserting one’s rights. Besides freeing us from the necessity of pleading for goods, the possession of rights entails with respect at least to certain interests, that we as individuals will not be sacrificed or treated as a means to the satisfaction of the interests of others without our consent¹⁴

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ITSELF AS A RIGHT

A very tense situation has been created over the years, as these temporary measures are being looked at as a persistent and immutable state of affairs. There is a growing trend towards deviating from the objective of leveling the uneven societal set up. Affirmative action policies are being asserted as a right, and a constant struggle for being a beneficiary of these had torn u the state and society. Where the state used to be the chief agency of administering these policies, now separate and innumerable groups have cropped up to fight for these policies leading to a strong backlash.

Rights are although no doubt a very volatile issue as they can stir up conflict when everyone just focuses on rights forgetting the rationality and the virtue of duties attached to it. Off late the issues of affirmative action policies are being abused and are no more ‘welfare’ policies. There is a growing tendency to see these policies in the form of having a right to rather than having them to further the rights of the minorities .This involves questioning the minorities from dual sides, firstly it cannot be overlooked that yes the minorities have a right to those policies to make up for decades of being ill-treated and secondly, in an already divided society there cannot be a unanimous acceptance of such policies as rights. Such a situation demands to weigh the consequence of typecasting the policies as rights. Secondly right to affirmative action should have its own set of normative and moral instructions, as more than being asserted as a matter of rights, these need a status of special measures on which there should be full consensus.

The task of combating social inequality is one of the chief concerns of the state, and to make it an onerous one, the rights label being attached to the policies is harming the state institutions. There is a dilemma in the question, that should the affirmative action programmes be seen from the angle of rights. Sowell with regard to it writes “despite how widespread the affirmative action programmes have become, even the promoters of such programmes have seldom been enough to proclaim preferences and quotas to be desirable on principle or as permanent features of society .On the contrary, considerable efforts has been made to depict such policies as "temporary", even when in fact these preferences turn out not only to persist but to grow¹⁵. These are proposed as something which is time bound and goal centric, so that when there had been enough uniformity in the growth of both majorities and minorities achieved these can be withdrawn.

Andre Beteille, in trying to answer the rights question with regard to the affirmative action policies states that the provision of the positive or protective discrimination initiatives should be seen as a matter of policy and not rights. Going with Dworkin's analysis Beteille writes that in the United States of America, even the strongest arguments is made not on the grounds of rights and justice, but on the grounds of policy and utility. Dworkin rejects categorically the assumption, that racial and ethnic groups are entitled to aid, but only on the strategic hypothesis that helping them is now an effective way of attacking a national problem. Among other things this allows a degree of freedom and flexibility in the administration of such programmes. How the rights languages tends to make things difficult can be gauged from the fact of how the situation in India has turned out to be so complicated. In India the case for reverse discrimination is made persistently in the language of rights. This at once raises the temperature of the debate and forces people to adopt intransigent positions¹⁶.

Any one sided opinion on this situation will lead to a strong backlash. There is a need to take a moral stand by weighing in all the opinions. To support the policies 'solely' as a form of rights, would ignore the very intent of having one and will create a competitive urge in people to come under the beneficiary category. Here my views converge with Sowell he states ‘that just as we cannot presuppose continuing control over the scope and duration of preferential policies, so we cannot simply assume what will happen to those designated as the preferred group or groups. Neither they, nor the non preferred groups are inert blocks of wood to be moved here and there according to someone else's design. Both confront policies and laws as incentives and constraints and not as predestination and react in their own ways. These reactions include redesignating themselves altering their own efforts and attitudes towards members of other groups¹⁷.

Sowell (2004:8) has substantiated his claim by citing numerous examples for instance to quote one, in the United States during the Jim Crow era some light skinned blacks simply passed as white in order to escape the legal and social disadvantages that went with being designated as blacks. Later during the era of affirmative action, whites with traces of American Indian or other minority ancestry redesignated themselves in order to take advantage of preferential policies for disadvantaged groups. These have included blond haired and blue eyed individuals with official papers showing some distant ancestors of another race. The number of individuals identifying as American Indians in the U.S. Census during the affirmative action era rose at a rate exceeding anyone's estimates of the biological growth of this population such was the gradual deviation from the goal which was posing a threat to the policies(Sowell : 2004:11-22)

The change in the nature of affirmative action policies, when it becomes something as rights is also a source for proliferation of groups and even changes the claimants of these policies. Sowell (2004:11) states that the spread of benefits from group to group not only dilutes those benefits especially when more than half the population of the country becomes entitled to them, as in both India and the United States, it can also make the initial beneficiaries worse off after the terms of the competition are altered. In India for instance those members of the selected groups (creamy layer in the other backward castes) are benefiting who already come under those who do not need any external assistance(Sowell : 2004:11)

The need of the hour is to not delve into the politicization of rights, but a proper moral stand is needed, as far as upholding and protecting the rights of minorities is concerned.

Contextualizing rights issues: for any theoretical concept, its implications and positive aspects can be better understood when contextualized. As far as the rights are concerned with regard to affirmative action policies, here I would like to bring in the case of India, where they have created strong instability and a paradoxical situation. Sarah Joseph, expressing her views on the issue of complexities due to majority and minority rift states that, the issue of minority rights and multiculturalism is high on the political agenda of most states today, since they incorporate a variety of ethnic, religious and other diversities. She adds that the situation in India is different in a number of significant ways to the situation in Western countries. Like the United States, Germany or Canada. Indian society incorporates a bewildering number of minorities identified by factors like religion, caste, class or region. Moreover the boundaries of such groups have always been somewhat fluid and overlapping. The situation in India is a classic example to embody extremes of pro and anti affirmative action ¹⁸.

REFERENCES:

1. Nagel Thomas. Equality and Partiality. Oxford University Press, 1991. 139

2. Edmundson, William A. An Introduction to Rights. Cambridge University Press, 2004. 12-13

3. Goldman Alan. Justice and Reverse Discrimination. Princeton University Press, 1979. 149-151

4. Decew Judith wagner. Moral Rights: Conflicts and Valid Claims. Philosophical Studies 541 (1988) 63-86

5. Fagan Andrew. Human Rights. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy url:www.Iep.utm.edu/hum-rts

6. Waldron Jeremy.Rights in A Companioin To Contemporary Poltical Philosophy ,edited by Goodin Robert and Petit Philip Blackwell Publishers 2000. 572-582

7. Kramer Mathew H, Simmonds N.E and Steiner Hilel.A Debate Over Rights.Oxford University Press, 1998. 195-197

8. Mitnick Erick J. Rights, Group and Self Invention: Group Differenciated Rights In Liberal Theory.Ashgate Publishing, 2006. 25-28.

9. Kramer Mathew H, Simmonds N.E and Steiner Hilel.A Debate Over Rights.Oxford University Press, 1998 .195-198

10. Kapur Aanchal, Duvvury Nata. A Rights Based Approach To Realising The Economic and Social Rights Of Poor and MarginalisedWoman. International Center For Research On Women (2006) Accessed on March 15, 2013

11. Boliver Ligia .The Fundamentalism Of Dignity” in A Human Rights Message, edited by Swedish Institute (Stockholm: The Ministry Of Foreign Affairs Of Sweded, 1998) 29-30, mentioned in International Human Rights Internship Programme and Asia Forum For Human Rights and Development, “A Circle Of Rights :Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Activism, A Training Resource (Washington D.C :IHRIP) Accessed on 15 March, 2013

12. Office Of The United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights, “Declaration On The Rights Of Persons Belonging To National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities” General Assembly Resolution,47/135(18^th December,1992)

13. Nahar Emmanuel. Minority Rights In India: Christian Experiences and Apprehensions. Mainstream. December 23, 2006, Volume X1VNoo1.www.Mainstreamweekly.net/auteur

14. Goldman, Alan H. Justice and Reverse Discrimination. Princeton University Press, 1979. 149-168

15. Sowell Thomas. Affirmative Action Around The World: An Empirical Study. Yale University Press, 2004. 2

16. Beteille Andre. Distributive Justice and Institutional Well Being. Economic and Political Weekly (Annual Number, March 19. 591-599

17. Sowell Thomas.Affirmative Action Around The World: An Empirical Study.Yale University Press, 2004) pp 7-8

18. Joseph Sarah .Of Minorities and Majorities. Seminar Magazine. 25, June, 2001

Received on 18.06.2017

Modified on 25.06.2017

Accepted on 29.06.2017

Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 8(2): April- June, 2017, 164-171.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2017.00023.7