Democratic Identity

Democracy is basically a question of human dignity. It also brings benefits such as security and freedom, which, in general, make people prosper. Democracy, in turn, demands that people act as citizens and not carry their pre-democratic identities and inclinations into democratic affairs. It seeks to make each person the master of their own life, while also obliging them to act and interact knowledgeably and responsibly.

It is surprising and anomalous that pre-modern, job-related identities and narratives responding to existential anxieties continue to capture the human imagination and tragically impede the democratic potential of societies. Humanism unfolds as liberalism in the domain of knowledge, democracy in politics, and capitalism in the economy. Strengthening democracy, therefore, requires freeing the market to the maximum, as this alone promises mobility into secular roles and a spirit commensurate with democratic norms.

Let me add something here about the free market. It is a truism that competition begets excellence in corporate affairs and that people empower themselves to serve humanity better. However, the free market must not be seen as economic entities engaged in a blind race for market domination, but rather as a drive to serve fellow human beings better and to respect competition rather than curb it. I am not speaking here of Western liberalism, but of an incipient Indian liberalism, a manifest form of which is Gandhism.

Some may find the passage contradictory, as I advocate secularism in the second paragraph and dharma in the third. It is a gross epistemological folly to equate dharma with religion. Dharma concerns the upholding of life in the best feasible way, commensurate with time and space. In doing so, it draws upon both reason and the emotional sensibilities of human beings and transcends the boundaries of religion and science. In brief, dharma is a conscious and cultivated realisation of human consciousness.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Adharma and Civilizational Drift

I had read an essay by the venerable Harimohan Jha, the great Maithil litterateur and philosopher, in the early 1980s, when I was an intermediate student. Though my memory of it is now faint, it has returned to me with renewed force in recent times, as the United States lays bare its civilisational underbelly before the world.

What I recall is Prof. Jha’s characterisation of the West as a civilisation primarily oriented towards artha and kāma, with Marx and Freud serving as their most articulate exponents. When artha and kāma are pursued in isolation, without dharma as their normative and regulative principle, they no longer remain legitimate ends of human life. Livelihood and pleasure then cease to be dharma-mediated pursuits and collapse into crass greed and unrestrained lust.

It has taken me more than four decades to fully comprehend the depth of Pandit Jha’s insight. This belated clarity has also illuminated the classical idea of rājadharma. In the Indic conception, the political order is not entrusted with moral instruction; that responsibility belongs to ṛṣis and seers, the custodians of ethical and metaphysical wisdom. The ruler’s duty is more circumscribed yet foundational: to uphold dharma by restraining adharma, neutralising predatory forces, and ensuring a social order in which individuals may pursue their own dharma in accordance with varna, āśrama, and vocation, without fear or obstruction.

A dharmic person, in this sense, does not merely obey rules but embodies righteousness in action, recognising the inviolable dignity of every individual engaged in the pursuit of his or her own dharma.

The United States represents the culmination of Western civilisation in terms of knowledge production and the rational organisation of life. Yet this knowledge, increasingly severed from moral restraint, transgresses ethical boundaries. Reason, when detached from dharma, does not liberate; it corrodes.

We, the people of India, must therefore move beyond what is commonly celebrated as modernity—a historically specific, Western variant of it—and re-anchor our consciousness in what may be described as an eternal modern: a civilisational orientation in which knowledge, power, and desire are disciplined by dharma rather than freed from it.

Niraj Kumar Jha

इतिहास बोध और समाज

इतिहास स्मरणीय तथ्यों का संग्रहण है। स्मरणीय तथ्यों में से आधारभूत है गुणी और सुधी जनों के मानवों को पाशविकता से मानवातीयता की ओर ले जाने के लिए संघर्षों की और दुष्टों के अतिचारों की कहानियाँ। सज्जनों के संघर्ष प्राकृतिक प्रतिकूलता तथा मनुष्य की अमानवीय प्रवृत्तियों के विरूद्ध रही हैं। ये कथाएँ और गाथाएँ हमें सूचित करती हैं कि किन-किन प्रकार के विचारों, किन-किन अभियानों और किन-किन प्रयासों ने मानवता का हित किया है और किन-किन ने अहित। अच्छाई को कैसे बचाया और बढ़ाया जाए और बुराई को कैसे रोका जाए या कम किया जाए, इसको जानने के लिए जिया हुआ अनुभव सबसे प्रामाणिक पैमाना है। इस संदर्भ में तर्क और भावना भरोसे लायक नहीं हैं। इतिहास की यह मौलिक उपादेयता है।

 
विगत की समझ और समझदारियाँ विचारधाराओं के रूप में हमारे बीच रहती हैं। इस संदर्भ में विचारधारा और क्रियाशील ज्ञानमीमांसा भिन्न नहीं है। सामान्य लोकयात्रियों के लिए उनके बीच प्रचलित विचारधारा ही उनका प्रश्नातीत अवलंब होती हैं। बेहतरी के नजरिए से बड़ी बात यह है कि विचारधाराएँ भी ऐतिहासिक और समाजशास्त्रीय अनुशीलन की मांग करती हैं और भिन्न विचारधारा पोषित इतिहासकारिताएँ  (इतिहासलेखन की धाराएँ) भी।  

 
इस लघुलेख का उद्देश्य यह रेखांकित करना है कि विगत में ऐसे भी दौर आये जब इतिहास बोध विलुप्त हो गया। हर समय ऐसा भी नहीं था कि इतिहास की पुस्तकें और इतिहासकार उपलब्ध नहीं थे। वास्तव में इतिहास मात्र ज्ञान के लिए ज्ञान की विधा नहीं है, बल्कि समाज की अच्छाई के प्रति प्रतिबद्धता से जनित बोध और सक्रियता है।

 
नीरज कुमार झा

From Colonial Binaries to Organic Epistemology

The colonial regime in India deployed a thought-craft for the legitimation and perpetuation of its occupation so subtly that it gradually morphed into the operative epistemology. Part of this craft was inherited, and part of it was devised. The inherited element was a binary vision drawn from their religious worldview: the division between believers and the undesirable existence of non-believers.

This faith-based binary informed their consciousness and rendered them largely inattentive to the existentially organic nature of social life, which accommodates difference without necessarily translating it into antagonism. What was a matter of conscious design, however, was the systematic marking of social roles and identities in oppositional terms and the deliberate placement of one against the other. This is not to say that injustices or conflicts did not exist, for they were absent nowhere then and are absent nowhere even now. Only the influence of deepening humanistic ideas and practices has mitigated such conditions, in proportion to their reach and impact.

What colonial rule systematically did was to instrumentalise even minor or latent differences and amplify them into sites of conflict. This enabled the regime to act as the guardian-arbiter among contending subjects, keeping people absorbed in internal antagonisms and rendering them largely oblivious to the regime’s own designs, which culminated in moral degradation and widespread impoverishment.

In pre-colonial times, India possessed a relatively effective moral order, and despite many odds, an organic way of life broadly prevailed. This organicity did not imply the absence of hierarchy or tension, but it did provide integrating norms that restrained social fragmentation and limited the escalation of conflict.

When a group of Indian intellectuals later adopted socialism as a liberative “science,” they largely carried forward this conflict-centred, binary mode of social understanding. Though they identified a different division of society into two classes, one that had little correspondence with the historically evolved social reality, they nonetheless legitimised social categorisation primarily in antagonistic terms.

It is the task of the Indian knowledge system to overcome this colonially induced epistemic legacy and to recover the conditions of an organic social understanding.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Restoring a Route to Ancient Riches

Shared with Friends

The Indian–EU FTA under formalisation is a reclamation of the past. Much of the fabulous riches of our ancients were anchored in their trade with Rome, then the nerve centre and gateway to Europe. That seamless exchange between the two civilisations weakened as the Roman world declined and older trade structures gave way to new, intermediated networks.

The Western world thereafter grew restless in its search for a more direct route to India. Before reaching it through what they named the Cape of Good Hope, they discovered the Americas. When they finally arrived on Indian shores, however, it was no longer the same India, and with the passage of time, they realised that they could colonise India rather than carry out trade under the rules of fair exchange.

Now, we are a new India. We must work for a nationhood grounded in strength, innovation, and justice. How is this to be done? By refraining from adharma and performing one’s dharma. This is not a matter of lamentations or exultations, but of mindful analysis, respectful conversations, fair play, innovation, and working with a sense of service. Nationhood is not a spectacle; it is a shared responsibility. Each must act, each must contribute.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democratisation of Visibility

One of the positive aspects of social media is that it enables ordinary people to use public platforms for self-celebration, even if this frequently involves mimicking so-called celebrities. This is desirable to the extent that such posturing can reinforce a sense of self-worth and bolster self-esteem among common people by granting them visibility otherwise denied to them. A related point is that what we notice, share, and communicate ordinarily or in these spaces is rarely neutral; it is largely designed, and human attention itself is structured to register certain stimuli while disregarding others. The opportunity for the public to appropriate and engage with such designs is a particularly valuable aspect of this development.

Before the advent of social media, common people had minimal means to publicly showcase their moments of celebration. At best, they maintained photo albums, which were shown, often somewhat forcibly, to visiting guests, who, in turn, usually feigned interest. This arrangement functioned as a tacit social agreement. Social media has expanded this possibility. Ordinary individuals now possess small but visible spaces on public platforms of their choosing, accessible to audiences who opt in rather than being compelled. In this sense, social media represents a form of democratisation of public space.

This development is largely welcome. At the same time, it remains important to recognise that decency requires a conscious distinction between private and public life, and a respectful adherence to that boundary. Secondly, in the same vein, public expression should not be merely showy; without embedded substance or wider relevance, it risks becoming assertive and intrusive, disregarding shared human sensibilities.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Society and Political Theory

What hinders agencies from serving society better is the lack of suitable theories, in general and, in particular, political theories. They need political theories not only to plan a project, but to realise the very need for any project and to visualise it. A political theory is the problematisation of collective existence, which is otherwise lived as a fait accompli, and an attempt to find a way to overcome it. Theories provide a map of social realities and an organisation of action plans.

One may feel that one is working through common sense or raw intelligence, but in reality, one is only working with theories already diffused as common sense. If a nation ignores serious research that yields grounded, practical theories, or does not nurture spaces for people to philosophise in a similar vein, it will not solve its problems; rather, it will further complicate them by adopting foreign-baked theories. This is not an argument against the universality of theory as such, but against its uncritical transplantation without mediation through local histories, institutions, and social experience.

A large chunk of so-recognised political theorists is still busy figuring out what political theory is. At a second level, they learn some high-sounding names and jargon and keep regurgitating them in front of people. Initiates are awestruck by the sheer incomprehensibility of what they hear. Thirdly, what is discussed and understood often resembles filmy drama: a social or status-group conspiracy followed by its surgical solution. Fourthly, some highly regarded theories are merely descriptive, and they describe reality in a manner that kills the possibility of solutions. They turn the persistence of problems into a mission, much like typical missionaries. Fifthly, and finally, within the limits of my own understanding, they often exhaust their careers in comprehending theories of Western origin, endlessly elaborating upon them, and pursuing adaptations that are never fully realisable.

To conclude, societies need genuine theories.

Niraj Kumar Jha