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 

The Mahatma

It was the early 1970s. I was just a kid then. I was trying to learn the basic letters. Our tutor Shri Suresh Babu was struggling with me to make me learn the first alphabet but my faculty was stubbornly resistant to accept that. Anyway, at that time I knew about Gandhiji. The Mahatma at that time, I felt, lived around, not as a person but as an influence. His presence as an ennobling ethos permeated the ambience in that remote location of the country. I saw his pictures hung on the walls of public offices and places as if looking at me and everyone affectionately with a mischievous smile. As I grew, I see today, his presence gradually withering away over time. We can discuss the legacies of the Mahatma endlessly in appreciation or approbation but the fact, which I feel we cannot deny is that he bound us in a very humanising association as a nation. At that time, which I can articulate now, the Indians then must have felt that they belonged to the nation, and the nation belonged to them, and everything was geared to the idea of universal good. And Bapu with his careless smile symbolised the spirit.

Niraj Kumar Jha