I feel very honoured and also very happy to be
here, back in Dhaka, my ancestral town, and among
friends whom I greatly admire and like. And, yet,
it is also a very sad occasion for me: it is
impossibly hard to get used to the idea that the
dynamic and visionary friend, Salma Sobhan, who
lit up our lives so profoundly, is not with us —
and will not be with us again. It is, however,
also an occasion of very great pride for us, for
having known so wonderful a human being, whose
life and ideas still inspire us.

In an open letter addressed to Salma just after
her death, her followers in the International
Solidarity Network of Women Living Under Muslim
Laws told her — and us — how she had influenced
the thoughts, commitments and struggles of her
friends and associates. I am taking the liberty
of quoting from that immensely moving document:

"Our very vocabulary in WLUML is coloured by
Salma-isms. This is not just because, as Zari
says, Salma had the light touch of unobtrusive
leadership. Nor is it just because, as Vahida
says, Salma had the brilliance that allowed her
to keep track of discussions even when seemingly
dozing off — then suddenly would bounce back
with incisive inputs and contributions while
others — seemingly awake — struggled with the
issue at hand. In fact, the Salma-isms came from
that incredible combination of a vast fount of
knowledge, situation-perfect analogies and
humour. Always that humour and mischievous smile."

I first saw that mischievous smile — and Salma’s
gentle humour — more than fifty years ago, in
October 1955, when she had just arrived at
Cambridge as an undergraduate. Rehman Sobhan and I were then working for — in fact running — the
active South Asian students’ society called the
Majlis: I think Rehman was the president, and I
was the general secretary. We were then busy
recruiting fresh members from those arriving from
the subcontinent. So Rehman and I went to see
Salma, in her college, to persuade her to join
the Majlis. Salma smiled as Rehman unleashed his
well-rehearsed chain of arguments on why a newly
arrived South Asian at Cambridge must join the
Majlis immediately, or else her life would be
culturally and politically ruined.

Salma listened and was clearly not entirely
averse to signing up (and that, indeed, she did),
but she was not persuaded by Rehman’s hard sell:
Rehman learned, I imagine, to be more influential
later on. On that occasion though, more than
fifty years ago, there was scepticism in Salma’s
eyes, but friendliness too, as if she stood far
ahead and looked back at us with tolerance and
with a smile of unconcealed amusement.

I was not aware then, of course, how momentous a
meeting that would prove to be for Rehman
Sobhan’s own life, and for the lives of a great
many other people in the subcontinent, and in the
world, as Salma would go on to join Rehman in
enterprises far larger, and far more momentous,
than our tiny little Majlis on the banks of the
tiny little Cam. The Meghna, if I may invoke the
mighty river of Bengal, of her political vision
and intellectual leadership would come with
abandon in the decades to follow.

So what was this intellectual Meghna? What power
made Salma Sobhan’s ideas so profound and her
influence so strong? To answer these questions, I
must distinguish between the implicit force of
Salma’s life and example, and the explicit
influence of her reasoning and active leadership.
On the first — Salma’s life and example — she
exploded many myths that impoverish social
perceptions and that continue, alas, today to
make the contemporary world unnecessarily
flammable. Chief among the myths is the
much-touted belief that our lives must be
determined by the singular identity of the
community in which we are born — an automatic
priority of an inherited identity about which we
have no choice whatsoever.

Salma Ikramullah, as I knew her first, had
something to tell the champions of choiceless
cultural destiny through the chosen life she went
on to lead. She also had something to tell the
political sectarians who try to persuade us that
our religious identity must overpower every other
affiliation, association or affection we may
have. Her life is a refutation of that mindless
celebration of unreasoning singular loyalty that
has come recently from religious warriors —
Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, and others.

Her life had a message also for the confused
cultural theorists who try to confine us into
little closed boxes of extraordinarily gross
identities of civilizational categories, and also
for anthropological reductionists who insist that
we are the creatures of singular identities that
are not subject to reasoning and choice but which
we “discover” — that magic word of identity
politics and of rigidly communitarian philosophy.

Salma was born into the top layer of Pakistani
aristocracy and political elite. Liberal and
broad-minded as her own family was, she still had
to take a huge leap when she chose to identify
with the cause of the freedom of Bangladesh.
Reasoning and reflected choice were central to
her life, not passive acceptance of societal
“unfreedoms” that the politics of confusion
imposes on less courageous and less clear-headed
human beings. Also, as someone who was a devout
Muslim (when she was staying with my mother for a
few days in our home, Pratichi, in Santiniketan,
my mother wrote to me in England to say how
admirable and inspiring she found Salma’s gentle
religiosity), Salma also showed with great
clarity that religious identity — important as
it can be on its own — does not obliterate every
other affiliation and attachment that we have,
related to class, gender, culture, citizenship,
political commitment, or personal friendship, nor
eclipse our ability to be guided by reason, if we
so choose.

This is an intellectual assertion of immensely
powerful reach in the contemporary world — a
world that has been made so poisonous by the
cultivation of unchosen singular identities of
one kind or another. We are constantly pushed,
today, by ferocious patrons of religious politics
who call us constantly to battle. We are also
pushed by the intellectual fog of civilizational
categorizers who place us into sealed boxes of
“the Muslim world,” “the Hindu world,” "the
Judeo-Christian Western world," and so on, with
high theory joining hands, if only implicitly,
with very low politics.

And we are also diverted into totally
counterproductive initiatives of Western national
politics which cannot go beyond seeing us as
being defined entirely by religion, with
confounded political leaders interpreting people
of diverse ancestries simply through religious
classification. This is well exemplified by the
alarming British official attempts at defining
people in contemporary Britain by placing them
exclusively in pre-determined fixed categories
such as “British Muslims,” “British Hindus,” and
such, in addition, of course, to old Brits (there
is no difference in this classification between a
Bangladeshi Muslim and a Sudanese or Saudi
Arabian or Somali Muslim).

Salma’s determination to lead an “examined life”
(that great Socratic virtue), based on reflected
choices, constituted an emphatic assertion of the
power of humanity and reasoned action, rather
than blind — or imposed — passivity. We have to
follow Salma’s lead in refusing to be drawn into
the destructive fury of assigned — and
unreasoned — identities in which "confused
armies,“to use Matthew Arnold’s graphic phrase,”clash by night."

If Salma had a great deal to teach us against
blind identity politics, gross cultural
determinism and unnecessary social disaffection
generated by intellectual confusion, she also had
much to teach us about the nature and reach of
societal inequality in general and gender
inequality in particular. As an inspiring and
immensely admired teacher in Dhaka University’s
Law Department, Salma also had fresh ideas to
offer on the importance of human rights,
including the rights of women, and she also had
much to say on the ways and means of fighting
against — and overcoming — social injustice.

On the important issue of gender inequality,
Salma Sobhan brought about a remarkable
enrichment of the gender perspective and feminist
understanding of social inequalities in
Bangladesh and also elsewhere. The Ain O Salish
Kendra she founded here offered a much deeper
analysis of the roots of deprivation of
disadvantaged people, including afflicted women.
The work of this remarkable institution still
draws on the clarity and reach of Salma’s
discernment of social disparity in general and
gender inequality in particular.

While fresh legislation is often needed to
guarantee the rights of those who have very few
recognised rights, even the existing legal
opportunities that can help if used may not be
effectively usable because of other handicaps,
like penury or illiteracy, which can prevent
downtrodden people from invoking and utilizing
the protective force of even the existing law (if
you cannot read what the law says, you are
inescapably impaired from using that law).

Along with her friends and colleagues — Hameeda
Hossain and others — Salma laid the foundations
of a comprehensive approach to resisting human
rights violations and defending the claims of the
most disadvantaged members of the society. ASK —
Ain O Salish Kendra — with its intellectual
power and practical commitment, remains a lasting
monument to Salma’s vision and initiative.

In paying my own tribute to Salma’s ideas and
intellectual leadership, I shall devote the rest
of this talk to some observations of my own, both
on gender inequality and on human rights. They
relate closely to Salma’s vision. Central to
these perspectives is the idea of human agency,
including women’s agency. My own understanding of
this general idea has been much influenced by
Salma’s thoughts, and the force of her practical
work.

I begin with the question of gender justice.
Salma’s leadership and initiatives can be seen as
parts of a huge change that has occurred in
feminist understanding and action in recent times
across the world, in dealing with social
deprivation in general and women’s deprivation in
particular. This involves a change from the
initial concentration of women’s movements
exclusively on women’s well-being to a newer and
more activist focus on women’s agency in the
broadest sense.

The appreciation of women’s agency involves, I
think, an important evolution of the basic nature
of women’s movements across the world. Not long
ago, the tasks faced by these movements were
primarily aimed at working towards achieving
better treatment for women — a more square deal.
The concentration was mainly on women’s
well-being, and it was, of course, a much needed
corrective after centuries of neglect of women’s
interests in the understanding of the well-being
of society.

The objectives have, however, gradually evolved
and broadened from this “welfarist” focus to
incorporate — and emphasize — the active role
of women’s agency. Rather than being seen as
passive targets of welfare-enhancing help, women
can be seen in this perspective as active agents
of change: the dynamic promoters of social
transformations that can alter the lives of both
women and men.

It is easy to miss the significance of this
change in perspective because of the overlap
between the two approaches that concentrate
respectively on well-being and agency. The active
agency of women cannot, in any serious way,
ignore the urgency of rectifying many
inequalities that blight the well-being of women
and subject them to unequal treatment; thus the
agency role must be much concerned with women’s
well-being also. When Ain O Salish Kendra, or ASK
as it is often called, tries to help women to
realize and achieve what they should get through
more powerful use of legal and political
opportunities, it tries to bolster women’s
agency, and through that it can have far-reaching
effects on women’s own well-being as well.

Similarly, coming from the other end, any
practical attempt at enhancing the well-being of
women cannot but draw on the agency of women
themselves in bringing about such changes. For
example, Muhammad Yunus’s rightly celebrated
initiatives through the Grameen Bank movement,
which have recently received the recognition they
strongly deserve in the Nobel Prize for Peace,
have been able to help women mainly through
strengthening women’s own agency through
micro-credit.

The same can be said of the many different
avenues, from education to employment, which have
been part of the initiatives of BRAC, led by
Fazle Hasan Abed, which are also internationally
celebrated, and will continue to receive,
rightly, much global acclaim. These, and other
activist movements in Bangladesh, have been able
to help women mainly though advancing women’s own
agency. Their effects can be seen not only in
women’s immediate well-being, but also in women’s
economic and social enterprise. There are also
huge indirect effects of women’s reasoned agency
on fertility rates (Bangladesh had a faster fall
in the fertility rate than almost any other
country in the world), and on the survival of
children, and even on the nature of political and
social discourse in this remarkable country.

Thus, we have to recognize the dual regularities
that (1) the well-being aspect and the agency
aspect of women’s lives and works inevitably have
a substantial intersection, and (2) yet they
cannot but be different at a foundational level,
since the role of a person as an “agent” is
fundamentally different from the role of the same
person as a “patient.” The fact that the agent
may have to see herself as a patient as well does
not alter the additional modalities and
responsibilities that are inescapably associated
with the agency of a person. There is a very
important conceptual distinction here.

The agency issue relates, in fact, to the
medieval distinction between an “agent” and a
“patient,” and I would argue that the view of
women as agents of change — not just as patients
whose interests deserve support — is critically
important for the broadening of “women’s agenda.”
A patient is a person whose well-being should
interest others, and who needs the help of people
in general. An agent, on the other hand, has an
active role in pursuing whatever goals she has
reasons to support and promote. These goals can
be very broad, taking us well beyond the concern
with the agent’s own well-being.

The focusing on the agency role is central to
recognizing people as responsible persons. Not
only are we well or ill, but also we act — or
refuse to act — on the basis of our reasoning.
We, women and men, have to take responsibility
for doing things, or not doing them. It makes a
difference, and we have to take note of that
difference. This elementary acknowledgment —
though simple enough in principle — can be
exacting in its implications, both to social
analysis and to practical reason and action.

Of course, the most immediate argument for
focusing on women’s agency may be precisely the
role that such an agency can play in removing the
iniquities that depress the well-being of women.
Empirical work in recent years has brought out
very clearly how the relative respect and regard
for women’s well-being is strongly influenced by
such variables as women’s ability to earn an
independent income, to find employment outside
the home, to have ownership rights, and to have
literacy and be educated participants in
decisions within and outside the family. Indeed,
even the survival disadvantage of women compared
with men in developing countries seems to go down
sharply — and may even get eliminated — as
progress is made in these agency aspects.

The altered focus of women’s movements is, thus,
a crucial addition to previous concerns; it is
not a rejection of those concerns. The old
concentration on the well-being of women, or to
be more exact, on the “ill-being” of women was
not, of course, pointless. The relative
deprivations in the well-being of women were —
and are — certainly present in the world in
which we live, and are clearly important for
social justice, including justice for women. For
example, there is plenty of evidence that
identify the biologically “contrary” — socially
generated — “excess mortality” of women in Asia
and North Africa (with gigantic numbers of
“missing women” — “missing” in the sense of
being dead as a result of gender bias in the
distribution of health care and other
necessities).

That problem is unquestionably important for the
well-being — indeed, even the survival — of
women, and cannot but figure prominently in
exposing the treatment of women as "less than
equal." There are also pervasive indications of
culturally neglected needs of women across the
world. There are excellent reasons for bringing
these deprivations to light, and to keep the
removal of these iniquities very firmly on the
agenda: women are certainly the victims of
various social iniquities.

But it is also the case that the limited role of
women’s active agency seriously afflicts the
lives of all people — men as well as women,
children as well as adults. While there is every
reason not to slacken the concern about women’s
well-being and ill-being, and to continue to pay
attention to the sufferings and deprivations of
women, there is also an urgent and basic
necessity, particularly at this time, to take an
agent-oriented approach to the women’s agenda.

What began as an inquiry into women’s passive
misfortunes has gradually been transformed into
an analysis of women’s active capability to make
the world a more liveable place. Salma Sobhan’s
own contributions can be seen in the perspective
of this broad development — a global change that
is still gathering momentum across the world.

I turn now to the subject of human rights. In
fact, there is quite of a lot of similarity
between the agency perspective, that has been so
important for the recent successes of women’s
movements, and the importance of taking an
adequately broad approach to human rights (well
beyond the limits of formal laws), which has been
a subject of classic arguments, going back at
least to the eighteenth century. I will also
argue why and how a heterodox woman thinker,
namely Mary Wollstonecraft (in many ways a very
similar human being to Salma Sobhan), has been
quite central to both, the theory of women’s
agency and the development of an adequately broad
view of human rights in general.

Despite the tremendous appeal of the idea of
human rights, it is seen by many legal and
political theorists as intellectually frail and
lacking in foundation and, perhaps, even in
coherence and cogency. It is certainly true that
frequent use of the language of "rights of all
human beings," which can be seen in many
practical arguments and pronouncements, has not
been adequately matched by critical scrutiny of
the basis and congruity of the underlying
concepts.

This is partly because the invoking of human
rights tends to come mostly from those who are
more concerned with changing the world than with
interpreting it, to use a distinction made famous
by that pure theorist turned political leader,
Karl Marx. In this contrast, there can be a
stirring appeal, on one side, and deep conceptual
scepticism, on the other. Underlying that
scepticism is the question: what exactly are
human rights, and why do we need them?

I have tried to present a particular approach to
the discipline of human rights in two essays in
recent years, and I shall take the liberty of
drawing on the arguments developed there. In the
interpretation pursued there, I would argue that
human rights are best seen as articulations of a
commitment in social ethics, comparable to — but
very different from — accepting utilitarian
reasoning. Like other ethical tenets, human
rights can, of course, be disputed, but the claim
is that they will survive open and informed
scrutiny. Any universality that these claims have
is dependent on the opportunity of unobstructed
discussion.

Human rights are, thus, integrally related to
public reasoning that would occur in a
politically open — as opposed to an
authoritarian and regimented — society. The
relevance of human rights cannot, of course, be
rejected by pointing to the fact that in
societies in which free public discussion is not
allowed the discourse of human rights can be
easily stifled. The real test is the strength and
richness of that discourse when public discussion
is allowed, rather than being penalized by
censorship and incarceration — or worse.

This view contrasts with the more conventional
view of seeing human rights in primarily legal
terms, either as consequences of humane
legislation, or as precursors of legal rights.
Human rights may well be reflected in
legislation, and may also inspire legislation,
but this is a further fact, rather than a
defining characteristic of human rights
themselves.

The legal interpretations have appealed to many
for very understandable reasons. The concept of
legal rights is well established and the language
of rights — even human rights — is influenced
by legal terminology. The relation between human
rights and legal rights is, in fact, a subject
with some considerable history. The American
Declaration of Independence in 1776 took it to be
“self-evident” that everyone is "endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights," and
thirteen years later, in 1789, the French
declaration of “the rights of man” asserted that
"men are born and remain free and equal in
rights." These are clearly pre-legal claims — to
be reflected in law — not originating in law.

It did not, however, take Jeremy Bentham long, in
his “Anarchical Fallacies” written during 1791-2
(aimed specifically against the French "rights of
man"), to propose the total dismissal of all such
claims, precisely because they are not legally
based. Bentham insisted that "natural rights is
simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible
rights (an American phrase), rhetorical nonsense,
nonsense upon stilts.“He went on to explain:”Right, the substantive right, is the child of
law; from real laws come real rights; but from
imaginary laws, from “law of nature” [can come
only] “imaginary rights.”

It is easy to see that Bentham’s rejection of the
idea of natural “rights of man” depends
substantially on the rhetoric of privileged use
of the term of “rights” — seeing it in
specifically legal terms. However, insofar as
human rights are meant to be significant ethical
claims (pointing to what we owe to each other and
what claims we must take seriously), Bentham’s
diagnosis that these claims do not necessarily
have legal or institutional force — at least not
yet — is in fact correct but entirely irrelevant.

Indeed, even as Bentham was busy writing down his
dismissal of the “rights of man” in 1791-92, the
reach and range of ethical interpretations of
rights were being powerfully explored by Thomas
Paine’s “Rights of Man,” and by Mary
Wollstonecraft’s "A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral
Subjects," both published at the same time,
during 1791-92, though neither book seems to have
interested Jeremy Bentham. They should, however,
interest us.

Tom Paine was identifying what we would now call
“human rights” to guide our public efforts,
including efforts to give legal force to them
through new legislation (Tom Paine’s was the one
of the earliest voices demanding anti-poverty
legislation). In Tom Paine’s understanding, these
rights were not — as with Bentham — "children
of law,“but in fact”parents of law," providing
grounds for legislation — a point of view that
would receive support, two centuries later, from
the great Oxford philosopher of jurisprudence,
Herbert Hart.

Indeed, in a classic essay "Are There Any Natural
Rights?" (published in 1955), Herbert Hart has
argued that people "speak of their moral rights
mainly when advocating their incorporation in a
legal system." This is certainly one way in which
human rights have been invoked, and Hart’s
qualified defence of the idea, and usefulness of
human rights in this context, has been justly
influential. However, the more general point is
that whether or not these serious claims are
ideally legislated, there are also other ways of
promoting them, and these ways are part and
parcel of the understanding and realization of
human rights.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s work took note of this
broader point as well. She discussed elaborately
how women’s legitimate entitlements could be
promoted by a variety of processes, of which
legislation was only one, and need not even be
the principal one. We can see an immediate
similarity here with Salma Sobhan’s involvement
with literacy and education for women as a means
of the realization of their rights — even
legally established rights that may not otherwise
be utilized. The effectiveness of the moral
claims that constitute human rights — their
practical “vindication” (as Mary Wollstonecraft
called it) in addition to their ethical
acceptance — would depend on a variety of social
features, such as actual educational
arrangements, public campaign for behavioural
modification (for example modifying what we would
now call sexist behaviour), and so on. They could
radically transform the power and reach of
women’s agency.

In a sense Mary Wollstonecraft was pointing to
ways that provide powerful bases for the work
that many non-legislative organizations,
including international associations, citizen’s
organizations and developmental NGOs try to do —
often with good effect. The United Nations,
through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
made in 1948, paved the way for many constructive
global activities. That declaration did not give
the recognized human rights any legal status, and
the effectiveness of that momentous recognition
has come in other ways. The ways include fresh
legislation which an agreed recognition can
inspire (the UN declaration did, in fact,
motivate a number of new “human rights laws”
across the world), but also other efforts that
are supported and bolstered by the recognition of
some foundational claims as globally acknowledged
human rights.

Also, global NGOs (such as OXFAM, Save the
Children, Action Aid, Medicines Sans Frontiers,
and others) have been involved for a long time in
advancing human rights through actual programmes
in providing food or medicine or shelter, or by
helping to develop economic and social
opportunities, and also through public discussion
and advocacy, and through publicizing and
criticizing violations. These are all fields of
activity related to the commitments of Ain O
Salish Kendra.

To pursue the conceptual distinction, I should
also comment on the fact that some human rights
that are worth recognizing are not, it can
argued, good subjects for legislation at all, so
that the legal approach to human rights may be
even more limited than I have already argued. For
example, recognizing and defending a wife’s moral
right to be consulted in family decisions, even
in a traditionally sexist society, may well be
extremely important and can plausibly be seen as
a human right.

And yet the advocates of this human right who
emphasize, correctly, its far-reaching ethical
and political relevance would quite possibly
agree that it is not sensible to make this human
right into a “coercive legal rule” (perhaps with
the result that a husband would be handcuffed and
taken in custody if he were to fail to consult
his wife!). The necessary social change would
have to be brought about in other ways, including
through women’s education and economic and social
roles, which tend to relate in one way or another
to the strengthening of women’s agency.

It is this broad focus on agency that, I think,
Mary Wollstonecraft and Salma Sobhan shared. Each
advanced the theory and practice of strengthening
agency as a means of making human rights more
powerful and more fulfilled. Of course, they
worked in very different worlds. The Ain O Salish
Kendra, founded by Salma Sobhan, is active in the
specific context of Bangladesh and the developing
countries of today, whereas Mary Wollstonecraft’s
efforts related to the debates and programmes at
the time of the French Revolution in Europe and
US independence in America. But there is a very
firm conceptual as well as practical connection
between the two approaches.

Since I am much impressed and influenced by both
the approaches, and also admire both Mary
Wollstonecraft’s and Salma Sobhan’s respective
visions, I thought I should end tonight by
pointing to the commonality of ideas that link
these two very great women. There is a connection
there, in the understanding of the relation
between agency, human rights and the removal of
inequality that needs to be remembered well and
used even more extensively. I feel extremely
fortunate to have had the opportunity to give the
Salma Sobhan Memorial Lecture today, and I thank
you all for listening.