As the term suggests, social equality signifies equal chance or opportunity to all for self-development as a human personality. It also envisages the absence of special privileges to anyone. Social equality means no one should be discriminated in the distribution of rights, privileges and opportunities based on birth, caste, religion, language, race, colour, gender or social status or similar social differentiations. Thus, social equality is a condition for meaningful enjoyment of civil, legal and political equality.
Demand for social equality can manifest in different ways. Demand for equality raised by the rising capitalist and industrial class in the eighteenth century Europe was aimed at rejecting special privileges enjoyed by the nobility and the aristocratic elements. Social equality could also manifest in the demand for provision of equal opportunity for acquiring capabilities and skills. Thus, social equality implies three main aspects: (i) removal of discrimination based on social status, (ii) absence of special privileges to few, and (iii) ensuring equality of opportunity in terms of acquiring education, etc. Social equality could be associated with ideas that developed under positive liberalism, social democracy and socialist thought in Europe. If we apply the doctrine of natural rights and human rights, the case for social equality becomes clear. The three famous declarations of rights have announced equality of rights to all human beings. The American Declaration announces that ‘all men are created equal’. The French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizens speaks that ‘Men are born and always continue free and equal in their rights’. The UN Universal Declaration asserts for ‘inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family’. Their declaration of equality implies social equality as well. The basic premise of social equality proposed by such declarations is human dignity and equality as human beings.
However, different grounds for social inequality exist or have existed in history. Let us consider the following forms of social inequality which have been rejected and the demand for social equality raised:
- Slavery in Africa, West Asia, Europe and America
- Untouchability in India
- Racial discrimination against the Blacks particularly in the USA
- Apartheid in Africa
- White man’s burden and colonial rule
- Social Darwinism as practised by Hitler against the Jews
- Gender-related inequalities and discriminations
Historically, slavery has been a time-tested means of labour. From the classical age to the twenty-first century, slavery has been used as a means to employ a section of humanity for extraction of surplus without remuneration. Aristotle justified slavery as not only a reflection of collective wisdom of generations, but also useful means for leisure of the master. On the other hand, Rousseau criticized slavery and argued against it because he felt that slavery is against the basic premise of being a human being. The Kantian philosophy that every individual should be treated not merely as means but also as an end would reject slavery as against humanity. Abraham Lincoln in the mid-nineteenth century became instrumental in abolishing slavery in the US.
Writing about development of slave trade, Braudel says, ‘The major phenomenon of the fifteenth century, and still more of the sixteenth, was the development of the trade in Black slaves.’41 He suggests that Black slave trade was prevalent between Africa and America in large scale and nearly 50,000 slaves reached America in the nineteenth century just before it was banned. Braudel further mentions that in 1830, the Sultan of Zanzibar claimed dues on 37,000 slaves a year. Most of slaves went to Cairo and Arabia. Looking at the scale of slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both West Asia and Europe/America, as hinted by Braudel, one wonders at the history of human helplessness amidst the dawn of modernity and claims of doctrinal equality advocated by religions. It is agonizing that while liberal order and capitalist economy was rising in Europe and America, in the nineteenth century, claiming the stewardship of modernity and progress, it was not without usefully tolerating slavery. On the other hand, both Islam and Christianity, the two religions, which advocated equality, barely did anything than tolerating slavery in the land where they were being practised. Slavery, in whatever form or wherever it exists and has existed in the past, is the ultimate form of social inequality. This is not only because it is predatory means of extracting economic gains out of somebody but also primarily, to treat a human being merely as a means.
Historically, in India the extreme form of social inequality expressed was untouchability. Untouchability refers to a practice as part of the caste system, which defines the rules and codes of segregation and social intercourse between those who claim twice-born high caste status and those who are at the bottom of the caste system. It is a concept of purity and impurity. At times, the concept of impurity was taken to absurdity and it was argued that not only physical contact, even touch of the shadow of someone who is untouchable would be enough to make the high caste impure. This doctrine has its scriptural supports and many attribute this to Manusmrti or Dharmashastra (The Laws of Manu) written by Manu considered as an ancient sage and lawgiver. The practice of untouchability can be considered as an extreme manifestation of social inequality. India has now abolished untouchability and has made it punishable.
Manu in his Dharmashastra and Kautilaya in his Arthasastra have mentioned about slaves also. Manu mentions seven kinds of slaves and says that the property or earnings a slave has belongs to the master. Kautilaya however, provides certain protection to slaves against certain mistreatments such as deceiving, rape of female slaves, etc.42
Black slavery and discrimination against Black people in USA has its own history. America took almost 90 years after its independence in 1776 to even abolish slavery on paper on 14 April 1865. After almost hundred years, on 28 August 1963, we see Martin Luther King speaking at Lincoln Memorial about the dream of fulfilment of the creed ‘…that all men are created equal.’43 Fight against racial discrimination and social inequality against the black people led to civil rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King which resulted in the Civil Right Acts of 1964–5. While Martin Luther King was leading the black civil rights movement in America, of Africa, Nelson Mandela led a resistance movement against apartheid. He and his party, the African National Congress (ANC) opposed the policy of racial segregation and discrimination between the white and the black known as apartheid. Mandela was charged under Suppression of Communism Act in 1963 and was imprisoned for 27 years though he denied that he was a communist and described himself as ‘African patriot’. After his release, the ANC under his leadership abolished apartheid and established social equality that racial discrimination had damaged.
Colonial rule by design promoted social inequality and discriminated between not only the natives and the rules, but also within the groups of natives. Colonial rule conferred special privileges on a few and created social inequality or at times promoted the existing social inequality to their own benefit. During the colonial rule, a doctrine of supposed morally and religiously high position of the white Europeans was advocated in the form of white man’s burden. The doctrine of white man’s burden implies ‘supposed responsibility of the Europeans and their descendants to impose their allegedly advanced civilization on the non-white original inhabitants of the territory they colonized.’44 This was a doctrine of arrogated cultural, moral, spiritual and scientific superiority of white people. While colonial rule was the political arm of this doctrine, Christian missionary activities in those days provided the religious justification for its implementation. Besides the superior–inferior relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, the natives were designated differently to create social inequality, for example, designating a group of castes or communities as ‘martial communities’ and others, as ‘brigandage’. Anti-colonial movements rejected the arrogated civilizational burden of the white people and argued for self-rule and regeneration of national culture.
Racial discriminations and slavery of Black people has been a historical fact. A new form of racial hatred manifested in the form of Nazism practised by Adolph Hitler. Hitler advocated the idea of racial purity and superiority of the German race. Using this idea, he alleged that the Jews were corrupting the German nation. He even vehemently opposed communism by charging it as a Jewish conspiracy led by Marx. Racial hatred of Hitler was manifested in a very organized form and the Jews were tortured, suffocated and killed in concentration camps. The political culmination of his policy of racial hatred against Jews was the implementation of the Nuremberg Law, 1935, which amongst others, deprived Jews of German citizenship. Hitler advocated racial superiority of the German race and believed that Jews being inferior and corrupting must be wiped out. He was a practitioner of social Darwinism and held that the German race, being the fittest, must survive.
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