BEING AND BECOMING

What is an achievement if it remains personal? If one dares to ask air about its personality what answer he will receive? If one asks the stream of water about their name and identity; what answers are expected? Life is a phenomenon, happening here-and-now, transcending any and every pre-supposed limitation of individuality. I dare to experience I'm not one. I am a fragment of the big reality in happening. I don't exist in personification, abstraction. Ego is a boundless possibility if and only if there is endeavor to break the shackles of "Platonic Cave", which is not a transcendental imagination, outside reality, but immanently striving for the "Will-to-life". No global catastrophe, emerged out of chaste-thumping parochialism, would have knocked at the door to the humanity, had there been visions to see outside limitations. What personal achievement has not been swallowed in by the history of life? What has remained but the dust of life. After indust...

ये पन्ने अख़बार के पलटता हूँ तो जी घबराता है। अब हर कोई उस संग गुज़रता है, अब हर कोई एक सा बन जाता है! जीवन के कितने पन्ने, कुछ जाने, कुछ अनजाने, अब एक ही रंग में ढ़ल जाता है। ये पन्ने अख़बार के पलटता हूँ तो जी घबराता है। अब हर कोई उस संग गुज़रता है, अब हर कोई एक सा बन जाता है! आधुनिक रिश्ते को अब कौन सा पोथी सींचे जाता है? आज का अख़बार ना जाने कितने रिश्ते बनाता है? और कितने मिटा जाता है? ये पन्ने अख़बार के पलटता हूँ तो जी घबराता है। अब हर कोई उस संग गुज़रता है, अब हर कोई एक सा बन जाता है! तंग-हाल में पड़ोसी भूखे पेट सो जाता है, अख़बार के ख़बर के माफ़िक, ये एहसास कुछ क्षण में मर जाता है। ये पन्ने अख़बार के पलटता हूँ तो जी घबराता है अब हर कोई उस संग गुज़रता है, अब हर कोई एक सा बन जाता है। छपने को बेचैन हर कोई, सफलता के प्रमाण को तलाशता है। अख़बार में छपी तस्वीर अक़्सर, आवाम से अलग कर जाता है। पहचान गढ़ना और मटियामेट कर देना, अख़बार हर भाषा जानता है! ये पन्ने अख़बार के पलटता हूँ तो जी घबराता है। अब हर कोई उस संग गुज़रता है, अब हर कोई एक सा बन जाता है!

It is true; isn't it? Everybody loves her picture. But what picture I am referring to? The one portrays my innocent childhood, or another one, which paints my maturity, you may call it adolescence, adulthood, or old-age whichever suits your imagination. Don't you think that it's a hard task to identify and categorize? Naturally, no picture can portray me what I am inside as a diary of beings. Imagining myself through a picture I often fail to judge if I am of this kind or that kind? I imagine a good picture of mine; for I need a good filter to make me fair and rosy. I don't know what is real in me, to extend it further, hyper-reality is also a mythical jargon for me. I judge my self without judging it in a fair, objective, or neutral way. Obviously, I am not an "impartial spectator", in terms of what Adam Smith create a character of imagination, who can judge without pre-judging. I am a judge of something or someone who is other in me. Judging requires sep...

Geetam Tiwari, IIT Professor, wrote an erudite piece for The Hindu quite a few days ago on the recent amendment of The Motor Vehicle Act. That essay has made me aware that the structural problems are far more important than a top-dressing attitude. The modern science of law revolves around a few penal justifications, and deterrence, as a penal justification, is one of few ones, which is taken as a show-piece, to justify much higher punishment. As if, writing down on the paper becomes a socio-historical reality. The positivistic science of law doesn't allow us to diagnose the real problems. It remains expositorial in its contours, to refer a Benthamite term, or fictious like a "persona ficta". Hegel was realistically true when he remarked, "Once you start knowing someone you stop understanding him". Understanding is an "organic attitude", which requires openness in perspective, and courage to look beyond 'dogmatic castle'.  There may be s...

एक पर्वत और एक चिड़िया कभी-कभार बात कर लेते हैं, पर्वत कभी पूछ लेता है कि तू उड़ती रहती तो है हर क्षण पर तुझमें ऊँचाई क्यों नहीं है? चुगती रहती है तू हर पल दाने पर तुझमें भुख की गहराई क्यों नहीं है? तेरे घोंसले पे सबकी निगाहें हैं पर तू घबराई क्यों नहीं है? चिड़िया बोल पड़ती है; तेरा उठना हवस की कहानी है, तेरा चोटी अहँकार की निशानी है, तुझे जल्दी थी अब तू बूढ़ा हो गया है, मैं जो ठहरा हूँ, ज़िन्दा हो गया हूँ। तू जला था कभी पेड़ों को उठते देखकर, तू डरा था कभी समंदर के प्रवाह से, भागते-भागते तू तन्हा हो गया है, मैं जो ठहरा हूँ, ज़िन्दा हो गया हूँ। मेरी उड़ान में तुझे ठहराव नज़र नहीं आया, मेरी पंखों का तुझे आराम नज़र नहीं आया, तू विशालता के शिखर पे अन्धा हो गया है, मैं जो ठहरा हूँ, ज़िन्दा हो गया हूँ!

What is 'other' in me? Something which is not a part of me, someone who is separate and distinct from me? This separateness is often preached in every bit of discourses. Otherness has a value which starts with the premise of self. Self, which is egotistic, selfish, and individualistic. The dichotomy of self-otherness is the genesis of chaos, violence, hatred, and contempt. In fact, no violence is violence in real sense if it does not affect self. Inflicting injury to others must be injurious to self. Can there be an action which affects the so called others without self? I doubt if any. I doubt if there is self-other dichotomy in existence. The moment people practice "I" v. You, or I v. They, that moment only the very possibility of life as harmony, beauty, and peace looses its fragrance amid chaotic-egotistical tensions. There is no self-other division except in my mind. And this division has resulted into catastrophic strains since ancient to modern time. Viol...

Once I had privilege to witness a lecture, which was delivered by Prof. Keith Hart at India International Centre, New Delhi. The theme of the lecture was "Cosmopolitanism in Gandhi and Kant". At that point of time, I was a nascent scholar of Law, for me, that lecture was too complex to comprehend by any ordinary mind. However, the basic theme was quite fascinating. The two  practitioners of morals at two different time and space, if they have an opportunity to initiate a dialogue, how will they take each other as a thinker and practitioner of ethics? As a student of Gandhi and Kant I am of the firm view that Gandhi and Kant were two different paradigms of ethics. Gandhi was a scientist who experimented with the conjectures which was there in theology since ancient and medieval times. Kant, on the other hand, was deeply pious and well disciplined as a person who lived for the sake of enrichment of moral laws. Both Gandhi and Kant broke the "dogmatic slumber" of rel...