But if you follow a world history argument, the discourse of universal rights and citizenship was universalized precisely in the efforts of non-Europeans. . . . The early #Caribbean school of world history . . . had already argued for the precocity of the Caribbean experience in the development of the modern world. . . . [T]he idea of universal rights was made universal not in the French Revolution, but in the struggle of the Black Jacobins in Haiti. This argument . . . demonstrates that the genealogy of universal rights isn’t purely Western; this idea comes to India via France AND Haiti.
– Mrinalini Sinha in interview with Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa, Part II https://www.jhiblog.org/2026/09/23/universal-rights-and-the-specters-of-indian-feminism-part-ii-an-interview-with-mrinalini-sinha/
