Teachings on Human Rights

What human rights protect

Human rights are basic freedoms and entitlements that belong to everyone because they are human. They are not rewards for good behaviour, membership of a particular religion or social status. Their universal nature means that they apply across religious and national boundaries.

Their purpose is to protect human dignity: each person’s worth and their claim to respectful treatment. Examples include freedom of religion and belief, freedom of expression and equality under the law. Freedom of belief protects both someone who practises a religion and someone who chooses not to believe in God. Equality under the law means that neither should receive inferior treatment simply because of their beliefs.

An important distinction is between having rights and having those rights protected by law. Someone may argue that people possess rights even when a government refuses to recognise them. Laws provide a means of protecting rights; they do not necessarily create the worth on which those rights rest.

Why Sikhs might see human rights as a religious duty

Sikh support for human rights can begin with belief in God as the creator of everyone. The Guru Granth Sahib teaches: ‘All beings and creatures are His; He belongs to all’ (425). If everyone belongs to the same creator, religious identity cannot justify treating some people as less worthy than others.

Another teaching is: ‘Recognise the Lord’s Light (Spirit) within all’ (Guru Granth Sahib 349). This connects respect for people with respect for God. Protecting someone from degrading treatment recognises the divine light within them, while kindness towards others expresses reverence for God.

Guru Granth Sahib 300 teaches: ‘The Lord is kind to and compassionate to all beings and creatures. His Protecting Hand is over all.’ Sikhs can follow God’s example of universal love by respecting all human life and protecting people from harm. The emphasis on all matters: compassion should not depend on someone’s religion or background. Supporting human rights puts this teaching into practice by defending everyone’s dignity and freedom, not just those of one’s own community.

These beliefs give human rights practical importance. Protecting another person’s freedom or dignity is not merely obeying a government’s rules: it can be part of living faithfully as a Sikh. The protection should extend to non-Sikhs as well as Sikhs.

Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom in defence of Hindus’ religious freedom provides a concrete example. Its relevance is that he defended another community’s ability to practise its religion, rather than only protecting his own. It supports the argument that freedom of religion should be universal.

Different Sikh views about the need for rights

Sikhs can agree that people deserve respect while disagreeing about the importance of formal human-rights frameworks.

One response is that legal protection is essential because goodwill alone cannot prevent oppression. Rights give public recognition to people’s dignity and provide standards against which governments and other powerful institutions can be judged. From this perspective, campaigning for rights puts Sikh teachings into action.

Another response places greater emphasis on the religious basis of human worth. Some Sikhs argue that rights belong to people because God created them, not because a law grants them. They may therefore prioritise teaching people to recognise each other’s worth in God’s eyes rather than defending every legal formulation of rights. This is a disagreement about the foundation and means of protection, not necessarily a rejection of human dignity.

Some Sikhs may also give greater priority to spiritual development and eventual unity with God than to human-rights campaigning in an imperfect world. A contrasting Sikh response is that spiritual life should include active resistance to injustice: defending the vulnerable is itself a way of serving God. Guru Tegh Bahadur’s example strengthens this argument for action.

Applying individual rights can create disagreement

Broad support for human rights does not mean agreement about every application. Marriage is one example. Some Sikhs object to extending marriage rights to same-sex couples because they believe this conflicts with their religious understanding of marriage. Others may emphasise equal dignity and argue that people should not be denied civil rights because of their sexuality.

The problem is a possible conflict between an individual’s claim to equal treatment and a religious community’s understanding of its teachings. It is useful to distinguish civil marriage, recognised by the state, from a religious marriage ceremony. Supporting equal civil rights does not automatically settle what a religious community should be required to do in its own ceremonies.

This shows why evaluating human rights requires more than saying that everyone should be equal. The difficult question is how to protect individual dignity while also respecting religious freedom, and whether a claimed religious freedom would unfairly restrict someone else’s rights.

How situation ethics supports human rights

Situation ethics judges a decision by the most loving outcome in its particular circumstances. Applied to human rights, it supports protecting people from cruelty, exclusion and degrading treatment because doing so expresses care for their wellbeing.

For example, defending someone’s freedom to practise a different religion can protect them from fear and oppression. A situation-ethics argument would support this because the loving response concerns the person’s needs, not whether their beliefs match one’s own.

This approach can reinforce Sikh duties of kindness and protection. However, it can also create tension where a Sikh believes a religious teaching must guide conduct even when another person argues that making an exception would be more loving. Evaluating this approach involves asking both what harm a decision prevents and whether its understanding of love adequately respects everyone affected.

Non-religious arguments and Sikh responses

Atheism means not believing in God or gods; it is not a complete moral system. An atheist can support human rights without accepting that God is their source. Humanism offers a developed non-religious argument: our shared humanity, capacity to suffer and need for wellbeing give us reasons to protect each other.

Humanists use empathy, reason and the consequences of actions to judge moral choices. They support rights across differences of religion, nationality, gender and sexuality. From this perspective, protecting freedom and preventing harm do not require belief in a divine creator.

A Sikh response can agree with the practical aim while offering a different foundation: people deserve protection because they are created by God and contain God’s light. The two views may therefore cooperate in defending rights without agreeing about why human beings possess them.

Humanists also commonly support secularism. They argue that neutral public institutions and equal treatment under the law protect religious and non-religious people alike. Sikhs can support this protection of freedom of belief. However, some Sikhs argue that religion should still inform public action against injustice, rather than being excluded from political life. Equal treatment by the state and religiously motivated campaigning are not necessarily incompatible.

Reaching a justified judgement

A strong case for Sikh support of human rights is that universal protection follows from recognising God’s light in everyone and following God’s compassion towards all, as taught in Guru Granth Sahib 300. Defending others’ freedom also has a powerful Sikh example. The strongest qualification is that agreement about dignity does not remove disagreements over particular rights or their application.

A defensible conclusion is therefore that Sikhs have substantial religious reasons to protect human rights, while remaining able to question particular interpretations. That conclusion must still explain how any proposed restriction would respect the dignity of those affected, rather than treating religious disagreement alone as sufficient justification.