BEING AND BECOMING

पिछले कुछ दिनों से दिल्ली का मिज़ाज बदला सा नज़र आ रहा है। वैसे जो ना बदले वो दिल्ली कहाँ! बादशाह बदले, इमारते बदली, पुरानी से दिल्ली नई भी हो गयी। मेरे ख़्याल से यहाँ का मौसम घड़ी दर घड़ी करवटें लेता है। अब मई के महीने में सावन का एहसास तो यहीं से मिल सकता है। अभी ख़बर आई कि मानसून देर से आएगी। अखबार वालो ने लिख रखा है। पर यहाँ तो बारिस सुबहो-शाम हो रही है। मौसमी पढ़ने-लिखने वालों के लिये आफत ये है साहब कि अभी परीक्षाओं का ताबड़तोड़ दौर चल रहा है। अब भला सुबह से लेकर रात तक, विद्यार्थियों का हुज़ूम पुस्तकालय के चक्कर काट रहा है। बीच सेमेस्टर में पुस्कालय ने बड़ी आस भरी नज़रों से उन्हें याद किया था। तब नहीं दिखे। अभी साहब बिना कुर्सी के भी पढ़ने को तैयार हैं। वो भी ऐसे मौसम में।  चुनावी मौसम भी है साहब। हर कोई अपनी उपयोगिता को सिद्ध करने में लगा है। लोकतंत्र का पर्व ट्यूटर के हैंडल पे एक्टिव हो चुका है। मीडिया वालों ने अपने अपने चैनलों पे इंटरव्यू की होड़ लगा रखी है। कुछ यूट्यूब पे इंटरव्यू दिए जा रहा है, और तो और कुछ लोग इंटरव्यू की बखिया उधेड़नेे में लगे हुए हैं। साहब टी आर पी का कम्पटीश...

Asian values are often discussed in the 21st century, whenever European cultures are trapped int their limits of imagination; undoubtedly, Greek and Roman had significant contributions in the advancement of Episteme. Europe witnessed some sparkling minds as well as aesthetic ones. Europeans were smart enough to recognize the wisdom of history and brought back some invaluable wisdom from the graveyard of history, particularly they looked back at Romans in order to develop a system of law; Bentham and Austin were fascinated by the wisdom of Romans, and their "twelfth table" was the remarkable example of a systematic and discursive foundation of law. But, Asians, particularly India and China neglected their own traditions; Chinese adopted Marxism in the leadership of Mao, but later on moved at the fundamental building blocks of a "market society". Their old traditions were very rich, particularly Confucianism and Daoism, in the leadership of Confucius and Lao Tzu flo...

Everyday I read some columns in various newspapers and what I find intriguing is the same issue again and again, articulated by leading thinkers of our age. To be fair, thinkers are no more. Articulators and commentators are many around the spotlight. Nobody pays heed to the role of people in the dismal performance of our institutions. Institutional safeguard cannot be a singular method to enhance freedoms of our fellow citizens. Institutional pragmatism has its own limitations. It cannot change the nature of the governors and governed. People are the sole guardian of every valuable thing humankind has achieved with steady struggle. No institution is perfect, but it can be made perfecatble. For we need to avoid imitation games. We are too much obsessed with copying everything from others. The best way to check institutions across the board cannot be uniform everywhere. We need to work on human resources and devlopment. Better people are the solution for the better institutions and th...

Marriam Webster dictionary has today preferred to explain the meaning of a word, "hypermnesia", which means abnormally vivid and complete memory. Some public intellectuals refer it with "elephantine memory". Memory is a unique apparatus of our brain which preserves many a subtle emotional and intellectual phenomenons at the same time it is always ready to erase many a minute details we often pass through. The logus of memory and memorial ceremonies are revered around the world, reason being, memory is regarded as the foundational leap from animal kingdom which differentiates humans from instinctual life-cycle of mysterious nature. Memory, for a yogi, not a obstacle but a journey through which a yogi transcends it, to reach at pure consciousness. Memory is quintessential for a scientific journey of humans; it is a deep and pervasive source of pleasure and pain. Memory, in that sense, loves to be filled with what is available. If one aspires to achieve some pleasura...

नेतृत्वकर्ता करुणामयी होता है. जिसके पास अहंकार आती है तो उसे दया भाव से देखता है, और मुस्कुराते हुए आगे बढ़ जाता है. अहंकार एक स्वाभाविक लक्षण है. जब तक अस्तित्व है तब तक अहंकार है, इसे मिटाया नहीं जा सकता, पर बेहतर होता है कि वो हावी ना हो. हमारे समाज में, चाहे वो मनुष्य हो या जानवर हो, नेतृत्व करना हर किसी की बात नहीं है. नेतृत्वकर्ता अपने काम को इबादत की नज़र से देखता है. अनुपालन करने वाला पूरी ज़िंदगी इसी बात में गर्व करके बिता देता है कि कितना सफल व्यक्ति उसे जानता है. उसका अस्तित्व बस इस बात पे निर्भर करता है कि वो कैसे दूसरों की ज़िंदगी का हिस्सा बन सके. इस प्रकार वो अपनी ज़िंदगी के अध्याय को लिख नहीं पाता है. भटकता रहता है पर उसे मालूम नहीं कि वो क्या कर रहा है. प्लेटो, ग्रीक दार्शनिक, ने सही कहा था कि नेतृत्व करना हर किसी के बस की बात नहीं है. क्योंकि नेता वो है जिसकी अपनी स्वतंत्र आवाज हो. जो खोने को भी पाने जैसा सत्कार करता हो. जो सीखता रहता हो बिना किसी अहंकार के, अपने ईर्ष्या को अपना मित्र समझकर उससे बातें करता हो. मैं हैरान नहीं होता इस बात पे की लोग अनुपालन को उपलब्ध क्यों...

Sometimes a good book makes you happier more than a million dreams of heavenly pleasures one may dream about. But reading is a difficult habit which seldom interests you and once you find the music in books no other imagined pleasure would seem to be perpetual enough to replace the bliss of reading. I learnt from a textual journey of Jacques Derrida, to whom I admire immensely for his sheer brilliance, which I perceive in his magnum opus, Of Grammatology. Derrida taught me how not to read a text; reading with love and reading with suscipicion travel around through two extreme poles. It is only after a reading with the critical intimacy a text becomes a leader to guide in a dark and unguided path to explore.  Today, I got to know about Jeremy Bentham a little bit, because narratives and headnote knowledge are more obnoxious than ignorance, though frankly admitting, I am still away from his masterpiece, Principles of Morals and Legislation. While reading Karl Polanayi, The Grea...

Writing about something is a task of exemplary courage, and writing about nothing is of course a fun of anxious wanderer. Something matters to everyone deep down living under an intervowoven thread of the society. "Something" is a question of existential nature which invites multiple criticisms, myriad ways of observations, negation, sublimation, and elevation. I am sorry for using Hegelian terminologies, but the fact is, what I find compelling here to express is that our society has not responded with urgency to the various existential crisis in mature and delicate ways. The deep divide between poor and rich has reached to its extreme consequences. Somebody rightly said, we can fight against poverty either by exterminating the structure of impoverishment or abolishing the poor. It seems that we have taken the second mantra more seriously than a prior one. Culturally and politically, we the humans on  planet Earth have developed a unique kind of "exploitative men...