For Prosperity and Power

The US delegation to the People's Republic of China affirms the obvious: the interest of big business is the national interest. The United States understands this and deploys its imperial might to promote its corporations. Here, it has come to negotiate with its greatest challenger in order to secure a smoother field of operation for them. I do not intend to criticise this reality, but to highlight what prudence demands.

A nation must ease the conditions of doing business at home to the optimum extent and promote its corporations' operations abroad. That is the path towards the intertwined goals of prosperity and power. At the next level, it must ensure that power and wealth remain fairly distributed within the country. The national ecosystem should enable widely held shareholder companies and cooperatives to rise into global corporations. It is fundamentally about the rule of law and fair, facilitative rules of the game.

Simultaneously, insofar as their rules permit, Indians must raise, and be allowed to raise, their stake in the shareholding of global companies to feasible and safe limits, and benefit from the operations of multinational giants.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Questioning What Passes for Poetry

Is poetry about expressions that do not make sense or that sit on the line which divides the sensible and the senseless, where they hint at some hidden meaning which even the one expressing it is not sure about? Is it about noumena that evoke the unknowable, which people only end up revering? Is it about getting lucid-sounding nouns for exotic flowers like daffodils or gendas (marigolds) and birds like flamingos or harils (yellow-footed pigeons) into the imagery? Is it about moral exhortations which the poets themselves never followed and which burden others who are not in a position to live accordingly? Is it about pretensions and fantasies? Is it lust painted as divine? Is it about wordsmithery: saying the very quotidian through dramatic expressions? Practitioners fashion their clothes and hair accordingly. These are strands of what is accepted as poetry, which sound lofty but diminish people's thought and agency.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Capitalism: Ideology or Human Condition?

Capitalism is often theorised as a later stage in human existence. Its historical origins are traced and presented as an outgrowth of civilisation, rather than as an essential aspect of human life itself. In reality, however, it evolved alongside civilisation from its very beginnings, when human beings first ceased to be merely subjects of nature and began to exercise some control over it. This became possible because of the unique biological capacities of human beings: a thinking mind and the extraordinary utility of their hands.

The moment human beings began striving for more than mere subsistence, they were already anticipating capitalism. When they domesticated animals, cultivated crops, harnessed fire, devised methods of channelling water, transported goods with the wheel, and increased mobility through the use of animals and carts, they created systems of production that generated surplus. From there emerged the need for exchange, storage, preservation, and accumulation.

Capital, therefore, has prehistoric origins and constitutes an unavoidable part of civilised life, even though the term itself was coined in modern times. Capitalism became dominant only when trade expanded in scale and production ceased to remain merely household-based or localised for immediate consumption.

Tragically, imaginative yet resentful theorists portrayed capitalism as a late and aberrational phenomenon. More tragically still, many accepted this view unquestioningly. In doing so, they disrupted human progress and strengthened forces hostile to human flourishing.

Popular dictionaries and textbooks commonly define capitalism as the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. Such definitions crudely portray private ownership as though it were unique to the modern age, and the profit motive as though it were a moral perversion that emerged only a few centuries ago. This is intellectual absurdity masquerading as epistemology. It is not a definition so much as an ideological position, one that diminishes human sagacity, agency, and the civilizational impulse itself.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

The Rule of Rules

There is the rule of law. Article 14 expresses it succinctly: “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.” It signifies that law stands above individuals, offices, and power itself.

Then there is rule by law, where law becomes merely an instrument of power. The British governed India through laws as well, but those laws primarily served imperial control rather than justice.

A third condition increasingly draws attention: the rule of rules. Here, rules are applied and obeyed mechanically, without regard to their purpose, spirit, or consequences, or else abused for private advantage. Rules themselves begin to rule, detached from the social needs they were meant to serve. Some may temporarily benefit while others suffer, yet in the long run, everyone loses.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Philosophy, Science, and Engineering of Politics

A continuous realignment, a fine-tuning, is an unavoidable part of a constitutional system. The basic document, and the whole paraphernalia and ecosystem built upon it, together make the system. As it grows and tests itself against reality, it may deviate from the very constitutional spirit it is meant to bring into lived reality.

There may also be fundamental flaws that cause turbulence to persist, regardless of the remedial actions taken. Alongside this, there is the problem of a gradual loss of constitutional vision as the idea unfolds. As reality gathers its own momentum, the system may even come to negate the very idea that constitutionalism seeks to offer.

The story begins at the source, the original homeland of formal constitutionalism, the United States, where it was consciously adopted as a comprehensive project by men of considerable courage, competence, and judgment, drawing upon, curating, and cohering the finest prevailing wisdom. Constitutionalism, therefore, is not a self-executing equilibrium. It is a fragile and contingent achievement, constantly shaped and threatened by incentives, power structures, and institutional inertia.

The challenge, therefore, does not end with preservation. Constitutional wisdom itself is not final. As the system evolves and reality unfolds in ways not originally anticipated, that wisdom requires revision. The task, then, is not merely to restate principles but to infuse the revised understanding back into the system. This is where the engineering of the political becomes unavoidable: the reworking of instruments, the adjustment of institutional mechanisms, the recalibration of processes and linkages through which constitutional intent is realised. Without such translation, even renewed wisdom remains inert, and the system continues on the strength of outdated assumptions.

The philosophy, science, and engineering of politics can never sit back. The academics of politics must rise above banal description, resist the ritual invocation of received ideological lessons that are often inapplicable, and avoid reducing themselves to cheerleaders or professional mourners.

Niraj Kumar Jha

शब्दों की प्राण-रक्षा

हर शब्द प्रयत्न है,
अर्थ उसका जीवन है।
निष्प्राण न हों शब्द,
शब्दों को सींचना होता है।
सूखे-गिरे बिखरे शब्दों के ऊपर,
जीवन दुष्कर हो जाता है।

नीरज कुमार झा

Hierarchy in India: A Corrective Thesis

My thesis is that India was neither uniquely hierarchical nor rightly understood through the singular lens of hierarchy; it was uniquely theorised as such. The tendency of societies to reproduce status through family, occupation, marriage circles, inherited wealth, and social networks has been near-universal. Elsewhere, it appeared through aristocracy, serfdom, guild privilege, landed inheritance, racial exclusion, slavery, elite schooling, and closed class systems, often sustained by sharper legal barriers and more centralised coercion. Yet these were usually narrated as stages of history, regrettable episodes, or ordinary sociology. In the case of India, comparable tendencies were more insistently named, codified, and later foregrounded by colonial and modern discourse as though they disclosed the essence of an entire civilisation. What was widely human was thus rendered peculiarly Indian. What was widely human was thus rendered peculiarly Indian. Strangely, even many Indians collaborated in this project. I am inclined to attribute much of it to naivete, intellectual conditioning, or the prestige of imported frameworks rather than always to conscious malice, though some among them continue to be treated as patron saints of Indian scholarship.

A further distortion lay in imagining India itself as ordered through a single, neat, occupation-based pyramid. Much of the subcontinent was marked instead by complex and locally varied arrangements in which status was contextual, layered, and often criss-crossing rather than linear. Ritual esteem in one sphere could coexist with political weakness in another; those commanding land, arms, trade, wealth, or state power could outrank ritually honoured groups in practical life. Social standing shifted by region, dynasty, sect, economic role, and circumstance. The very meaning of the “superior” changed with the domain being considered. To compress this fluid and plural order into a rigid schema is to mistake a highly differentiated civilisation for a simplified abstraction.

My further contention is that India’s inequities, though real, were in many respects milder, more diffused, and less uniformly brutal than several forms of stratification elsewhere. Europe’s feudal bondage, inquisitions, religious wars, hereditary nobility, and imperial violence; the chattel slavery and racial orders of the Atlantic world; and other systems of state-backed domination often carried severities of another scale and texture. This is not to romanticise India, but to refuse the habit of flattening all hierarchies into one category while making India their chosen emblem.

Even this comparison remains incomplete, for Indian civilisation also preserved within itself recurrent correctives against social hardening. The meeting of Rama and Shabari in Ramcharitmanas, before the teaching of Navadha Bhakti, is among the clearest expressions of this spirit. There, birth, pedigree, and worldly station are quietly set aside before devotion. The ninefold path esteems humility, sincerity, remembrance, trust, self-restraint, and love of the divine, not inherited rank. Bhakti here is not an ornament added to hierarchy; it is a solvent of hierarchy. It reminds us that the most refined thing a human being can bear is not superiority, but inner elevation.

India should therefore be understood not as the singular home of hierarchy, but as the civilisation most insistently interpreted through that lens, despite the comparative mildness of many of its historical forms of stratification and despite the deep indigenous resources it sustained for transcending hierarchy altogether.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Silence or Speech

It is often said that silence is a mark of knowledge and gravity. One must keep in mind that it depends on the context. In our daily life, silence is practically stillness, a tendency to accept whatever is going on, whether good or bad.

One must speak and engage with others on public issues. Conversations help break the barriers that divide people, often at their own cost. Today, technology offers great opportunities for such conversations on public platforms, and they remain open-ended. It should be used to appreciate each other and positive acts, and to resist negativity.

The best way to curb negativity is often to ignore it. By negativity, I mean any condition, place, or association that negates or undermines a person or refuses to accept them as an equal. Some such situations are unavoidable and part of life. One has to live with them but not succumb to them. The effort should be to limit dependence on them. What is needed is a state of withdrawn engagement, being involved, but not overwhelmed.

Niraj Kumar Jha

सच की नियति

संघर्ष ही सच की नियति,
नहीं कभी रहा उसका ठाठ।
करुणा व प्रीत प्रकृति उसकी,
कैसे फैलाए वह जाल?

नीरज कुमार झा

शोधपद्धति-विज्ञान

पाँव देखो,
हैं कि नहीं?

 
नीरज कुमार झा

डकार भी नहीं लेता

अति बुद्धिसंपन्न होगा वह
जिसने पहचाना होगा
सबसे पहले
कि झूठ के पाँव नहीं होते।

यदि यह सच है कि
झूठ के पाँव नहीं होते,
तो फिर झूठ पहुँचता कैसे है
हर जगह?

झूठ के पाँव नहीं होते,
पर उसमें फरेब होता है।
वह सच की पीठ पर चढ़ जाता है,
यह कहकर
कि वही उसे ले जाएगा
सही जगह।

और इस तरह
झूठ पहुँच जाता है
हर जगह।

पहुँचकर जहाँ पहुँचना होता है उसे,
सच को बाहर
खूँटे से बाँधकर रखता है वह।

पाँव नहीं होते झूठ के,
पर उसका मुँह बड़ा होता है,
और पेट भी।
वह निगल जाता है
संघर्षरत सच की संपत्तियाँ—
मानवीय सरोकार,
उद्यमिता,
सृजनशीलता
और क्रांतियाँ।

डकार भी नहीं लेता।

नीरज कुमार झा

लोकधर्म

जनतंत्र को जन शक्ति देता है, और जनतंत्र जन को। जनतंत्र विषयक धर्म व्यापक धर्म के अटल विधान के ही रूप में कार्य करता है -

 
धर्म एव हतो हन्ति धर्मो रक्षति रक्षितः ।
तस्माद् धर्मो न हन्तव्यो मा नो धर्मो हतोऽवधीत् ॥

जनतंत्र को पुष्ट करने निमित्त जन को सम्यक आचरण और उपक्रम अपनाने से पहले तंत्र के व्यवस्थित बोध को प्राप्त करना अभीष्ट है, अन्यथा ऐसे प्रयास विपरीत प्रभाव डाल सकते हैं। इसके लिए लोग प्रश्न करें, और जिनके लिए संभव हो, वे अध्ययन करें। यहाँ यह उल्लेख भी प्रासंगिक है कि वैश्विक संदर्भ में (अन्य सभ्यताओं की तुलना में) दृष्टिगत करने से यह स्पष्ट है कि भारतीय परंपराओं में मानवता और मानवीय गरिमा को अतुल्य रूप से श्रेष्ठ स्थान प्राप्त है, जिसका अध्ययन सम्यक बोध प्राप्ति हेतु ठोस आधार प्रदान करता है।

 
नीरज कुमार झा

Ideological Biology

Most people get their identity and ego fused with a certain ideology, and the lives they lead accordingly shape their physicality too. It is almost like biological growth. As geography shapes one’s physique and mentality, so the ideological milieu becomes biological.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Development or Humanisation?

Development often proceeds like a directed, almost dictatorial campaign where people are treated as cogs in a giant wheel. Even their participation is mechanical, fixed and pre-designed. It becomes more of a formality than something truly substantive.

What should be pursued instead is the humanisation of human beings. Development, as a goal, often ends up relocating or using people. The real need is to unleash the potential of each individual so that everyone can become a substantial human being.

The challenge is that human potential remains culturally and politically constrained. People need to be unchained to realise their humanity.

The task begins with pedagogy. Pupils must be cultivated with a sense of service and learn to value basic public work such as cleaning shared spaces, caring for the sick, and respecting other living beings and nature. At the final stage of education, they should undergo compulsory internships in places of intense humane work like hospitals, nursing homes, and municipal services.

They must also develop fellowship, rise above jealousy, appreciate others’ achievements, and strive to excel with humility. At the same time, they should be trained to stand on their own, be courageous, adventurous, and willing to take risks.

Human substantialization also requires the freedom to do what is worth doing. It means maximising autonomy and safety for all. A free market is a basic and substantive means of achieving this. The market is not a site of predation, as is often propagated, but the most efficient process through which people serve one another.

The government has a clear role: to ensure safety, protect property, and enforce obligations. The government, to be true to its purpose, must function as it is: a collective agency that fairly manages the commons.

If such pedagogy and practice shape public life, development will follow as a byproduct. It would mean clean living spaces, an unpolluted environment, undisturbed natural landscapes, comfortable and aesthetic habitats, safe surroundings, and reliable, humane public services like healthcare.

Niraj Kumar Jha

निदान

गणित के शिक्षक ने विद्यार्थी से कहा कि उसका उत्तर गलत है; सही उत्तर 4 है, जबकि उसने 2 लिखा है। विद्यार्थी ने अपने उत्तर में 2 जोड़ दिया और बोला—“लीजिए सर, अब उत्तर सही हो गया।”

पानी और उर्वरक के अभाव में फसल पीली पड़ने लगी। किसान ने पौधों को  हरा रंग दिया।

कमरे में छत से पानी टपक रहा था। मकान मालिक ने फर्श पर पानी बहने के लिए नाली बनवा ली।

नकझ

Time for United People

The obvious bottom line is that this is only a phase in a long-drawn process of build-ups, manoeuvres, and counter-manoeuvres for global supremacy, control over resources, and leverage in global exchanges. The real concern is their intensity and starkness at this moment, such that the international system, built over half a millennium in an excruciatingly slow fashion, appears to be collapsing. The suffering of people around the world is a bitter reality of life. The world now critically needs united people for peace and fair play in affairs internationally and within nations. It is only wishful thinking at present, but there is no mistake in saying that we need greater unity and a firmer resolve as a nation to navigate the stormy seas of international politics.

Niraj Kumar Jha

वैश्विक वैचारिक तन्तुजाल

वैश्विक संगठित शक्तियों का वर्चस्व, दमन और दोहन जिन तंत्रों पर टिका है, उनका पोषण करने वाला वैचारिक तंतु-जाल सामान्य व्यक्तियों की मानसिकता में आविष्ट होकर क्रियाशील रहता है। स्वयं को निरीह मानकर आरोपित आचरण का स्वाभाविक रूप से पालन करने वाले व्यक्तियों का समूह ही अंततः उस व्यवस्था का यौगिक अवयव बन जाता है। यह तंत्र इतना सूक्ष्म रूप से कार्य करता है कि वही निर्धारित करता है कि सामान्य व्यक्ति किन व्यक्ति-भूमिकाओं, दृश्यों और वस्तुओं की सराहना करे और किनका तिरस्कार। स्वयं, स्वजनों और समस्थित व्यक्तियों के प्रति तिरस्कार इस पराजयी प्रवृत्ति का प्राथमिक लक्षण है।

नीरज कुमार झा

भारतीयता

माता-पिता और गुरुओं के प्रति अनन्य सम्मान मानवीयता का आधारभूत लक्षण है। यह पुरानी सी लगने वाली बात ही भारतीयता के अस्तित्व और अस्मिता का पोषक और रक्षक रही है।

नीरज कुमार झा

राह दिखाते हैं गांधी

शांति के गीत में हैं गांधी

प्रतिरोध के प्रयास में हैं गांधी

मानव की हो धरती

राह दिखाते हैं गांधी

नीरज कुमार झा

Boots on the Ground

They are not “boots on the ground.”
They are human beings in the killing fields.
Anxious.
They feel pain when injured.
They have kin and friends
who feel that pain in their loss.

And those to be “booted”
are human beings too.

Humanity can span the distances to the Moon and Venus,
Yet cannot overcome the chasms within.
It can look inside an atom,
Yet cannot see another human as human.

A person can connect, face-to-face,
with another anywhere on the planet,
Yet fails to see the other as human.

Why?

Niraj Kumar Jha