By Pynshai Kupar M. Dkhar
Recently I came across a book by John Rawls ‘Theory of Justice’ which mentioned one philosophical thought that has lived rent free in my mind for more than a week now and that he terms this thought as “The Veil of Ignorance”. What Would You Do? Imagine that you have been given the most extraordinary responsibility imaginable. You are asked to build a society from scratch. You have the power to decide its laws, institutions, economy, education system, healthcare, taxation, rights and opportunities. You can decide what justice should look like and what rules should govern the lives of millions. But there is one condition. You will not know who you will be when society begins. You do not know whether you will be rich or poor. You do not know whether you will be powerful or powerless. You do not know whether you will be a man or a woman, able-bodied or differently abled, educated or uneducated, born into privilege or into deprivation. You do not know which community, caste, tribe, class or social group you will belong to. You do not even know whether you will be among those who make the rules or among those who have to live under them.
Now, what kind of society would you create? Would you prioritize protecting the most vulnerable? Would you reward skill, effort and merit above everything else? Or would you insist upon strict equality for everyone? Your answer may reveal more about your understanding of justice than you think. This thought experiment lies at the heart of the political philosophy of John Rawls in his book the Theory of Justice, who asked a deceptively simple but profoundly unsettling question, what would a truly fair society look like if we did not know where we ourselves would stand within it? Rawls called this condition the “veil of ignorance.” It is a mental device designed to strip away our personal interests and privileges before we decide the rules of society. And that is where the real test of fairness begins. Would You Still Believe in Your Principles If You Did Not Know Where You Would End Up?
Consider healthcare, would you design a system in which quality healthcare is available primarily to those who can afford it? Or would you ensure that even the poorest person has access to treatment when they are sick? Now consider education, would you allow the best institutions to be accessible primarily to those who already possess the financial and social advantages necessary to reach them? Or would you create mechanisms that ensure that a talented child born into poverty has a genuine opportunity to compete with a child born into privilege? Now consider taxation, would you argue that everyone should contribute exactly the same amount? Or would you accept that those who possess greater resources should contribute proportionately more so that society can provide opportunities and security for everyone? The answers become considerably harder when you imagine that you might be the person at the bottom rather than the person at the top.
That is the power of the veil of ignorance. It asks us to remove ourselves from the position we currently occupy and imagine that we could have been born anywhere in the social hierarchy, because if you knew beforehand that you would be wealthy, you might design a society that protects wealth. If you knew you would be powerful, you might design institutions that preserve power. If you knew you would be privileged, you might call the existing system “fair.” But if you had no idea where you would end up, you would have a very different reason to think carefully.
You might ask, what if I am the poorest person? What if I am the child who cannot afford a good education? What if I am the person denied an opportunity because of the circumstances of my birth? What if I am the person whose voice is too weak to be heard by those in power? And perhaps most importantly, what if I am the most vulnerable person in the society I am designing?
Rawls in his book Theory of Justice argued that rational individuals placed behind this veil would choose principles that protect basic liberties, guarantee genuine equality of opportunity and prevent social and economic inequalities from becoming instruments of oppression. This does not mean that everyone must have exactly the same income, ability or outcome. It means something more profound. Inequality should never be allowed to become an excuse for injustice.
A society may reward talent, effort, innovation and achievement. But the advantages that people enjoy should not be determined entirely by the circumstances into which they happened to be born. After all, nobody chooses their parents. Nobody chooses the family into which they are born. Nobody chooses their birthplace, their childhood circumstances or the opportunities available to them at birth.
Yet these accidents of birth can profoundly determine the trajectory of an entire life. That raises a difficult question, how much of what we call “merit” is actually the product of opportunity? The child who attends an excellent school, receives private tutoring, eats nutritious food and grows up in a secure home may indeed work hard. But so does the child who studies under a streetlight or a candle, works after school or college, struggles to afford books and grows up without the security of privilege. If both are judged solely by the final result, are we truly measuring merit? Or are we sometimes measuring the opportunities that came before the competition even began? Fairness Is Not the Same as Treating Everyone Identically. One of the greatest misunderstandings about justice is the belief that fairness necessarily means treating everyone exactly the same. It does not. Imagine two people trying to see over a wall to see what is beyond. One is tall. The other is short. Giving them both the same-sized box to climb on may be equal, but it may not be fair. Fairness may require giving the shorter person a larger box not to give them an unfair advantage, but to ensure that both can actually see. This is the deeper logic behind policies such as affirmative action, social welfare, universal healthcare, scholarships for disadvantaged communities and progressive taxation. They are not necessarily attempts to create privilege but at their best, they are attempts to correct the unequal starting conditions from which people enter society.
Equality asks: “Did everyone receive the same?” Equity asks: “Did everyone have a fair chance?” And justice asks an even deeper question, “What kind of society would I choose if I had no idea which side of inequality I would occupy?”
The Danger of Designing Society from the Top
Policies designed from positions of privilege can easily mistake existing advantages for deserved advantages. Those who have succeeded within a system often assume that the system itself must be fair, but success within a system does not necessarily prove that the system is just. A person who has always had access to good schools may believe that education is equally available to everyone. A person who has never experienced discrimination may believe that discrimination no longer exists. A person who has never worried about paying for medical bills may believe that healthcare institutions are simply a matter of personal responsibility. And those who have always possessed economic security may regard poverty as a failure of individual effort.
The veil of ignorance challenges all of these assumptions. It asks us to step outside our own experience. Do not design society according to the life you happened to receive. Design it according to the society you would be willing to live in without knowing which life you would receive. That is a much harder standard and perhaps a much fairer one.
Justice Is Not Charity
There is another important lesson here. Protecting the vulnerable should not be viewed merely as an act of kindness by the powerful. It is not charity, it is not generosity, it is not something that those at the top graciously give to those at the bottom but we must understand that it is a matter of justice.
A society that guarantees access to healthcare is not necessarily “helping the poor.” It is recognizing that illness can happen to anyone. A society that invests in disadvantaged children is not simply giving them favors, it is recognizing that none of us chose the circumstances of our birth. A society that protects workers, minorities, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups is not weakening itself. It is acknowledging that any of us could have been born into those circumstances. The veil of ignorance therefore transforms compassion into principle. You do not protect the vulnerable merely because you feel sorry for them. You protect them because, for all you know, you could be them.
Democracy Alone Does Not Guarantee Justice
We often assume or conclude that if a decision is made democratically, it must therefore be just, but democracy answers the question of who decides. It does not automatically answer the question of whether the decision is fair. A majority can still discriminate against a minority, a popular government can still create unjust laws, a democratic institution can still reproduce inequality. Justice requires something more than numbers. It requires principles, it requires institutions capable of protecting rights even when doing so is unpopular, it requires us to think beyond our immediate interests and ask whether the rules we create could withstand the test of impartiality and that is why the veil of ignorance remains so powerful. It forces us to confront a question that politics often encourages us to avoid, would I support this policy if I did not know whether I would benefit from it?
Imagine Starting Again
Now imagine that tomorrow everything begins again, you will be born into this society but you have no idea where? you may be born into wealth or poverty, you may be born in a city or a remote village, you may have access to the finest education or struggle to find a school. You may be healthy or live with a disability, you may belong to the majority, or to a marginalized minority. You may become a business owner or a daily-wage worker. You may become a minister or the person standing outside the minister’s office waiting to be heard. You may become a judge or the person seeking justice. You may become powerful or completely powerless. What rules would you write then? Would you still believe that opportunity should depend heavily on birth? Would you still believe that poverty is simply an individual’s failure? Would you still believe that those at the bottom should simply “work harder”? Would you still believe that equality means treating everyone identically regardless of where they started? Or would you design a society in which, regardless of where you landed, you would still have dignity, rights, opportunity and a genuine chance to build a meaningful life? Perhaps that is the ultimate test of justice.
Not whether a system is comfortable for those who already benefit from it. But whether it remains acceptable to us when we imagine ourselves among those who benefit the least. A truly just society does not begin by asking “What do I deserve?” It begins by asking “What rules would I accept if I had no idea who I would become?” because privilege is often accidental, birth is accidental, circumstance is accidental but justice is a choice. And perhaps the fairest society is not the one that promises that everyone will end up in the same place. Perhaps it is the one in which we would be willing to live anywhere in the social order even at the bottom because we know that the rules themselves are fair. A just society begins when we stop designing the world for the person we are and start designing it for the person we might have been.
