Unversity to celebrate humanity

The gurukuls sent their pupils to beg for themselves and their preceptors. The venerable sages could have gotten any sum of wealth from the kings only by hinting, but, instead, they sent out even the princes under their charge with begging bowls in their hands. Gurukuls taught them humility and made them realise that they depended on the householders and would serve them. Today, the high-end public universities privilege themselves at the cost of society and churn out graduates only to lord over whom they can. A university worth its name must privilege commoners, not itself, and prepare its graduates for the purpose. They must see that their graduates personify humility and not snobbery as the case is. A university must be a running celebration of humanity.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Being a fool

Most people have this feeling about any person that the person is a fool. Indeed, everyone is so, at least, in one respect or the other, but the softer ones know that others have a similar opinion about them, and revealing to a person their reality is against courtesy.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Philosophising

Imagination is phenomenally unlimited. One can let one's imagination fly as one fancies without care for rhyme or reason. It happens that people with their power of language or credentials get their wild imaginations accepted as philosophy. They connect factors, they have also the liberty of creating factors from their imagination, in whatever way and to whatever effect they want. They know well that social happenings are not testable in labs, and therefore they have nothing to fear about getting wrong. And, they find it to their great relish that the more fanciful an idea, the greater its appeal. But, they must know, the philosophers and also the litterateurs, that for the good of society, for the sake of the people they love and who love them, they must be very cautious about their imagining faculty. They must mediate it with experience and social and historical knowledge, and with the sensibility that ideas affect real people subject to the same pains and pleasure as anybody. Greatly fanciful ideas tend to be tyrannical and are capable of savaging lives across ages and geographies. The takeaway: philosophising is not fantasising; it is about exercising faculty with responsibility and care.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Historiography of Cherry-Picking

They say it is a bad history that you use the past as a storehouse and pick the facts which suit you. And, the good history, they insinuate, speaks for itself. This is a euphemism for a long ideological reading of the past. The ideologists martial the entire past for their conception of a wholesome future. They do not do cherry-picking but denude all the flora. They in the course of making the past a gigantic nothing (in its independent form, without its assigned justificatory role), undo the entire historical project: that is, you are denied of learning from your past for negotiating with your present.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Methodology

Methodology textbooks are a violent form of scholarship. They convert the simple and instinctively doable to a complicated and riddlesome non-starter. A wannabe researcher after undergoing the course of lessons and classes is left more confused than they were earlier. But, then to their respite, they find that it is about performing a set of rituals, propitiation, and finally, they would have the voluminous production in hardcover bearing a degree. The ritualised and dogmatised process is indeed very arduous, almost like a guided scaling of the Everest, but in the end, there is something very obvious, the peak beneath your feet and the same sky over your head.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Citizens of Sustance

Something which humanity confronts today is unprecedented and that is the global environmental crisis, ironically, caused by humanity itself. I read a transcript of some discussion; the discussants betrayed the airs of global elitism in terms of both ideas and language, and the pertinence of the reference here is that they blamed the bordered and trans-bordered politics. 

What they failed to figure out is the role of commoners. In fact, their very attitude, the condescension, is belittling of the common folks. People constitute politics, whether local or global. Unless we are able to see our makeover to persons of substance, each of us, we are not going to correct anything. The whole discourse must be changed, and its casting of the people always as a tool must end. An intellectual must talk of and talk to folks as a commoner. An honest intellectual must know if their intellect is appropriated, and if not they are commoners.

The project is never meant to be completed: spacing for folks to come up as citizens, individual persons in control of themselves. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Why write?

If one can write, one must write. If you want to keep it to yourself, you have your diary, and if you want to share your writeups, you have social media readily available.  

Why should one write? There may be several reasons for that, but I am here with something specific. You invariably use a mirror daily, and you do this to check your appearance: whether you look proper or not? Your writing does the same to your thoughts. When you read yourself after some time, you are able to know the property of your thoughts. Your writings mirror your thoughts. And, when you read yourself, you are a better judge of yourself. 

Why should one review one's own thoughts? More than anything else it is your thoughts that you are. It affects your relations, the social milieu you are a part of, and finally yourself. It is better if you study your thoughts with care as nothing affects you more than the thoughts you hold. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

An Invisible War

It would be the most closely watched war ever waged, but very strangely, it is a war hardly visible to us. The brutalisation of the Ukrainian people and the Russian lads, it seems, has been bargained for something else.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Life Package

People purchase travel packages because they get designed happiness. They undergo a drill and get a bottled gel of happiness. They can rub it on their faces whenever they like. While they are happying, their minds hibernate.

There are absolutist agencies. They offer life packages, which nobody is supposed/allowed to refuse. People do their biddings and get fulfilment as a reward.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Ecology of a Problem

A clearly identifiable social problem as a standalone phenomenon having its exclusive causes and consequences does not exist as such. Such a sifting and separating is an intellectual exercise only which is not the reality. The social conditions are highly diffused of things that go into their making. The point I want to make is that a social problem does not drop from the sky like a meteor but it occurs as a result of the prolonged crystallisation of effects of some dysfunctionality of social ecology. If we really care for society, we need to work on the ecology which feeds a problem. It's a long-drawn and thoughtful process.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Entertaiment

I stopped watching films long ago. They are disgusting as they recast general envy and sufferance as entertainment. They humiliate the rich and avenge the rogues. The fantastic storylines season people to believe that enterprise is evil and laws are useless. Moreover, these recurrent doses sedate people to tolerate their miserable lives. The pedagogues, products of doctrinaire disciplining themselves, only added to this oppressive mental state. They trained the scholars to believe in a forthcoming revolution and churned out possessed persons as graduates. Entertainment and education join forces to devalue enterprise and law and legitimate to disturbing extent patrons and persons to lord over their lives. 

Niraj Kumar Jha  

समस्या-मुग्धता

समस्याओं में सबसे बड़ी समस्या बहुतायत में लोगों का समस्या-मुग्ध होना है। अधिकतर समस्याओं का निदान, समाधान, या शमन संभव है। मेरा यह अवलोकन है कि जिनके विचार और व्यवहार के कारण समस्या उत्पन्न हुई है, वे ही अपनी कृत के उत्पाद से अनभिज्ञ समस्या को लेकर सबसे अधिक आंदोलित होते हैं। और, यह भी मैंने अकसर देखा है कि जो समाधान है उसका भी लोग विरोध करते हैं, विशेषकर वही लोग। यह अजीब सी नियति है, लोग समस्या का भी विरोध करते हैं और उसके समाधान का भी। शायद यह दासता की दीर्घावधि का परिणाम है कि समस्याओं की न्यूनता की स्थिति हमें असहज कर देती है। इससे भी बड़ी त्रासदी यह है कि समाधान के नाम पर समस्या-वर्धक युक्तियों को ही वरीयता दी जाती है। उदाहरण के लिए एक विदेशी मूल के अर्थशास्त्री ने पाठशालाओं को भोजशालाओं में बदलने की वकालत की और उसे मान भी लिया गया। परिणाम: न माया मिली न राम। अब उसी धारा के अनुयायी शिक्षा के स्तर को लेकर रूदन कर रहे हैं।

नीरज कुमार झा

The War in Ukraine

One view is that Ukraine provoked Russia. Another buttressing this is that Zellenskyy did not do well by not cowing down. These views state realism, and what these reveal to me is that realism inheres cowardice and opportunism. Realism is good only when it is not divorced from idealism. Realism must remain a tool, and must not become an end ever.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Education

Education, among others, is also about enabling the graduate to be in control. It should empower the initiate to know the essential ideas of living well and equip one with necessary life skills. Everyone should know the fundamentals of the economy, civic life, and health. For instance, when I say health I mean to say that a person should have a fair knowledge of diseases, their causes and cures. The first thing is that they should not fall ill, if fall ill, they must know the basics of cure, and further if the problems aggravate, the person should know enough not to be duped by the practitioners. The ancient university of Nalanda had a compulsory course on medicine for all the resident scholars. They knew it so well that only a healthy body possesses a good mind.

The fact is that our present pedagogy, a colonial graft, seeks to overawe pupils. It basically imparts the knowledge of big and extraordinary things, ideas over lived realities, the universals, the meta realities, but it strictly keeps away the students from learning how to negotiate with all those gigantic phenomena. They create wedges and counterpose norms against mores, ideals against practices, and learning against the living. Today's pedagogy forges the graduates only to fit in the different frameworks. A good number of people do learn the tricks of the trade, but the hard way through trial and error, or outside the ambit of formal education. In other words, they are trained primarily for clientelism. And, the greater part of the pedagogy is simply wasteful: the pieces of ideological stuff. In a nutshell, colonial education creates dependent personas: everyone is prepared to be cheated or exploited by others.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

The Latent Reality

What the times manifest leaves the old school of intelligentsia aghast. They cannot read the latent reality: it is that the times are waging the most desperate battles for republicism, civicism, and constitutionalism. In the absence of a commensurate epistemological framework, they do what they can do the best. They mirror the anomalous.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Let others question you

Let others question you. Answer with all sincerity and honesty. They help you fight devils occupying your mindscape.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Resisting the Tyranny of Philosophy

Philosophy liberates; such is the general assumption. In reality, it is double-edged; it does the opposite too. How does philosophy do the opposite to us? The reason is that we associate philosophy with the thoughts of mystics, geniuses, achievers or leaders. We ignore the fact that philosophising is something we all do. And, when we distrust ourselves and our fellows and rely blindly on lofty ideas, we make philosophy tyrannical. One may look kiddish while philosophising, as I do right now. But we must not be shy about being kiddish. It was a kid who told the truth about the king's regal attire. Let us all philosophise with confidence; let us dialogue about how we make sense of the world. It does not mean that great philosophies and philosophers are irrelevant; they are rather valuable. The point is that we must engage with them and must not submit to them.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Atomisation of Society

Atomisation is an inevitable dimension of an advancing society. People choose to be either aloof or prefer only measured relations. They value privacy and non-interference. The pandemic speeded up the process greatly.

This leaves everyone vulnerable as it means less support even from family as one grows old, suffers a prolonged illness, or fell into some crisis. Even otherwise as an individual one feels helpless when they encounter different types of rogue entities which abound all around. The crisis for one is going to worsen as the support from the clan, caste, and peers is disappearing fast.

The answer is not to exhort people for strengthening families or to cement and augment social ties. These are hardly going to materialise. The answer is to revamp and build public spaces, agencies, and institutions to serve the individuals. We need a freer market as it serves the individual interest best, and a body of functional laws, which protects one from being cheated or robbed or harmed in any way. The practice of patron-client ordering would result in endless isolated tragedies, sparing perhaps none.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Neoliberalism or Neoabsolutisms

Literati's incessant cannonade reduced neoliberalism to rubble. And thus, they decided the fate of the twenty-first century. For the first time in human history, literati had got the opportunity solely to set the course of humanity.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Utopium

He offered utopium, the ultimate pain-numbing dope, the dream of heavens on the earth, to the sufferer. And, at the same time weaponised sufferance. However, I do not intend to flog a dead horse here. There is a long and ongoing tradition of weaponising sufferance, and one must exercise caution. Theocracies and ideocracies do the same and then we have famines in the fields and camps in the wilderness.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Schooling

Not thesising, I am only sharing my impressions. Schooling, the modern non-theological one, is one of the pedagogical means, though it is the prime one in the totalitarian political age. Its primacy is so encompassing that one hears hardly about other pedagogical means and what one can hear, but only those with trained ears, are the faint cries for deschooling and unschooling, It is no strange as schooling is a working part of a larger arrangement. 

What does schooling do? Learning 3Rs can be done in any setting, and even other knowledge elements can be learnt by reading books and taking help from elders, and now with multiple media. Certainly, this is not the USP of schooling. What is the exclusivity of schooling? Basically, it is a public institution, and it drafts the required number of kids to serve the public ends when they grow up; and to the purpose, it regiments the kids to grow as agents of some grand objective, which entails uniformising to make them comrades for a mission and training the mind to accept which the minds usually resist accepting. 

The thing is that minds resist rationalism and agency. And, the schooling thus does the right thing in that it applies some coercion to train the mind for science and enterprise. However, there is another aspect: that the schooling seeks to appropriate these two for denying humanism by creating secular colossuses. The Kremlin and the Commissariat make the most formidable of such phenomena. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Captive Capitalism

Yet another form of socialism is captive capitalism. Such an economy mines the capital and deploys the same to its full potential, and here the government's hands, and not the market's invisible hands, move the economic wheel. Its milder version is crony capitalism, which we often talk about.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

If wishes were horses

If economics were a horse, the Rajapaksas would have continued with their joyful rides.

NIraj Kumar Jha

The International Order

The international order, as it exists, is not an order that streams from the nations' relations. It is a thing, an object. It was victors' booty, which they churned out of the global conditions then. It is a resource they have been keeping and exploiting thence. But, as it stands, it is overdone. It is not serving even the victors now, and more critically, it is no longer effective enough to impose itself as an order. A revamp must be thought over and carried out. 

Niraj Kumar Jha  

Mankind's Arrogance

They say men are destroying nature. Really! To say this is sheer arrogance. They are only destroying what nature has offered to them. They are on self-destruction.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Unknowable and Knowable

Truth in its final form is an unknowable abstraction. Yet, the claims and acts of divulging the truth have been incessant in history. Nothing wrong, a person has the right to their flight of imagination. But, this requires mindfulness that the so-divulged truths may be weaponised for domination or instrumentalised for contented coexistence The democratic pedagogy must include some course on the nature of the conceptualisation of truth along with how amoebas reproduce. Perhaps the former is far more important for human or civic life. Secular authoritarian regimes do concentrate on amoebas.

The Sanatana tradition kept its constituents in the know of the nature of the truth. It appears from historical analyses that the Indians on occasions got truer to the truthfulness and became complacent to the knowledge of statecraft, which requires manipulation of truths. Kautilya-Kamandaki tradition got muted. It served well their life but it turned out to be a debilitating weakness whenever hordes of brutes infested the land. Moreover, even under subjection, they made peace with 'the truth', which occurred to them.

The truth certainly cannot be known, but it remains a germane pursuit. We know and can know more of it to our benefit. And, at the same time when we align the truth with time and space and locate the regularity of conduct or the firmness of property of existential constituents, i.e. when we do science, we get the truths to favour us. In delimitations, truths are not only knowable but also workable. The history of civilization reveals that truths are evolving, unfolding, and performing.

We must see the Truth, the one beyond time and space, and the truths of time and space. The challenge is that even spacial and temporal truths inhere the transcendental nature of the Truth. Letting it not distract us, we have to see the people who are ruthless exploiters of the Truth and the truths. We have to save ourselves first and only after securing ourselves we can work for others.

Niraj Kumar Jha