होना

तुम्हारे होने से ज्यादा विस्मयकारी कुछ और नहीं है।
हर बात जो तुम्हें प्रभावित करती है, इस बात से छोटी है।

 
नीरज कुमार झा

तलाश

तलाशता आदमी दूसरों में खुद को है
समझता नहीं दूसरा कुछ और नहीं है

नीरज कुमार झा 

Liberalism

Liberalism is a word so variously used and so often ruthlessly abused that it has turned amorphous as a conceptual category. Its essence,  a human being centres the phenomenal, is lost in the din of noble-sounding ideas that many people articulate and champion to further their vested interests.  Humanism was both an epistemological and political revolution. The idea can be dismissed theologically and even philosophically, but, the fact remains that the idea emerged at a historical juncture and caught the imagination of certain people. With this idea over time, human beings could claim their humanity. Those who lack civic morality and desire to lord over their fellow human beings often seek to extinguish the liberal spirit by invoking very liberalism.   

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Systemic Knowledge

Well-integrated knowledge systems must replace ideologies. People must not subject themselves to the fancies of out-of-the-world thinking mavericks. Collaborative philosophizing and research projects must go into piecemeal calibrating of the working systems. A functional system results in people living free of want, fear, and indignities. Any good system or improvisation begins showing results from day one.

 
Multiple and multifaceted claims of what constitutes good often mislead people. For that people must be aware of this, one's personal and public good are intertwined. Social good is the ecology which alone can ensure personal excellence and, on the other end, individual people's endeavour for excellence betters the ecology. By excellence, I do not mean extraordinariness. The pursuit of extraordinariness is pathological.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

होना

जो कहता है,
वह स्वयं के होने का अहसास करता है। 
जो सुनता है,
वह दूसरों के होने का ज्ञान रखता है। 

नीरज कुमार झा 

आदमी ही रह गया

वह आदमी, आदमी ही रह गया

पढ़-लिख लेता तो कुछ बन जाता

 

नीरज कुमार झा

आदतों की नैतिकता

जो सही लगे, जरूरी नहीं सही हो 

अपनी आदतों की भी नैतिकता है

नीरज कुमार झा 

A Present History of Education

A time came when imperial orders competing with each other made imperialism global. At one point, imperialism was the world, its flora and fauna, and everyone. It was a planetary hierarchical placing of people and grabbing of resources. The system globally coopted education and made it an instrument of order rather than letting it remain a passage to the humanization of human beings. A degree was meant to be a passport to a higher sphere.  It was a process of the denial of humanity to human beings. The story ends here. Is it history? 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

बड़ी और छोटी बातें

बातें कुछ बड़ी
बातें छोटी बहुत सारी
दोनों के मुद्दे अलग
करने के तरीके अलग
दोनों में कुछ एक सा नहीं
बड़ी की अहमियत बहुत
छोटी की उतनी तो बिलकुल नहीं
मुझे एक दुःस्वप्न आता है
सभी लोग छोटी बातें कर रहे हैं
उन्हीं को अहमियत दे रहे हैं
संगोष्ठियों और सम्मेलनों में
टेलिविज़न और सोशल मीडिया पर
सभी छोटी-छोटी बातें कर रहे हैं
छोटे-छोटे अप्रासंगिक मुद्दे ही चर्चा में है
बड़े-बड़े प्रासंगिक मुद्दे गायब हो रहे हैं
मैं बहुत विचलित हो रहा हूँ
मेरी नींद खुल जाती है
राहत की साँस ले पाता हूँ

नीरज कुमार झा

बिना कथ्य की कथा

अभिव्यक्ति अहं की तुष्टि के लिए नहीं हो

प्रयास करें कि बिना कथ्य के कथा नहीं हो

किसी को चमत्कृत करने की नहीं

कोशिश बात ईमानदारी से कहने की हो

 

नीरज कुमार झा

मानवता के प्रति

स्थितप्रज्ञ है जो
मुझे लगता है
गुजरा होगा वह
गहन पीड़ा से कभी
स्थिरता का उसका मानस
सहा होगा भूचालों को
शीतलता निकाल लाया होगा
वह घोर तपन से
प्रकाश नहीं पाया होगा यूँही उसने
मथा होगा तमस को वर्षों उसने
सहज नहीं होगा
उनका ज्ञानी होना

नीरज कुमार झा

देख तू आकाश

अंधकार

अंतस का

सर चढ़ता

बन अहंकार

ढोता दंभी नित

स्वयं का बोझ

जहाँ पहुँचता

बन जाता

औरों का भार

कह सको तो

कहो उन्हें

देखो तुम धरती

देख तू आकाश

 

नीरज कुमार झा

Capitalism and Inequality

Inequality as such is there in every walk of life. Too many kids aspire to play cricket for India, but only one or two enter the national team in a year. An impoverished and deprived community may have high inequality among their members. Even the non-existence of private property is not a guarantee of equality anyway. Capitalism also causes inequality but, at the same time, it prevents poverty and deprivation in society. Equality in deprivation is a dehumanising condition.

If a capitalist order produces disproportionate inequality, it means that the market is not free enough, and competitiveness is compromised there.

The solution to capitalist problems is more capitalism.

NIraj Kumar Jha

Avoidance of Things

Vacuous is the most discoursed. This is due to the lack of existential courage. It takes place primarily in two forms: first, it not being so and second, the denial of this claim. Ideating a total makeover is also a vacuous discourse.

 
Vacuousness anyway is not without repercussions. Rather, they have serious repercussions.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

Ease of Doing Business

Sanjeev Sanyal has rightly pointed out that a colossal number of young people, relatively more talented, end up wasting the prime years of life trying to qualify for the civil services examinations conducted by the UPSC. This is a personal loss for those youths and a humongous loss for the nation.

In the Western part of the country, the craze for government jobs is less as they came under colonial rule later and the fabled Indian business traditions survived to some extent.

The only way, we can save the prime years of so many talented youths and put those to social use is by enhancing the ease of doing business. Whoever is willing, must have a conducive and encouraging system and ecology in place to carry out whatever business they choose.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

होली है आज

सच  रंग-बिरंगा  

मानव बीच नहीं  भेद 

सत्य की जीत का 

इससे नहीं बड़ा 

त्योहार कोई एक 

भक्त प्रह्लाद 

सनातन भक्ति 

सुमिरे आज 

कहे जीवन सच 

उमंग सच  

मोद सच 

देह सच 

माटी सच 

झूमे  पंचभूत 

मनाए सृष्टि का उत्सव 

उच्छृंखल आज  

जल विशेष 

मस्तिष्क की सत्ता

आज़  नहीं 

संप्रभु  हृदय आज 

होली है आज 

नीरज कुमार झा 

Scholarship and Pseudo-scholarship

What we know as scholarly in the domains of social and human knowledge may be just the opposite of being scholarly. I am not talking here about the formalism of the presentation but about the substance and more about its consequentialism. Scholarly presentations and performances enthralling their readers and audiences respectively may be inconsequential or seriously harmful. 

At first, what we feel and judge as scholarly or stupid is more about obedience to some commandment and managed consensus. And, in a more nuanced state, a piece of scholarship may be a handiwork of craft rather than an effort for some genuine factual, not make-believe, concern. Long-held values or power matrices determine what a community or a political community accept or rejects as a scholarship rather than their intrinsic worth doing the same.  

The worth of scholarship can be known by comparative histories and sociologies and their applications can even be tested in advance, and thereby it may be known whether any scholarly statement serves the general good without sacrificing the legitimate interests of any individual person or does not. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Conversations

Conversations among folks go into holding or advancing social norms and practices. Republicanism bestows citizens the responsibility to hone their conversation skills to the effect of social good. The primary thing is to see the relevance of a conversation, its content and the way we do it, whether it serves or disserves us. We must know that things savoury or unsavoury, the biggest of them spanning nationally or internationally included, exist by existing in the microcosms of interpersonal relations among common folks. We can augment or contain their effect by how we converse. Another point to put here is that a conversation about a condition is basic for the recognition of that condition. My brushes with history introduced me to great and deafening silences over phenomena, which affected humanity and its course very deeply. Avoiding than conversing about some conditions has been the norm. Conversation for advancement is a courageous act.

Niraj Kumar Jha

बड़ा आदमी

बड़ा आदमी वह है जिससे मिलने पर किसी को स्वयं के बड़प्पन का अहसास हो, तुच्छता का नहीं।

नीरज कुमार झा

सामाजिकता

सामाजिकता का ह्रास आज की कटु सच्चाई है। सामान्य समझ यह है कि इसका कारण मोबाईल और इंटरनेट है। लोग ऐसा मानते हैं कि सामाजिकता की जगह ऑनलाइन संलिप्तता ने ले ली है। यह प्रगट कारण है लेकिन मूलभूत नहीं। यह मेरी सोच है और एक परिकल्पना है। इसपर गंभीर चिंतन और शोध की आवश्यकता है।

 
स्‍कैन्‌डिनेव़िअन देशों में सामाजिकता अत्यंत न्यून है। वहाँ व्यक्ति हेतु सुरक्षा और सुविधाएँ बहुत ही अच्छी हैं। वहाँ लोगों को एक-दूसरे की जरूरत ही नहीं है जैसा कि सार्वजनिक अभिकरण उनकी हर जरूरत को बखूबी पूरा करते हैं। इन देशों में लोग सम्पन्न हैं और उनका जीवन निरापद है। लेकिन मेरा मानना है कि सामाजिकता का अभाव इस स्थिति में भी आदर्श नहीं है। व्यक्ति एकाकीपन में जीवन की सार्थकता प्राप्त करे, अस्वाभाविक प्रतीत होता है।

भारत के वर्तमान दौर में सामाजिकता को सघन, स्वस्थ और सुखद बनाने की आवश्यकता है। इसकी कमी के कारणों और इसमें विस्तार हेतु उपायों को लेकर व्यापक विमर्श होना चाहिए। मैं इस विषय (स्थिति, कारण, और समाधान) पर अपने विचारों को क्रमशः लिखता रहूँगा। मित्रों से आग्रह है कि इस विषय पर विचार करें और उन्हें साझा करें।

नीरज कुमार झा

धार्मिक, रीलिजस नहीं

दो बड़े बौद्धिक नेता यूट्यूब पर अंग्रेजी भाषा में प्रदर्शन वार्तालाप कर रहे हैं। दोनों इस जानकारी को साझा कर रहे हैं कि एक सर्वे में भारत के अधिकतर लोगों ने बताया कि वे रीलिजस हैं। असल में, भारत के बहुसंख्यक जन धार्मिक हैं। दोनों यह समझ नहीं रख रहे हैं कि धार्मिक और रीलिजस होना सर्वथा भिन्न है।

इस विषय पर अधिकतर लोग भ्रमित रहते हैं। इसका कारण है कि एक बात धर्म और रीलिजन में दोनों में केंद्रीय महत्व का है, वह आस्था है।हालाँकि धार्मिक होने के लिए आस्थावान होना अनिवार्य नहीं है।

जिसको लेकर अंतर है वह मानव मस्तिष्क का एक दूसरा आयाम, विवेक, है। धर्म में विवेक और आस्था सहचर हैं और रीलिजन मे विवेक आस्था का अनुचर है। विवेक की स्थिति दोनों को विपरीत बनाता है।

नीरज कुमार झा

Democratisation of Knowledge

The availability of and access to knowledge has never been so widespread. Most of the things one needs to know are online, always ready to be accessed and even curated with the help of AI. At the same time, now again with the help of the internet and AI, one can articulate better and always be present before an audience.

This vital aspect of existence so democratised along with others strengthens democracy in a manner, which we cannot make out right now. We may be in a transformational phase little realising it. We can see right now a definitiveness in the political cultures in the world. This may be an age of denial of old consensus or its lack wherein the fresh consensus remains elusive. The world lacks a common set of values leading to any collective idea of good. The age has yet to give birth to its philosophers. We will have to wait.

Niraj Kumar Jha

दार्शनिक

जन अथवा समाज मंगल  गंभीर और जनहितैषी दार्शनिकों की उपस्थिति की मांग करता है। 

हालाँकि दर्शन के साथ गंभीर और जनहितैषी विशेषण अनावश्यक हैं, लेकिन दर्शन के नाम से जो चलन में रहता है, उसको लेकर सचेत करने के लिए  यहाँ इन विशेषणों का प्रयोग किया गया है। 

गंभीर इसलिए कि एक तथाकथित दार्शनिक हवाई किले बनाने वाला हो सकता है; बिना इतिहास बोध, समाज और मानवीय प्रकृति की समझ के वह निरर्थक स्वप्नों का द्रष्टा और प्रसारक हो सकता है। ऐसे दार्शनिक बड़ी-बड़ी बातें करते हैं और समाज अपनी तमाम विसंगतियों के साथ यथास्थिति में रहता है। किसी भी साधन-संपन्न संप्रभु देश में विपन्नता की विद्यमानता इस तरह की कुबुद्धि के आधिक्य का ही प्रमाण है। 

दूसरा कि अनेक आधिकारिक विद्वान द्वारा बाह्य संस्कृति से उत्पन्न विचारधाराओं को स्वयं के परिवेश में अनुकूलन की क्षमता की बिना परख किए उसके आरोपण की पैरोकारी करते हैं। यहाँ तक कि जहाँ से उनका आयात किया गया है, वहाँ भी उसे स्वीकार नहीं किया गया हो। ऐसे विद्वानों को भी दार्शनिक की श्रेणी में रखा जाता है। विदेशीकृत विद्वान अपनी गठरी में संग्रहीत सामग्रियों को लेकर उलझन का प्रदर्शन कर भी इस श्रेणी में स्थान पा लेते हैं। 

जनहितैषी इसलिए कि दर्शन संज्ञा का दुरुपयोग होता है। कोई व्यक्ति अस्तित्व के अज्ञेय पक्षों को लेकर भय  और  मानवीय मानसिकता में अंतर्निहित दुर्बलताओं को आधार बनाकार  शब्दाडंबर अथवा भाषाई जाल के माध्यम से लोगों को भ्रमित कर सकता है। मानव इतिहास में मानव निर्मित त्रासदियों की भरमार ऐसे ही विकृत बुद्धिप्रयोगों का दुष्परिणाम रहा है। 

दर्शन और विज्ञान में अंतर है। दर्शन की प्रकृति समग्रता मूलक अथवा व्यापक दृष्टि है। इस दृष्टि की व्यापकता अज्ञेय और ज्ञेय का भी मेल कराती है। इसका बिन्दु संकेन्द्रण भी व्यापक दृष्टि का ही सघन संकुचन है। यह जीवन को अर्थयुक्त बनाती है। विज्ञान प्रधानतया एकलता से व्यापकता की ओर जाता है और इसकी मूल प्रकृति संकेन्द्रण की है। 

दर्शन मानव जीवन का विज्ञान की तुलना में अधिक सशक्त मार्गदर्शक है।  दर्शन विज्ञान को अधिगृहीत रखता है। विज्ञान की स्थिति दर्शन सेवी की  है। 

यह दर्शन ही है जो मानव को बर्बर से सभ्य बनाता है, और दर्शन के अभाव में भौतिक तथा वैज्ञानिक साधनों से युक्त होते हुए भी  समुदाय प्रवृत्ति और आचरण से असभ्य ही बने रहते हैं। ऐसा नहीं लगता है कि मानव बिना दर्शन के हो। वास्तव में बर्बरता प्रवृत्ति होती है, जो दर्शन की जगह काम करती है।  यही प्रवृत्ति दर्शन विकृति का स्रोत और दर्शन की चुनौती है। 

भारत ने दर्शन में महती योगदान दिया है। वसुधैव कुटुंबकम, सर्वमंगल, जीवन की  विविध शैलियों का अभिनंदन, शांति  और सुबुद्धि हेतु सतत प्रार्थना इस दर्शन की अनन्य सीखें हैं। आज भारत अपनी मौलिक मेधा को जागृत कर पुनः इस नए युग में मानवहित के पोषण में भूमिका निभाए, यह अभीष्ट  है।  

नीरज कुमार झा 

Business Leadership

A new kind of business leadership is in the offing. Generally, business leadership may mean leading a business enterprise, but what can be seen in a very embryonic stage is that businesspeople speak for the public good. In the most likelihood, they would be in the public leadership role like elites in other walks of life. This is the rise of the new India, which is moving away from the slavish mentality instilled by a very prolonged period of subjugation. During the alien regimes, the Indian society lost much of its vitality and positivity, and now India is on the path of redeeming itself. The redeeming process however needs a lot of vetting, institution building and structuration. The intellectual leadership must reinvent their role to the spirit of the new era of India being itself and in ascendance. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democratising Epistemology

Epistemology is the key. The prevailing epistemology anytime is an outcome of the play of multiple factors, ideas, and designs of organisations. It shapes people's imagination and in turn fashions people's lives. For the substantialization of democracy, the democratization of epistemology is a critical urgency. Education institutions must equip learners with the skills for identifying the sources, purposes, functioning, effects, and aftereffects of the prevailing pieces of knowledge and their working. They must be made to rise above being the passive subjects of knowledge.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Functional Universities

Being the most populous in the comity of nations, India needs the highest number of functional universities. Functional here means functioning to the collective good. It is about holding on to whatever sustains the good and building upon that.

 
For skill-oriented education, India's top-notch institutions have done well; in particular, they have served as great preparatory schools for gaining entry into the finest Western universities. And by graduating from there, many Indians now occupy high positions in the global corporate world.

 
But for pure sciences and liberal arts, Indian universities have yet to attain functionality. Globally, such national attainments are reflected in the number of Nobel awardees or by the prestige universities of a nation command across continents.

 
In fact, functional universities create enabling ecology and improvise mechanisms for enterprises and agencies to make life livable and facilitate betterment.

Nations failing to ensure a dignified life for their constituents speak of their universities if they have any.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

Arun Yogiraj

Shri Yogiraj is a blessed human being. He sculpted the Divine to life. The eyes are more alive than those of any living human being. What he did appears pure inspiration. It is ethereal; no work of art of any earthling can match in beauty or grace.

Arun Ji got everything by his sheer Chosen Role, which a person can aspire to get in their life. But, the grateful nation can do the least is to confer Bharat Ratna on him and offer membership in the Rajya Sabha by nomination.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Of Personas: Natural and Positioned

People commanding some socially recognised position or seeing themselves on a mission invariably have a lot of artificiality in their persona. They cannot be called abnormal, but they are not normal either. Their demeanour is overbearing, and they expect people to be submissive. A person who has normal mental makeup, is self-respecting, and does not suffer from any want, actual or notional, would feel uncomfortable by their presence around and sometimes even find them unbearable.

Why do we have positions and missions occupied by such overbearing people? The basic fact is that people err in imagining and working on their coexistence. Why does such an error prevail everywhere on the populated parts of the planet though in proportion to the state of development? This may be because of the genetic coding of human beings. We have lived for a far longer duration of our existence in jungles where bare survival was an act of extreme heroism. Extraordinariness which was once a survival need remains a human goal. People devise extraordinary positions and roles for themselves, which in turn necessitate extraordinariness in human beings to play those roles.   Precarious conditions and human consciousness together disconcert human agency. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Morality: Manifest and Latent

I get this: while the conclusion part of a write-up states the manifest morality of the author, it is the statement of fact that betrays the latent morality of the writer, which is a more authentic thing to know about. Knowing the morality of an author in the fullness of its manifest and latent forms is a crucial part of reading any text. An author might have tried for objectivity with honesty, but the relativity of morality, by and large, remains unavoidable. For instance, the colonial era colonisers' writings can be decoded thus. It may have also happened that in its manifest form, an author might have concluded otherwise what they would have put in the statement of fact, They might have found ways to speak the unspeakable. Take the same context as mentioned above, for instance, the colonial era native literary forms often take this form.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Mutuality in Order

 More mutual goodwill and respect are highly desirable. What causes the hugeness of desirability? The reason is that a person does not value themselves. Many would not accept this as a fact. They would see people highly valuing themselves, but these people value their assumed positions, real or make-believe, not their persons. Arrogance and self-respect look similar but are essentially different. A self-respecting person would be unfailingly respectful to fellow people. 

This desirability does not emanate from something natural. Most of it is rooted in history where enslaver regimes through ruthless coercion denied any dignity to their subjects. Such people are now DNAed to hate each other and always love some high office to dictate their lives. Mandating collectivism has a history in the background. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Freedom of Expression and Progress

Generally known and accepted fact is that the single factor most critical for progress is the freedom of expression. What gave the West an edge over the rest of the world and enabled them to colonise a large part of the globe was that they had this freedom, at least in the elite circles. They had clarity of vision and thereby winning strategy. 

Freedom of expression is not a commodity given or taken, held or snatched. Its abuses may erode it, and good uses may enhance it. One must choose to speak and care to speak with clarity, knowledge, logic, honesty and tact. The elements of honesty and tact may sound incongruent, but honest purposes sometimes need, on occasion, some tact to make it work.  

Having a right to freedom of expression bestows on one the duty to promote this freedom. Speaking honestly, truthfully, politely and with civility helps, At the same time, one must strive to improve how they speak by enriching their knowledge and, thereby, cultivating open-mindedness.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

A Community University

I visualise a more rooted and functional alternative university system as a communitarian and cooperative one, wherein a whole township is fused into teaching, researching and learning while dwellers would carry out their usual businesses as town-dwellers do, sweeping the streets, running a shop or a factory. Roles such as ordinary citizens, administrators, learners and teachers would be flexible and changeable. A practising doctor may also teach in a classroom and undertake some research work at a lab.  A businessperson would teach management, and a management professor would own some business. A sanitary worker would be taking classes on hygiene or folk music. A homemaker would be tutoring on childcare and cooking and discussing the literary merits of Kalidas or the mysteries of the universe at some public fora. Here, education would be a lived experience and nourish life instead of dictating and dominating people. Classrooms, labs, and institutional centres would be scattered over the whole geography, and things would be coordinated by those willing to do so and capable of doing so. In the traditional system of India, communities used to patronise the education of their young and even outsiders in the case of larger townships. Hermitages were small communities of teachers and learners. Till very late, many settlements within some larger townships served as such communities. Even now, if a township evolves into a community and cooperative university or a university fuses itself into a township, it would make education really democratic, and such a setup would end the self-arrogated rights of scholasticism over folks.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

वशिष्ठ विश्व विद्यापीठ,अयोध्या धाम

भारतीय परंपरा के अनुसार मंदिर अध्यात्म और उपासना के स्थल होने के साथ शिक्षा और कला साधना के केंद्र हुआ करते थे। मुझे ज्ञात नहीं है लेकिन ऐसा ध्येय अयोध्या धाम पुनर्निर्माण योजना का भाग अवश्य होगा। यह अभीष्ट है कि मर्यादा पुरुषोत्तम श्रीराम के गुरु वशिष्ठ के नाम से अयोध्या में एक शोध और शिक्षा केंद्र स्थित हो । अयोध्या धाम की मर्यादा और माहात्म्य के अनुरूप 'वशिष्ठ विश्व विद्यापीठ' विश्व में प्रत्येक दृष्टि से अद्वितीय हो लेकिन विशिष्टता हेतु इसका संकेन्द्रण वेद, आयुर्वेद, योग तथा अन्य अपेक्षित ज्ञान की विधाओं पर हो सकता है। इसके अंतर्गत विभिन्न पीठों के नामकरण भारत के महान आचार्यों और मनिषियों के नाम पर हो, जैसे कि आर्यभट्ट खगोल विज्ञान शोध एवं अध्ययन केंद्र। साथ ही श्रेष्ठता के लिए यह भी अपरिहार्य है कि यह पीठ पूर्णरूपेण स्वायत्त, स्वशासी और स्वपोषी हो। यह संस्थान सम्पूर्ण मानवता के लिए रामराज्य के मानक और माध्यम निर्धारित करेगा जिससे उपलब्धि संभव होगी : ''दैहिक, दैविक, भौतिक तापा, रामराज काहु नहीं व्यापा।" वास्तव में अभी भी विश्व में एक भी शिक्षा केंद्र ऐसा नहीं है जो वैश्विक स्तर पर अखंडित मानवीयता और नैतिकता के प्रति लोगों को आस्थावान बनाएँ। यह ध्येय मर्यादा के अनन्य प्रतिमान रामचरित की प्रेरणा से संभव होगा। 

नीरज कुमार झा 

What to Value

What we value has value. See diamond: it is only aged compressed coal. We may value things without them having any intrinsic worth. There are several factors which play on our minds. For instance, people, who manage a lofty niche for themselves with their larger-than-life images getting flashed too often, attract the adoring attention of people despite their having no meaningful role in our lives. One may value, for instance, a film actress more than their mother. Unusuality is another factor; we don't value normal walking which sustains our lives but value dancing movements of legs like nothing.

What we value becomes valuable by taking something out of us. Sometimes, we are amply compensated for valuing something like if we value education. In many cases, the diminishing of self is irreparable when we value worthless persons, occasions, and things, particularly stage-managed ones with a purpose. One needs to be discerning what they value.

One of the paramount phenomena which deserves high value on the part of an individual is their person and persona. One must keep this in their mind. Anything that deprecates your value must be discarded if having a choice. One must value only things which enhance their value in return. There may be some exceptions to the rule; among others are our nation, parents, and teachers. We owe to them greatly for what we are. We must also value our fellow travellers. The mutuality makes us human.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Being a Developed Nation

Being a developed nation depends on the ease and cost-effectiveness of doing things within the borders. In this world, the fact of the matter is that nations compete ruthlessly with each other for the resources the planet offers, which also include other human beings. A country with its residents at their best alone is best enabled for the competition.

The cruel reality of the world is that rich nations and people use other human beings as resources. This is the unavoidable reality. The wise thing to do for one is to use others and get used by others judiciously in a balance favouring self. The good thing is that in the modern capitalist age, one can demand and get user charges. The fairness of charges is best ensured by the capitalist system itself. A nation or person needs more of a capitalist order for fairness in everything one may legitimately desire. Other systems extract forced labour and even sacrifices of lives without any compensation.

Being a most developed nation, the nation would facilitate its every member with the easiest way to do things worth doing and bearing the least cost for doing those worthy things. Such a nation would also be capable of getting a fair share of global resources and defending itself from rogue forces.

Entrepreneurship is the prime of all engagements human beings undertake. Entrepreneurs serve the people and communities by offering them goods and services they need and in the process they generate surpluses which feed the agencies of order, art, sciences, and literature. Moreover, it ensures an ambience in which one can attain spiritual bliss. It is unrestricted entrepreneurship which translates into high culture. The decay and the resultant wretchedness are directly proportionate to the restrictions put on people and their enterprises.

A poor nation is poor because of its habit of making things complicated for its constituents and imposing costs, fair and unfair, disproportionately to the value of services public agencies provide to the people. A poor nation also sees its government as an agency sui generis and fails to scrutinise and mend the mechanism based on cost-benefit analysis.

The issue I have raised above is the most obvious thing to say but the irony is that the nation's operative epistemology and system work mostly in contradistinction. We need to decolonise our minds from pathogenic leftist ideologies.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Western Lenses and the Desi Visuals

The Western lenses often get distorted visions of the desi visuals. Sporting such spectacles, one sees things from the bifocal of religious and earthly. Desis have things which cannot be captured with this binary. India always had a secularised faith. Worshipping the incarnation of the omnipresent in human forms and roles is itself the secularisation of faith as Indians have always been aware of the infiniteness and incomprehensibility of the Supreme Being. Dharma implies myriad things in their desirable forms and among them one induces the public functionaries to be moralistic and just. One can be Dharmik even without being a believer.

In the Indic traditions, we have an integrated perspective of life where reason and beliefs do not exist in separation or opposition. If we see them separated, we find them only indistinguishably blended in Dharma. If there is anything incongruent or unpleasant in prevalent ideas and practices, Dharma does not stop one from doing away with the unsavoury. The Dharma Dhwaja diffusion over the whole land and beyond augers well not only for all human beings but for all beings and things.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Good Education

If the education imparted is not good enough, it is not worthy of being disseminated. The bad education is counterproductive. It only produces hardened idiots and rogues. People are better left without any formal education if it is not good enough.

Here, it should be made clear that the goodness of education is barely tied to either metropolitan locality or the grandeur of architecture.

Let me illustrate it with the big picture of a piece of human history.

The modernizing West, while having the best educational institutions of the times, could only perpetrate manslaughters, banditry, human trafficking, drug peddling and devastation of flora and fauna around the globe. And, finally, it fell to the all-devastating two world wars, bringing untellable miseries to itself.

After the great war, nay, the most devilish enterprise of modern education, the two superpowers sporting the so-called most glorious institutions of learning, stunted generations of people worldwide in their Cold War campaigns.

The core value of education is Dharma as how Goswami Tulsidas defines it:
'परहित सरिस धर्म नहीं भाई, परपीड़ा सम नहीं अधमाई'
(Doing good to others is only worth doing, nothing is unbecoming like causing pain to others)

Kabir also brings much clarity to the objective of education :
पोथी पढ़ि-पढ़ि जग मुआ, पंडित भया न कोय, ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडित होय।
(Despite exhausting themselves by reading books, none could become learned; those who study four letters of love become learned.)

The fact is that true education leads one to overcome hatred and fear and equips one to engage with the realities for the betterment of one and all. There should not be confusion while it is about promoting the good, it is also about fighting the evil.

But, knowing what is good and evil is again very tricky. And that is the challenge of education.

Niraj Kumar Jha

साधुवाद आपको

नमन
श्रद्धासुमन अर्पित
साधुवाद
धर्मप्राण
संत
महाकवि
आपको

 
अपनी वाणी से
अपने सुकृत्यों से
वराहवातार की तरह
डूबते धर्म को उबारा
रामधुन ऐसी जगायी
हम हम ही रहे और
और आज यह
शुभ दिन आया।

 
पौष शुक्ल पक्ष १२, २०८०

 
नीरज कुमार झा

प्रार्थना

अयोध्या काया
मन मंदिर है
विराजे प्रभु राम
माता सीता हैं
हृदय बसे हनुमान
श्रद्धा से भीगी आँखें हैं
सुबुद्धि की प्रार्थना
हाथ हमारे जुड़े हैं

 
नीरज कुमार झा

पुनरागमन

पौष शुक्ल पक्ष १२, २०८०

अयोध्या में आज कालातीत एवं कालिक के संगम का सत्यम, शिवम, सुंदरम के मूर्त रूप में जीवंत होना पौष शुक्ल पक्ष - १२, २०८० को विलक्षण दिवस बनाता है। यह सम्पूर्ण मानवता के अपूर्व मंगल का युगारंभ है। प्रभु और भारत के चिरंतन सम्राट श्रीराम के प्रति समर्पण और निष्ठा की अनुभूति आज हर भक्त की पूर्णता है।

यह दिवस भक्ति और धर्म, अलौकिक प्रज्ञा और लौकिक विवेक, आस्था और सौहार्द, सौन्दर्य और सुगमता, एवं ऐश्वर्य और कल्याण की एकरूपता के उत्सव तथा तदनुरूप नवजीवन के उद्गम का कालखंड है।

यह दिवस भारतीयों को भ्रम और भटकाव से दूर होने की प्रेरणा देता है। भारतीय अपने विवेक, उद्यम और शौर्य से संस्कारयुक्त संपन्नता के नए-नए कीर्तिमान रचेंगे, यही आज से भविष्य है।

सियावर रामचन्द्र जी की जय। 

नीरज कुमार झा 

Soulfulness

 It is rare to see a person who is totally free of egoism. Those who are so are mostly indifferent. But we know and sometimes come to see people who do not impose themselves on others, create an ambience of bonhomie and walk with their companions with the spirit of collective well-being. What makes them the finest of human beings and makes them shine and light up others without being either egoist or indifferent.  This is soulfulness, which survives among some despite our education and social milieu. Our education basically instils egoism in us and divides us between those who are arrogant and those who are frustrated.  

Niraj Kumar Jha

Who is theorising?

And for that matter, who is defining? Apparently, a theory is a statement and tool of comprehension. What remains unseen, by design, is that theories are mechanisms for appropriation.

 
Among nations and within people, the crafty theory providers fashion the realities of their targetted area to suit the interests of their patrons.

 
A person, people, and nation, therefore, must enable themselves to theorise themselves and retain the capacity to do so. Every person may not be capable of theorising, but they must have enough education to read beyond what is writ large.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Millennial Statement

This is the civilization's millennial statement. The civilization discards the lingering millennium and inaugurates a new one. The imposed epistemologies are finally evaporating out of the collective consciousness. The nation makes a declaration of becoming authentically itself. Over time, but steadily, it has been scraping away the vestiges of defeats and subjugation. It renews the unity and resolve of all the people and consolidates their collective determination to see their nation as the leading light for humanity.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Scholar-Knowledge Relationship

 Based on the relationship between scholars and knowledge, one may classify scholars into two categories. The first category of scholars views the discipline of their engagement as sacrosanct and seeks to propagate whatever they decipher from their learning for the observance by whom they address. They see themselves as subjects of the discipline and work with a sense of devotion to the fashionable precepts of their respective disciplines. These are devout scholars. 

The other or second category of scholars are those who master their respective disciplines. Their approach to the discipline is secular and utilitarian. Instead of being driven by knowledge, they use knowledge for the common good, including their own good. 

The first categories of scholars are necessarily products of societies which have disturbed or ruptured histories yet to be overcome. Their collective vision is split, and they do not have a coherent perspective of what they view or review. They also lack in their efforts for the reason of the absence of sufficient motivation to know the ins and outs of the body of knowledge they engage with as they face mostly a demeaning milieu. For them, there always remains something mysterious in the body of knowledge they encounter mostly as a result of their incompetence. This incites a devotion in their minds instead of challenging their reason. Underdevelopment is a matter of the lack of seriousness in scholarly vocations. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

अनुभव और सिद्धांत के बीच का इंद्रजाल

अपने अनुभवों को सिद्धांतों के रूप में रखकर समझना और परखना हमारे लिए गंभीर चुनौती है। इसके लिए हमें विदेशी अवधारणाओं, उपागमों और सिद्धांतों का उपयोग करना पड़ता है। पहले तो इन उपकरणों को समझना ही टेढ़ी खीर है और कइयों की विशेज्ञता की क्षमता यही आकर समाप्त हो जाती है (इस क्षेत्र में अनूदित ज्ञान का परिणाम और भी भयावह है)। इसके बाद शुरू होता है ऐसे विद्वानों द्वारा उन आयातित शब्दावली और प्रणाली के अनुरूप अपनी परिस्थितियों को फिट करने का दुराग्रह। यह समाज में व्याप्त अनेक विसंगतियों का कारण है। इससे आगे की समस्या है विदेशी विद्वानों द्वारा भारत की परिस्थितियों का सिद्धांतीकरण। उनके सिद्धांत स्वाभाविक रूप से उनकी सांस्कृतिक चेतना पर आधारित होते हैं जो स्थूलता को अधिक दृष्टिगत करती है। दूसरा, समझने की मशीनी दृष्टि कई अप्रकट सांस्कृतिक ताने-बाने को उपेक्षित कर देती है। विदेशियों के ये सिद्धांत हमारे लिए मार्गदर्शक हो जाते हैं और हमारी समझ और सच्चाई में दूराव पैदा कर हमारे जीवन को कठिन बना देते हैं। शिक्षण संस्थानों में किए जाने वाले कार्यों को लेकर गंभीरता की गंभीर आवश्यकता है।

नीरज कुमार झा

 भक्ति

प्रभु की अराधना करे

नहीं करे प्रभुता की कामना

द्रव्य जीवे नहीं

द्रव हो सींचे जीवन

भक्ति उसी की सच्ची

हम माने या ना माने

नीरज कुमार झा

प्रभु

निश्छल मन
हृदय में उमंग
आँखों में आँसू
कंपित हाथों से
जब करता मानव स्पर्श
प्राणमय हो जाता जड़
जो कण-कण में सम्पूर्ण
क्षण-क्षण में शाश्वत
जीव-अजीव में अभेद
सृष्टि-शून्य में विद्यमान
अनादि-अनंत में स्थित
हो जाता स्पंदित उसमें
हो वह धातु या पाषाण

 
नीरज कुमार झा

For Being in Mutual Service

Serving each other, not cheating, robbing, and fleecing others, is the prime inclination of civil people. Barbarism relies on violence and craft, and barbaric people seek to enslave and despoil each other and anyone. The market is the mechanism through which one serves the rest. Democracy flows from this natural tendency of civilized people. Liberalism is the coin of which capitalism and democracy are two sides. Liberalism is the highest stage of civilizational evolution so far. 

I have used the term civilization here not in the sense of the racial-religious geographic regions of the world but in terms of the distance any individual has travelled away from their barbaric primality both historically and psychologically. 

What drags the civilizational march of humanity backwards is their primal instincts DNAed in them by their far longer existence in the wild. The herd mentality, natural to the primal human folks for surviving in the jungle,  undyingly informs human thoughts and leads to the production of collectivist ideologies, ironically, even through scientific methods. 

Liberalism in the last quarter of the twentieth century reemerged to be the default protocol for humankind as being the logical way to human good. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall was the most momentous occasion of the civilizational advance when ordinary people ripped the mighty menacing wall to rubble with their bare hands. 

We should avoid being the generation that would lose the legacy of the sagacity and sacrifices of the people who suffered and fought against the most barbaric regimes and orders ravaging humanity in the last century. 

Niraj Kumar Jha