Universalism and Particularism: Exploring the nexus

Abstract

This paper endeavours to analyse the conflictual relation that the concepts of ‘Universalism’ and ‘Particularism’ share and how the debate informs our understanding of human rights. To study the concept further, the paper takes the case of the current COVID-19 pandemic to explore the tensions and possible assimilations between universalistic and particularistic frameworks using empirical evidence to explore the intersectional impact on human rights in current times.

The Hindutva Brand of Populist Politics and the Women Question

“…While the political movements following essentialist perspectives seek a unifying political ideal, which excludes many groups which are non-represented, their struggles unvoiced, thus reproducing the same tilted structure that works with the exclusion of the oppressed and the marginalized, to create a unanimous ‘ideal’ to aspire towards (Young, 2000). The intersectional examination, however, throws light on how the interactive dynamics of gender, class, caste, race and other systems of categorization duplicate subordination and discrimination in differential degrees, thus rejecting the idea of a single political subject in the universalist formulations, as against taking into account the particularist and local contours (Singh and Parihar, 2022).…”