On Knowledge and Ignorance

It seems that almost every person is highly annoyed by ignorant people. And, add insult to injury, the person feels the others being stubbornly resistant to learn. What appears to me is that people are more knowledgeable or less knowledgeable. And it is the same thing as being less or more ignorant. But, it is all contextual. In fact, the real test for being learned, as I can see, is not about the quality or quantity of knowledge one possesses but is about the approach. Kabir had put it very succinctly, and irrefutably, that knowledge is love. And as it is ontologically, so it is epistemologically. Knowledge is valuing knowledge and the continuous drive for knowledge. On the mundane level or on the practical plane, knowledge and ignorance is a critical issue as it may be a matter as grave as the occurrence of avoidable large-scale deaths. And in general, it involves the quality of life, which may be unnecessarily quite abysmal for a larger number of people in a given society. And the reason for the tragedies and the abysmal living, intriguingly maybe the very successful implementation of the operating ideas held as knowledge by the society. What is the way out? Again knowledge, more than about knowing, is one's commitment towards it. One must engage with other people with love and respect in order to enable the person to avoid ignorant ways and go for knowledge-based options. When such engagement takes place with affection and respect, there is an equal chance of realising that what one considers knowledge is wholly or partially fallacious or irrelevant. And, there is no other way than the shared civic pursuit of knowledge for improving our living experience.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Making of a Phenomenon

The social phenomena are continuously in making as heaps or layers over the earlier set of phenomena but such conversion of making into a phenomenon is in fact cast and that is by the recognition and understanding of the making. The articulation of the making brings forth the phenomenal form. Formation or deformation, or disappearance of the making, thus depends on the preexisting and operative knowledge system.

Misunderstanding of or misplaced intellectualism about social realities as a result of epistemological inadequacies, in fact, distorts social realities in very material terms. The existing or emerging realities of social state are only like building materials, the architecture is mostly intellectual.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Recognition of Necessity

You can check the flow of some water, but you cannot change the flowingness of water. Recognising the necessity is crucial. M was not wrong with everything.

 
NIraj Kumar Jha

Dharma and Religion

Now, a great number of Indians have come to realise that Dharma is not religion. Most of the earlier narratives in English used religion for Dharma and even now the practice mostly goes on despite the growing realisation. But even those who know about these phenomena mostly see these only in terms of variance. The greater fact is that these phenomena exist not in variance but in total contrast. Dharma is about nature but is not paganism, it is rather a philosophy as well as the science of coexistence: of harmony, first, among human beings, and, then, among beings, and, further, among beings and things. And more pertinently, Dharma though talks of the essence, but the finding of the essence is an evergoing quest. It does not accept the finality of anything. The Gayatri Mantra, the most recited and holiest of all in the Hindu life, only seeks the sharpness of intellect and by that a clearer vision of the reality, which may be existent and which may not be so. Religion in contrast is about superseding nature and about the end of the human quest. Such opposites can be multiplied to great numbers and that would not be such a great discovery but the unfortunate thing is that a ceiling is mistaken for the sky. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Indigenizing Political Theories

Political theories are important. They help people to comprehend, conceptualize, and operationalize political processes systematically, which in turn make their living better. In our case, most of the political theories we use have Western origins, which is the case with other parts of the world as well. There has been a clamour for indigenizing the political theory, a sub-discipline of political science concerning theories. This is something of a wrong persuasion.

 

India has a long tradition of political theorisation, but after getting independence, it relied heavily on Western theories and institutions to situate itself in the comity of nations. In fact, the global order itself was a Western architecture and shaped the rest of the world as per the design.

What about Indianising political theory? In fact, quite a good number of Indians have theorised quite distinctly and made their mark globally. Their theories indeed contain a lot of Indianness.

Notwithstanding all these seminal interventions in the field of political theory, the Indians feel their presence is not mainstream and if some of them are in the mainstream, they hardly represent India but the same orientalism they started by decrying. Hence the clamour for indigenisation.

In fact, the geographical origins of ideas are irrelevant if we take into consideration how does an idea serve humanity. The Westerners theorised the processes intensely and coherently and the resultant theories and institutions rule the world. It is not as if they brewed ideas with racial flavour or geographical spicing. They were only rigorous in accounting for their experiences.

In fact, what we need is not indigenising theory but to theorise well and by doing so we will not theorise only for ourselves but for the world as a whole. It is only a matter of quality. The richness and complexities of our experiences occasion greater scope for greater ideas. For that, we need something very banal - rooted educational institutions.

NIraj Kumar Jha

बैंकिंग सेवा का #नागरीकरण*

नियति और नियंताओं का आभार कि बैंकिंग सेवा नागरीकरण की दिशा में अग्रसर है । उद्योग और वाणिज्य सरकार के कार्यक्षेत्र में नहीं आते हैं, यह सभ्य समाजों की स्थापित समझ है । अन्य के साथ बैंकिंग सेवा का सरकारीकरण बोलशेविक संक्रमण का परिणाम था, जिससे आज के भारत का जागरूक और गरिमायुक्त नागरिकसमाज मुक्त होने की स्थिति में है । इससे न मात्र उपभोक्ताओं का लाभ होगा बल्कि सेवियों के सम्मान और प्रतिदान में भी भारी बढ़ोतरी होगी ।

* सरकारी उद्योग-धंधों का नागरिक स्वामित्व में अंतरण की प्रक्रिया की संज्ञा के रूप में 'निजीकरण' शब्द का प्रयोग मेरी समझ से उचित नहीं है । प्रत्येक उद्यम लोक-उद्यम होता है, भले ही पारिभाषिक रूप से उसका स्वामित्व कुछ भी हो । मैं 'निजीकरण' के स्थान पर 'नागरीकरण' शब्द प्रयोग कर रहा हूँ, जो मुझे उपयुक्त लगता है, और मैं ऐसा प्रस्तावित भी करता हूँ ।

नीरज कुमार झा

The Tyranny of Language

Of all the tyrannies, the worst tyranny is that of a language. A single idiom or a single expression may survive generations of women and men and may dictate life in such a way that the most tyrants would envy to ensure their sway like that. At another level, expressions frozen in time endlessly produce tyrants. We must be very careful about powerful expressions, in particular, about lasting expressions.

There are some examples:

“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.”

“State is the march of God on Earth.”

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Niraj Kumar Jha