रास्ता पकड़ो

रास्ता पकड़ो 

और सुनो रास्ते का कहना 

यह बताता है सच का मतलब 

और मतलब का सच 

अहम्  यही है पैरों के नीचे 

और कहीं भ्रम अधिक है

नहीं है यह स्थिर और न ही मूक 

यह बताता है और ले जाता है  

वहाँ जो तुम्हारा है  गंतव्य है उचित 

नीरज कुमार झा  

Logic of Things

There is a logic of things and if that is not recognised and acted upon out of incompetence or ill will, it causes troubles and over time leads to crises. The incompetent analysts then see the outcomes of technical lapses as violations of great values. Ultimately it shows the crisis of intellectualism of the society in terms of quality.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Mythology

Historians take pain to underscore that their craft is not mythology, but the fact holds that mythology is far more important than what comes as history. Mythology encapsulates the lessons of good history, saves from the treacheries of bad history, and sustains life and its liveliness. Histories we have are useful or otherwise as tools or artefacts, but mythology lives and sustains people in their living.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Love

What is known as love has several components. The basic component is obviously biological, and another is rather more psychological, one loves to possess beings and things. At another level, love is caring in reciprocation. The first is bare nature, the last is prudence, the middle one is troublesome. It is the drive to possess, dominate, and spoil that get people in crass competition and causes envy and hatred. And as such love and hate are sides of the same coin. Anyway, the love, the desirable love, is one gets into by being enlightened enough to value life and that person loves every being and thing which make our life.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Poverty

Poverty is not a natural human state. It is purely political. Political doctrines as such, and misplaced, misconstrued doctrines in particular, and doctrines with the hidden design for domination drive people to poverty. In India, over centuries generations of people lost what could have been the life of prosperity and happiness. The sheer prolonged deprivation made them see virtue in poverty and hunger. They made a religion of non-possession. Nothing can be more tragic than this but it remains a state of wrongful politics. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Social Media

Mankind's one of the greatest gifts to self is social media. It empowers people almost universally to speak to others from a public platform, which hitherto was a privilege for only a few. Though this leaves the refined gentry aghast as they see the uninformed, unformed, vulgar, and brazen opinions flood the space. But, sometimes these indecent elements speak what is critically required to be spoken and the wise people invariably refrain from saying those critical words. We, the ordinary folks, must be supportive of making the space as open and accessible as possible. We must always try to clean the space but must not stop one from dirtying it. They too help.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Speaking

Speaking is the prime enabler of being. Speaking to self is equally important as one knows oneself better.

Niraj Kumar Jha

शिक्षण, प्रशिक्षण, और बोधसंचकन

व्यक्तियों का सामाजिक भूमिकाओं में स्थानन हेतु शिक्षण, प्रशिक्षण, और बोध-संचकन का भूमिका के अनुसार भिन्न उपादेयताएँ हैं। इनका विचारहीन मिश्रण औपचारिक समाजीकरण के अभिकरणों के उपक्रम को विफल कर देता है। व्यवस्था का प्रधान भाग एक का ही होना सार्थक है, और अन्य दो पूरक की स्थिति में हो सकते हैं। प्रथम परीक्षण हेतु योग्यता प्रदान करना, दूसरा कार्य-साधन के कौशल को प्रकृतिस्थ कराना, और अंतिम ध्येय के निमित्त व्यक्ति को साँचे में ढालना है। 

राजनीतिक प्रणालियाँ राजनीतिक समाजीकरण के विशिष्ट क्षेत्र में अपने संविधान के अनुरूप इनमें से किसी एक का चयन करती है। सर्वजन व्यवस्था शिक्षण, विशिष्टजन व्यवस्था  प्रशिक्षण, तथा सर्वाधिकारी व्यवस्था बोधसंचकन का माध्यम के रूप में उपयोग करती है। 

नीरज कुमार झा

क्रांति और उत्तरक्रांति काल की तैयारी

यह अहसास नहीं हो पाता, क्योंकि इस प्रक्रिया को हम जी रहे हैं, कि हम एक विश्वव्यापी और अभी तक की विश्व की सबसे बड़ी क्रांति के दौर से गुजर रहे हैं। और, हम जितना सफर कर चुके हैं, उसका प्रभाव हमारे जीवन पर पूर्व की अनेक क्रांतियों से ज्यादा हो चुका है। साथ ही यह भी तथ्य है कि यह शुरुआत भर है।

 

यह क्रांति हिंसा पर आधारित नहीं है लेकिन इसके सभी आयाम निरापद नहीं हैं और होंगे भी नहीं। साथ ही यह नए अवसरों और चुनौतियाँ को भी ला रही है और लाएगी। संतुलन में इसकी दिशा सकारात्मक और लोकहित में रहे इसके लिए समझ और निर्दिष्ट प्रयासों की आवश्यकता होगी।

 

एक नई दुनिया सामने है, जिसके बारे में हम नहीं जानते हैं और इसलिए इसके हेतु अधिक तैयारी की जरूरत है। इसके लिए जो हम निश्चित रूप से कर सकते हैं और करना चाहिए कि हम में से प्रत्येक योग्यता, क्षमता, सजगता, जिज्ञासा, सक्रियता, स्वायत्तता, आत्मनिर्भरता के विस्तार हेतु प्रयासरत रहे, जितना हो सके।

 

नीरज कुमार झा

If I say something unethical, then forget the fear and stop me.

Human beings are beings of ideas. They generate ideas, and ideas, in turn, create human beings. The ideas held by men determine the quality of their living and their state: noble, ignoble, or pitiable. The men of ideas thus are at the helm of regenerating human beings, each of them exclusively and all of them collectively, but ideas often overwhelm people of any generation or any location. Many ideas have a larger than life presence as they evolve and stay inputted from across spaces and times, and defended by people having a stake in them. Such ideas generally get a good number ideating in confirmation, and more worryingly these even trick an even greater number of well-meaning people. Everything is fine if an idea is fine, but it is singularly tragic if not so. The erroneous ideas continue to wreak havoc on people's lives and most people fault themselves for not getting the ideas correct. A good idea therefore never belittles any person it seeks to hold it or not even one who may hold the same. A good idea must equip its prospective adherent to examine itself.

While I was writing this, this suddenly came to my mind. Listen to the Supreme Lord speak and find the perfect illustration of how a good idea is rendered to. (Goswami's rendition follows its google translation.)

एक बार रघुनाथ बोलाए। गुर द्विज पुरबासी सब आए॥

बैठे गुर मुनि अरु द्विज सज्जन। बोले बचन भगत भव भंजन॥1॥

सुनहु सकल पुरजन मम बानी। कहउँ न कछु ममता उर आनी॥

नहिं अनीति नहिं कछु प्रभुताई। सुनहु करहु जो तुम्हहि सोहाई॥2॥

सोइ सेवक प्रियतम मम सोई। मम अनुसासन मानै जोई॥

जौं अनीति कछु भाषौं भाई। तौ मोहि बरजहु भय बिसराई॥3॥

Once the Guru Vashishthji, Brahmins and all other residents of the city, who were called by Shri Raghunathji, came to the meeting. When the guru, sage, brahmin and all other gentlemen sat down properly, then Shri Ramji, the one who eradicated the birth and death of the devotees, spoke the words.

O all city dwellers! Listen to me I do not say this out of any affection in my heart. I do not speak of immorality, nor do I have any authority in it, so (leaving hesitation and fear, paying attention) listen to my words and (then) if you like it, then do accordingly!॥2॥

He is my servant and he is the beloved, who obeys me. Hey brother! If I say something unethical, then forget the fear and stop me.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Dogmatic Liberalism

Among others but primarily, liberalism is the recognition and allowance of man: his existence, autonomy, agency; and the institution of man. The realisation of men of their being dawned upon the West after prolonged annihilation campaigns on the part of one or another grouping. 

The realisation of being led them to see and fashion their collective life objectively. In the process, however, they retained as was quite natural, their ethnic, racial, and civilizational moorings, and among the traits so held and which drove their agency was othering and dominating the other. 

The good liberal ideas dictated them to accept the others when they too rose to claim their humanity against the domination of the West. But, what I seek to underscore here, they while recognising the others and their ways, whether by goodwill or having no other choice,  make a dogma of liberalism too. Their latent approval of their ethnicity and civilization leads them to see equal merit in others' ethnic ways and civilizational values. Not to say that there is no equal merit but what the West had attained: objectivism, they too compromised that in the recognition of others. More tragically, when they were at the peak of their hegemony, just after their successful elimination of the monstrosity of Bolshevism, they stayed away from making objectivism the global order. And now, they are again back to the 'an eye for an eye' age. This is not to blame the West alone but being resourceful, and that at the cost of others, they owed more to the world. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Internet Capitalism

How would internet capitalism drive the world? What Anderson's print capitalism created appropriated radio and television. Now, it's hugely different.

 

#Internet_Capitalism

Niraj Kumar Jha

Online Histories

One way of looking at history, i.e. accounting of past, maybe that it is how ordinarily a person or community pictures the past of the areas of their concern. This laymen's picturization receives only derision from professional historians castigating the picture as distorted or fake. But I wonder how there can be an objective telling of the past when we do not have an objective account of the events taking place this day, yesterday or a year ago despite many happenings having video records. Historians say they take up issues only when things settle down over time. And yet, an ordinary mortal does not find any help from the professional historians who with their different and often conflicting historiographies only confuse. Only an adept scholar (other than a historian believing in one's exclusive craft or historiography) can have some sense of the past from the historians' narratives and the wisdom so acquired says only that the questions are too complex to have a clear answer. Nonetheless, the human mind seeks some finality against what is the human predicament and thus human beings tend to draw a neat and vivid picture of the past too in their minds, no matter how hard historians try to make the past complicated.

In this age when there is a glut of histories or imageries of the past online, there is literally mayhem on the platform. I believe that things are being settled now thus online no matter how acrimonious they may be, and at the same time, these cut actual conflicts among people with the potential of erupting into violent conflicts. It is not to say there are no ripple effects from online to offline but on the whole, these are minuscule what could have happened otherwise. One must scan the data of violent conflicts on such accounts of the past to realise the fact of the matter.

Now, I come to another, the concluding point. These are the high times of histories' surge, which these online platforms have let these be so. But, after sometimes I feel that this media would dehistoricize the popular consciousness. This internet capitalism would cause not the end of history, as seen as happened earlier, but there would be more histories, settled, unsettled and unfolding and their exclusivity in terms of readers eliminated by open access. The dilution of the exclusivity of historical accounts as a result of their proliferation, more discoveries of interconnectedness, commonality of themes and more because of the open and easy access to these accounts would render it far less provocative, and they would cease to be a significant component of human consciousness.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Being an Intellectual

A person in the business of knowing generally seeks general good. One may see it as a career or vocation for some fame and moolah but the point is that society at its best or the best of society makes it possible to get intellectualism funded.

Therefore, an intellectual must purpose its job so that it serves society to its best. For one who thinks deep, investigates, relates, and generalises social happenings around to make sense of these it is therefore imperative that the ideas must be disseminated. And, the person must not rely on finding some sensible actors to be counselled but must work relentlessly with the fellow persons, and enable them to fine-orient their behaviour in social interactions.

An idea must speak to one and all so that one who gets it grasps its import and imbibes the same instinctively. Certain jargons are a must to communicate the specializations, but the same can be narrated with some detailing to laymen. A work of social scholarship must be modified for public consumption. One must take care of fine points, nuances, and technicalities at the multiple stages of prototyping but the end product must be for mass usability. An idea must be precise, simple, lucid in a way so that the mind captures it effortlessly. An intellectual has very tough competitors, the ones who prey on people by exploiting their psychological vulnerabilities: the doomsayers, the deliverers, and a good number from among the entertainers.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Education as Substantialization of Individual Personality