Growing Wisdom

 Non-Western scholarship differentiates between the Western and the Modern. In fact, they try to retrieve some universals for their benefit out of the winning story of the Western civilization in its modern age. For the Western world, they remain indistinguishable experiences but they may make a differentiation for either academic purposes or, in a sinister way, leading or misleading the rest of the world in their own way. The fact remains that these two are inextricably interwoven, and extracting secular out of ethnicity is helplessly tricky. For instance, many non-Western peoples lapped up for Marxism from the Westen composite of political-economic thinking, which was largely a Christianity without God.

The point here is that mining good things from the Western world may not be of much help.  

Learning from anywhere is fine, but wisdom in any land grows out of its own soil. We must plant functional institutions and let them grow so they bear nourishing fruits. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Modern civilization

Modern civilization is primarily about the general recognition of an individual's ownership of their person, and its unrestrained performance.

NKJ

Conviction

Conviction, not content, makes a human phenomenon what it is. It is more often a tragedy than a comedy.

NKJ

Reading and Writing

When I read, I know the world; when I write, I know myself.

NKJ

क्या सीखना है, क्या सिखाना है?

क्या सीखना है, क्या सिखाना है?
क्यों न हम इस पर विचार करें?
मानवीय गरिमा का मान,
शायद, पहला ही होगा उसका विषय,
परस्पर सम्मान हो शिक्षित की पहचान,
कैसे ऐसा उपक्रम करें?
अहं त्याज्य हो,
हर को हर किसी की अहमियत की समझ हो,
विश्वास योग्य बने सभी,
भरोसा करें एक दूसरे पर सभी,
कैसे ऐसी शिक्षा हो?
जलन नहीं सताए,
सराहना पनपे
साथी या किसी की सफलता पर,
दंभ नहीं उपलब्धि पर,
कृतज्ञता मन में उपजे,
कैसे ऐसी प्रवृत्ति हो?
स्वतंत्र हर जन,
प्रसन्न मन
सहयोग करें आपस में सभी,
कैसे ऐसी प्रेरणा हो?
अनिश्चितताओं के जीवन में,
अखंडित निष्ठा जन-जन में,
सभी जीवन का अर्थ बने,
कैसी हमारी योजना हो?

क्यों नहीं इस पर विचार करें,
मानव-मन को कैसे तैयार करें?

नीरज कुमार झा

Ideology

 Ideology is manufactured and meant to be a modular systemic idea. Modelled as perfection, it seeks to replace an operating political model and culture. In its attempt, it confronts and seeks to destroy evolving and organic ideas guiding human life. A thinking person must avoid grandness and be humble and alive to life, i.e, they must be always conscious that any human being is not a piece or a block but a feeling and sensitive being.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Justice

 If substantive justice and procedural justice happen at the cost of each other, we should be more concerned with the need for systemic correction or reset. What we often ignore is happening none of them, and that is a more worrisome systemic state. 

NKJ

The Virtue of Conservation

Ideologies seek to artificialize change, which is an unceasing reality anyway. They make change a prime virtue and reduce the status quo to an evil-sounding condition. Hyper in their fantastic occupations they disturb or if successful in their mobilisation campaign destroy a functioning social order, and ultimately everyone loses except the leaders or vanguard who get the privileges and powers to enjoy while presiding over the dehumanisation of the folks. The virtue of conservation needs to be learnt hard as human minds are prone to the machinations of ideologists. However, conservation does not mean conserving edifices of aggression, occupation, and injustices.  Nowadays, knowing and conscious people can ensure all needed corrections by pedagogical and epistemological means. We need to be serious with epistemology.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

The New World Order

Finally, a new world order is taking shape. One of the two superpowers, the super two which dominated the world for many decades in the twentieth century, ceased to be so long ago. It has lost not much of its economic and military strength but also its prestige. Its justification for invading Ukraine has hardly any takers.

 
The remaining and sole superpower since the closing decades of the last century is seeing its instruments for dominating world affairs diminishing in their efficacy and another power is growing bigger every day eating into its means. More to its concern, it threatens militarily to push back the US spread globally. The problem with bipolar rivalry this time is that the world is highly integrated and the conflicts cause global disruptions and hardships.

 
In this new world order, observers see India rising as a prime power and they find India's young demography nearing one and a half billion with a democratic order behind this.
Nonetheless, India faces very tough challenges globally. It is a world in which globalism or internationalism is dead. It is now more about national power, alliances and the blatant use of force. India has the very aggressively aspiring superpower as its hostile neighbour. India is awake to the challenge and building up to face the new world. However, the citizenry must see and sense the global threats and also opportunities, and articulate their views accordingly keeping in mind the need for greater unity, purpose, and capacity of the nation.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

The Present Future

 No time has been such that the future so much overwhelms the present. The future is hovering over, it is downpouring, it is drenching everything. With every passing moment, we are deeper into it, yet we do not know where we are headed.  

The point is that the general understanding that a race must know its past to understand the present for planning the future is left with little merit.  The present future is so powerful that it is the future itself, which becomes the prime means of meaningful understanding of our times and a major determinant of itself. 

Ironically, we remain a people of the past. We bury our heads in the past and blind ourselves to the great churn, which is the present future, a disproportionally gigantic phenomenal phenomenon compared to which all past phenomena are minuscule.   

No doubt, we need a certain balance, but that is doable by simple constitutional mechanisms. The brouhaha about the past is going to diminish our stake in the new world descending and spreading fast on the planet.

Niraj Kumar Jha  

Anti-capitalism

Anti-capitalism is basically refurbished feudalism. Despite that, the reality is that hardly anybody favours capitalism except some persons who dream of general redemption. The established capitalist class too detest capitalism as they like monopoly or favoured status. The free market and open competition unnerve them.

 
Capitalism moves on its own as human beings are socially evolving beings. It is the general desire for betterment which propels capitalism.

 
Capitalism favours the commoners and the wannabe capitalists the most. Certainly, it seeks to discount the control freaks. While those who benefit do not speak for economic liberalism as they are not aware of its merit and beneficence for them. Those who keep curbing capitalism are very vocal and they are the people who are generally heard and heeded.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

प्रतीक्षा

उड़ेंगे  गुलाल ग्राम-ग्राम नगर-नगर

उस दिन 

जलेंगे साँझ दिए घी के  घर-घर 

उस दिन 

मुंह मीठा कराएंगे  एक-दूजे का जन-जन 

उस दिन 

सभी करेंगे शुभ-कर्म अनेक 

उस दिन 

नवयुग का होगा आरंभ   

उस दिन 

सर्व-मंगल का होगा नाद 

उस दिन

संकल्प सत्य-निष्ठता का होगा नवीकृत 

उस दिन

मानवता होगी साकार 

उस दिन 

जीव-जगत की गरिमा होगी मूर्त 

उस दिन 

सत्य सभ्यता पुनर्नवा होगी 

उस दिन 

विराजेंगे राम लला नवभवन 

उस दिन 

अब दूर नहीं 

वह दिन 

नीरज कुमार झा 

A free person is a responsible person

Liberty and duty being separate values is a common but mistaken perception. The general thinking is that liberty is conditional on fulfilling duties, i.e., one deserves freedom only when the person duly performs given responsibilities. The fact is that rights, codes for guaranteeing freedom, and duties are inseparable. Duties one performs are also one's rights and rights one exercise are also one's duties. It is one's duty to defend their nation and contribute to the national good because it is inherent in that person's right to citizenship and all that the person gets as a citizen. One defends others' right to expression and thereby they have their own right to expression. The point is that a free person is a responsible person. If it is not so in general, the idea of freedom and its mechanism needs correction. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

ज्ञानमीमांसा की सबसे बड़ी चुनौती

विद्याओं  में महत्वपूर्ण अपनी  तंत्रिका-कोशिकाओं के संदेशों का पारिस्थितिकीय पाठ, और उसके क्यों और कैसे को व्यक्त करने हेतु विपुल-शब्द भंडार का संग्रह है। जरूरी है यह समझ कि अपनी ही पीड़ा-हर्ष, भय-उल्लास, तथा द्वेष-अनुराग की  वस्तुनिष्ठ समझ व्यक्ति की  ज्ञान-मीमांसा की सबसे बड़े चुनौती है।  

नीरज कुमार झा