EQUALITY IS JUSTICE

 According to Meriam Webster, the word ‘equality’ means state of being equal in terms of status, rights and opportunities. The creation of Adam gave birth to the fight for equality, where the Lucifer did not abide by the rule of God to bow before a creation made out of mud and he was born out of fire, the rest is history as we all know it. Fire was thought to be of superior nature than mud. How can God ask Lucifer to bow before a creation made out of mud? A question that troubled our fallen angel. And from that time, the fight for superiority and inferiority begun and hence the inequality. This thought compromised the idea behind the creation of humankind. In reality, with the birth of human, fairness and justice was born. 

In the modern world, the French Revolution gave birth to Equality along with Liberty and Fraternity. Dr. Ambedkar, the Father of Indian Constitution used to call them Trinity of Unity, as these words can not be seen in silos. One word is meaningless without the other. In every society, be it ancient or modern, inequality did exist in one form or the other. 

But one question remains unanswered. What makes one think of being superior to its fellow humans? The Great Britain, ruled over entire world and wherever they ruled, had a same mindset the superiority of skin colour. The native Americans, the Red Indian, were considered inferior to them, Africans, Asians all faced the same kind of discrimination based on the skin colour. Mahatma Gandhi was thrown out of a train carriage inspite of carrying a first class ticket. The United States of America did get independence from the Britishers but people are still fighting for their right for equality. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi have one thing in common. They stood up against inequality. The women of America fought long enough to secure for their voting rights. The ideas of democracy, equality and freedom were central to the politics of Greeks but were all the citizens treated equal? 

 “Of all creatures who live and have intelligence, we women are the most miserable. [. . .] People say that we women lead a life without danger inside our homes, while men fight in war; but they are wrong. I would rather serve three times in battle than give birth once.”

Medea’s complaint, Athens, Greece, 431 BC (Euripides, Medea 230-51. G)

Medea’s words clearly shows the distressed condition of women of Ancient Greek society. They were kept under the dominance of their husband, had to pay dowry to the groom when getting married and had to bear the severe social and legal consequences in case of neglect of household duties. 

The eastern hemisphere is not kept aloof from these ideas. The society, here struggles with caste discrimination which leads to honour killing, hate crimes, bullying, mob lynching, suicides. Women are still not treated equal to men. People are discriminated on the basis of region, language, income status, sexual orientation, profession( like artists, sex workers), ethnicity, religion etc. 

Biases do exist and has got its roots penetrated deep into the society. These biases affects not only our ideologies or perception of others but also creates degradation of health, education, environment. It gives birth to crimes, threatens the social and economic lives of the people. 

In any nation, whatever be its political set up, Justice should be of paramount. The attack on George Floyd again sheds the light on our idea of equality. A man denied to get his food delivered from a man who belonged to a lower caste. The LGBTQ+ communities are fighting for their rights all over the world. They are fighting for the equality. Being born as a transgender in society is still considered as a bane. A child born to a sex worker has to fight hard to get into the mainstream society. Women are still not payed the same amount of salary as their male counterparts. The elderly people are not being given the dignity, respect and honour that they deserve. All these are crippling the society from within. 

“Are these issues too big too handle? Is there really any solution to this? The society exist in such a way that inequality is bound to exist, then why should we care? For any society to develop, stratification does happen and not everyone’s interest can be taken care of. Inequality is inevitable. We can not include everyone if we have to progress as a society.” These are the few statements we get to hear when we talk of solutions to reducing inequality but the reality is that inequality can be reduced. It is possible to take care of the needs of even the last man standing in the queue, we just have to mend our ways.

 If I were to explain this mathematically, Euclid’s axiom and Common Notion, Notion 1 explains this, which says that things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another. We were equal because that is fairness.

The world is more interconnected now. It has got a domino effect. If the problems are interconnected so are the solutions. In this unpredictable world, the only thing that is permanent is Change. Change of ideas, attitudes, policies and laws are some of the employable tools to reduce the inequality and provide for social and economic development of the world. Small steps at a time. Great efforts are needed to de escalate the rising graph of poverty, hunger, unemployment and environmental degradation. 

Empowering people at the grass root level, providing them with the adequate knowledge- social, economical, political, environmental, from the very tender age of their life is a very powerful tool to bring about the attitudinal change that is reciprocated in their actions and in the development of a society and world as a whole. Behalfism should be replaced with representation at every level of society. Elimination of discriminatory laws and ensuring the last mile connectivity should form the core of any policy making. 

Like it is said that Earth is but one family and all mankind its citizens, so to promote the welfare of its citizens, solidarity and togetherness is needed in order to ensure a just, libertarian and egalitarian society. Rights of every individual should be protected and their dignity be restored. 

“If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic and emotionally stable third kind of mankind, all races would be present” - Franz Boas.