Human Security and Human Rights: Gandhian Perspectives

Security has long been understood as something that belongs to the state: armies, borders, and the machinery of national defence. But what happens when the state itself becomes a source of fear for ordinary people? This question sits at the heart of human security, a framework that shifts the focus of protection from the state to the individual. Long before this idea was formalised in policy circles, Mahatma Gandhi was already articulating a vision of security rooted in human dignity, welfare, and rights. Examining the relationship between human security and human rights through a Gandhian lens reveals how closely the two are woven together, and why Gandhi believed that no security worth having could come at the cost of human rights.

From state security to human security 🔗

For most of modern history, security studies focused almost entirely on protecting the state from external threats. The human security approach represents a clear departure from this orthodox view, placing individuals rather than governments at the centre of analysis. The turning point came in 1994, when the United Nations Development Programme introduced the concept in its Human Development Report.

The UNDP defined human security as safety from chronic threats such as hunger, disease, and repression, along with protection from sudden disruptions to daily life. It grouped these threats into seven interconnected categories: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. This was captured in two memorable phrases, “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want.”

What makes this framework relevant to human rights is its foundation. Human security is built on deep-rooted ideals of positive human rights and universal human development. In other words, the concept does not treat security and rights as separate goals. It treats the protection of rights as the very substance of what it means to be secure.

Why Gandhi distrusted state-centric security 🔗

Gandhi’s political thought anticipated this shift by several decades. He was deeply sceptical of a security model that prioritised the power of the state over the welfare of people. He saw the individual as possessing a soul and moral authority, while describing the state as a soulless machine sustained by violence.

This was not abstract theorising. Gandhi had witnessed how a powerful state could trample the rights of its people in the name of order and security. His response to the Rowlatt Act of 1919 illustrates this clearly. The legislation allowed authorities to detain suspects without trial, restrict the press, and conduct searches without warrants. For Gandhi, this was an assault on the civil liberties essential to human dignity. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre that followed confirmed his fear that unchecked state security could become a machinery of oppression.

This is precisely the concern that the modern human security framework raises. When security is measured only by the strength of borders and armies, the everyday threats faced by individuals, poverty, discrimination, hunger, and repression, are ignored. Gandhi’s critique pointed in the same direction long before the language of human security existed.

Dignity as the foundation of security 🔗

At the core of Gandhi’s vision was human dignity. He argued that there was no greater crime against humanity than disregarding the dignity of fellow citizens and treating them as sub-human. For Gandhi, the denial of dignity was itself an act of violence and a violation of the core of universal life.

This belief shaped his entire approach to security. A society could have a strong military and stable borders, yet still leave millions of its people insecure if they lived in poverty, faced caste-based humiliation, or were denied basic freedoms. True security, in this view, begins with ensuring that every person is treated with respect regardless of caste, creed, or gender.

Gandhi’s distinctive understanding of human rights 🔗

It is important to understand that Gandhi did not simply adopt the standard Western language of rights. His engagement with human rights was more complex and, in some ways, a deliberate intervention. Scholars note that Gandhi rejected the central premise of the 1948 Universal Declaration that human rights belong to people simply by virtue of their humanity. This may seem surprising given his lifelong struggle for the rights of the oppressed.

The reason lies in his emphasis on duties. In Gandhi’s framework, obligations took precedence over rights, and rights followed as a corollary to obligations properly discharged. He believed that every individual should act as a trustee, fulfilling responsibilities towards others before claiming entitlements. This duty-first approach was not a rejection of rights themselves but a different route to securing them.

This distinction matters for human security. The human security framework asks not only what people are entitled to, but what conditions must be created for them to live with dignity. Gandhi’s emphasis on duty was his way of building those conditions. He believed that a society where each person felt responsible for the welfare of others would naturally protect the rights of all.

Swaraj and the right to self-determination 🔗

Gandhi’s concept of swaraj, or self-rule, brings together security and rights in a single idea. Swaraj meant not only self-governance but also concern for the autonomy of others, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. It operated on two levels at once: the political independence of the nation and the moral self-governance of the individual.

For Gandhi, political freedom was the ultimate political right of any people. When a government enacted laws that robbed people of their liberty and dignity, citizens had not merely a right but a duty to resist. This linkage of the right to self-determination with the duty to resist injustice shows how Gandhi fused rights and security. A people who could not govern themselves could never be secure, and a people who were insecure could never truly exercise their rights.

Protecting the full spectrum of rights 🔗

One of the strongest connections between Gandhi’s thought and the human security model is the breadth of rights both seek to protect. Human security is not limited to physical safety. It covers economic, social, and cultural dimensions of life as well.

Gandhi’s approach to human rights was equally comprehensive. Analyses of his thought identify a wide range of concerns, including the right to self-determination, the right to life, the prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment, the right to work, the right to just conditions of work, and the right to social security. These map closely onto the categories of human security, from personal and political security to economic and food security.

His campaigns reflected this breadth. The fight against untouchability addressed community and social security. His advocacy for dignified labour and equitable resource distribution spoke to economic security. His insistence on self-sufficient village communities aimed at building a society where the majority would rule with due regard for the rights of minorities. Each of these reflects a holistic understanding of security that integrates rights into its very core.

Non-violence as a method of protection 🔗

Gandhi’s commitment to ahimsa, or non-violence, was not only a moral principle but also a practical method for protecting rights without creating new forms of insecurity. He understood that violence could lead to greater violence, making it a poor remedy for abuse. Through satyagraha, he sought to assert rights while maintaining the dignity of even those who denied them.

This is significant for the relationship between security and rights. Many security models justify the violation of rights in the name of protection. Gandhi argued the opposite. The means used to achieve security must themselves respect human dignity, or the security gained would be hollow. His methods went on to inspire civil rights movements around the world, demonstrating that rights could be secured through moral strength rather than force.

A model that strengthens rights frameworks 🔗

Bringing these threads together, the Gandhian vision offers a security model that builds on and strengthens existing human rights frameworks rather than competing with them. Where the state-centric model often treats rights as obstacles to security, Gandhi treated the protection of rights as the definition of security. Where conventional security thinking separates the safety of the state from the welfare of individuals, Gandhi insisted the two were inseparable.

This integration is exactly what the modern human security paradigm attempts to achieve. By placing dignity, welfare, and the full range of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights at the centre, both Gandhi and the human security framework reject the idea that people must trade their freedoms for safety. Instead, they argue that genuine security and genuine rights grow together, each making the other possible.

What do you think? Can a security model that puts duties before rights, as Gandhi proposed, still adequately protect the most vulnerable in a modern democracy? And in a world that still measures strength largely through military and state power, is Gandhi’s vision of dignity-centred security a realistic guide for policy, or an ideal we are still struggling to reach?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/human-security
2. https://www.e-ir.info/2014/07/05/a-critical-evaluation-of-the-concept-of-human-security/
3. https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents/human-security.human-security
4. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/aligarh-muslim-university/later-modern-political-thought-of-the-west-and-indian-political-thought/gandhi-on-rights-and-duty/22472016
5. https://gandhi.study/human-rights-indian-perspective/gandhi-right-rebel-civil-political/
6. https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/12/mahatma-gandhis-role-in-championing-human-rights-and-human-dignity/
7. https://academic.oup.com/book/10124/chapter/157633599
8. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/63124/2/Unit-5.pdf
9. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3604024
10. https://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/radhakrishnan3.php