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.
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
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
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें