BOOKS BASED NOTES

We need a very stable conscience to fight  battles against all odds that rule our society. Society is plagued by all forms of inequalities, corruption, violence , and greed of power and financial elites. Inequalities have enabled small groups of corrupt elites to plunder resources of our society that exist in natural forms, human forms and man made forms. But band of warriors that exist today are no comperision . This is because most of the opponents are philosophically hollow in their inside. Fight for truth can't be fought by untruthful soldiers. If we visit the life of Mahatma Gandhi we find he first had to fight with his his own rotten conscience. After correcting his own evils he could be able to take up the enemies of society who belonged both to Britishers and Indians. On political front rulers of foreign country and on social front dominant  caste groups and communal forces were the prime adversaries. But Gandhi could manage to fight against  the both simultaneous...

RAHULUWACH SELF EXPLORATION  Philosophy is very important in life.  To understand this, it is necessary that we understand that every person lives his/her life from a particular point of view.  At the core of every action  is that particular attitude which he or she has.  But most of the people themselves are not aware of the existence of this attitude  which is constantly present in their life.  This approach is the philosophy of their life and most of the people while doing all their activities remain ignorant of their philosophy of life.  They feel that they are reacting to the events happening in their environment or they themselves are influencing that  environment .  But they do not take into account that two people of the same background may have different actions and reactions in the same environment.  Even if they see this difference, they still feel that they are responding according to   the factors which are in...

              आत्म अन्वेषण जीवन में दर्शन का अत्यंत महत्व होता है। इस बात को समझने के लिए ये जरूरी है कि हम ये समझें कि हर इंसान अपनी जिंदगी एक खास दृष्टिकोण से  जीता है। उसकी हर गतिविधि के मूल में उसका वह विशिष्ट दृष्टिकोण बना रहता  है। लेकिन अधिकांश लोग अपने जीवन में निरन्तर उपस्थित इस दृष्टिकोण के अस्तित्व से खुद वाकिफ नहीं होते हैं। यही दृष्टिकोण उनके जीवन का दर्शन होता है और अधिकांश लोग अपनी सब तरह की गतिविधियों को करते हुए भी अपने जीवन दर्शन से अनभिज्ञ बने होते हैं। उनको यही लगता है कि वे अपने वातारण में घट रही घटनाओं के प्रति प्रतिक्रिया दे रहे होते हैं या फिर उस वातावरण को खुद ही प्रभावित कर रहें होते हैं। लेकिन वे इस बात पर ध्यान नहीं देते की एक ही वातावरण में एक ही पृष्ठभूमि के दो लोगों की क्रिया और प्रतिक्रिया भिन्न हो सकती है। यदि वे इस भिन्नता को देख भी लेते हैं तो भी उनको लगता है कि इसके लिए वे कारक जबाबदेह हैं जो उनके व्यक्तित्व से बाहर की दुनिया में रहते हैं। दरअसल होता यह है कि इंसान जो कुछ खुद के बारे में सोचता और समझता है उ...

      HUMAN DIGNITY It's argued that religion gives us the way for salvation. But do we really really need salvation at all?  It's argued that life and the world is illusion and so cravings are pain generators. If this is so do we need to live a life in illusion? Again it's also argued that actions in this world determine our course to salvation. If the world is an illusion and cravings are forbidden fruits why are these so important for achieving salvation?    All such questions are highly misleading and confusing. In fact no one needs salvation but every one needs to act in pursuit of making this world a better place. Religion gives theists a sense of satisfaction and meaning to life. But the attainment of satisfaction and meaningful life  needs a philosophical background where we can find the real sense of our actions. As a human being living on the planet Earth it's our bounden duty to act in a way that makes this earthly life more peaceful, prospe...

  WHO IS THE REAL STATE Who is the real state in modern times? In  a modern parliamentary democracy as we have the  state , for all practical purposes is represented by its executive which is drawn from its legislature. In the real functioning executive dominates legislature as the executive is a representative of the political party or political group which is dominant in legislature. Thus in a modern parliamentary democracy the state is nothing but a concrete form of rule of the dominant political party or group. Legislature is also dominated by this party or group and so not in a position to oppose any move of executive. In all parliamentary democracies in the world and also in India state acts as the executive wishes and executive's wishes are shaped by its parent party or group. Legislature is not in a position to neutralize executive and legislature's wishes are  also determined by the wishes of dominant party or group.         Then whe...

FEUDALIZATION OF MODERNITY IN INDIA Most of Indians are still fascinated by their feudal roots and interestingly both modern Indian Polity and modern Indian economy are typically characterised by feudalization  .Both capitalist economy and socialist economy in India have this feature. So interestingly we could not  have any capitalist society or socialist society or even social democratic society in their classical terms. Rather our entire social system including it's  social, cultural, political and economic aspects have never fully modernized nor demodernized.  Of course the pull of demodernization on a modern practice or institution hascbeen more powerful than the pull of modernization. We see, our social traditions seldom adopt  radical transformation, our religious faiths and practices find new ways to interfere into personal lives, religion in India has never faced that sort of philosophical challenge as religion in the West faced, our financial system nev...

        क्या धर्म जरूरी है?  क्या श्रीमद्भागवद्गीता का दर्शन अत्यधिक आत्मकेंद्रित व्यक्ति की रचना करता है, एक ऐसा आत्म केंद्रित व्यक्ति जो व्यक्तिगत स्तर पर तो बहुत सफल होता है किंतु समाजिक हित के नाम पर इतना रक्तपात करता है कि समाज में अवसाद , और रुदन ही बच सकता है? अतिआत्मकेंद्रित व्यक्ति आत्मकल्याण की बात तो सोच सकता है किंतु उसका व्यक्तिवाद समाज के व्यापक साझा हित से कैसे जुड़ सकता है? पारलौकिकता और पुनर्जन्म की ओट में महानता की रचना करते करते क्या व्यक्ति के स्वयम की उपलब्धि को गौण कर दिया जाता  है ताकि व्यक्ति अपने सामर्थ्य पर भरोसा कर व्यवस्था को चुनौती नहीं दे सके?        अगर पांडव सत्ता के लिए नहीं लड़ते अथवा कोई अन्य मार्ग पर चले जाते या कौरवों की अधीनता स्वीकार कर लेते तो समाज में ऐसा कौन सा पतन हो जाता जो बाद में नहीं हुआ? न कृष्ण की नगरी बची , न पांडवों का साम्राज्य बचा, और न धर्म का सामाज्य ही कालजयी हो पाया , धर्मयुद्ध से यही हुआ न की द्वापर खत्म होकर कलियुग  का प्रादुर्भाव हो गया। तो आखिर मिला क्या?   दुनिया ...

            सोशल मीडिया सोशल मीडिया क्या है, इसे जरा समझने की कोशिश करनी चाहिए। सोशल मीडिया एक सार्वजनिक वर्चुअल मंच है जिसे कोई भी बिना किसी पूर्वशर्त के जॉइन कर सकता है और अपनी बात कह सकता है, और वह बात टेक्स्ट, ऑडियो, वीडियो, या इन तीनों के मिश्रण के रूप में हो सकता है। इस प्रकार सोशल मीडिया एक ऐसा वर्चुअल मंच है जिसपर उसके सदस्य कुछ भी कह सकने की स्थिति में होते हैं।  इस प्रकार सोशल मीडिया सदस्यों को अपनी बात बेहिचक कहने की आजादी देती है। और यही आजादी वैश्विक स्तर पर सत्ताधारी वर्ग को परेशान करती है। पहले जब सिर्फ प्रिंट मीडिया और रेडियो/टीवी थे तो उनपर वही लोग बोल, लिख सकते थे जो उनसे व्यवसायिक रूप से जुड़े हुए थे या फिर इन मीडिया संस्थानों के द्वारा आमंत्रित किये जाते थे अर्थात अखबार, रेडियो,और टीवी पर आने के लिए देश का आम आदमी स्वतंत्र नहीं था, बल्कि वह मात्र उन मीडिया संस्थानो की बात सुनने और पढ़ने और देखने के लिए बंधा हुआ था, वँहा आम इंसान के मत की कोई जगह नहीं थी। इस प्रकार ये परम्परागत मीडिया संस्थान मत तैयार करने की फैक्ट्री भी थे(आज भी हैं)।...

TOOL FOR GROWTH , DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS We in India as a community of people of one country have failed to comprehend one fine truth of history lessons and that fine truth is "the  story of history is a story of innovation and consequent  development of  technology". Human beings are basically innovative beings. Every living being eats and reproduces and finds some shelter but every living being doesn't innovate. Only human beings innovate. History of all living beings is the history of natural evolution but the  history of human beings is the history of innovation induced evolution. And so for other species on the earth there is no concept of growth and development but for human beings this concept is central.                 Innovation leads to knowledge and when knowledge becomes the tool for change it is called technology. As innovation progresses knowledge enriches which in turn stimulates further innovation. This ...

TECHNOLOGY VS MORAL VALUES Today's world is facing one big issue of technology vs moral values. As technology is opening new avenues of human interferance on the strength of science newer questions of moral values are arising continuously. At present the world is facing the wrath of COVID 19 pandemic and there is a fierce debate in media and in scientific world whether the virus originated naturally or it is man made (genetically altered) . One section of scientific world is telling that the novel corona virus is a result of human efforts which accidentally came out of lab setting . This section is not seeing anything wrong in the human interference in the growth of the virus, rather this section is arguing that such efforts are the parts of scientific research to develop vaccines for future diseases. This group has no moral issue with such alteration in genome sequencing by human interference. In reality development in biotechnology has enabled the human beings to alter future gen...

TASK OF INDIAN INYELLECTUALS Problem of Indian intellectuals is that they want to change Indian political practices by western models. But such a vision is bound to fail. India's democratic polity has its own unique features  and within the country there are many local uniques. Macro ideologies are required to understand broader principles but local miniatures are important to be understood for comprehending reality in totality. One uniqueness of India's democratic polity is that it has been under the influence of Hindu religion from its starting days during India's struggle for freedom . Tilak used Hindu symbols to push democratic freedom movement forward and Gandhi had given the movement a strong religious and spiritual tenet. His emphasis on satya, and ahimsa had strong imprint of the Shreemadbhag Geeta. His support for the Khilafat movement was another characteristic.  Rank and file of the INC  was mostly from rural India and this support base was mostly religious in ...

OTHER WAY OF POLITICS OF DHARMA VIS-A-VIS POLITICS OF RELIGION The most unfortunate aspect is that we in India has toiling hard politically to make our traditional Dharma a dogmatic missionary religion which was never here in the past. If we try to understand this we must see what the ShreemadbhagwadGeeta teaches us as this is one Scripture  which is almost available  in every Hindu home along with the Ram Charit Manas or the Ramayan. One of the beauties of SrimadbhagwadGeeta is it's humanity. In the Geeta humanity is more important than ethnicity or any other symbol of identity. Throughout  in the Geeta , the word Dharma h as appeared again and again but the most exciting aspect is that the word Dharma  has nowhere in the Geeta  been defined in any dogmatic way. Rather in the Geeta Lord Shri Krishna denounces the concept of Kuldharma  which is  advocated by Arjuna in the opening part of his dialogue with the Lord. In its place the Geeta opts for a dyn...

NEWS CHANNELS AS A BAD AGENT OF PUBLIC OPINION FORMATION One of the most important and mandatory roles of news channels is to air important news. But, besides this mandatory function news channels of both TV and Social media have some more roles,viz, 1. Doing analysis of important news items. 2. Arranging debates on such items. 3.Incouraging public discourse by inviting distinguished personalities to air their views and opinions.      All these three functions of news channels when combined together convert news channels into a pressure group and also such function of the news channels make them engine for building public opinion. Although the reach of cable TV and dish TV and social media is limited but it is also in such a significant scale that most people of the society who play a vital role in the course of opinion formation have reach to such media. So news channels of all sorts in today's environment play a significant role in the process of formation of public opi...

WE NEED CONSTITUTIONAL ACTIVISM Today while thinking about current scenario of society I felt how much we have to suffer due to bad policies and misplaced priorities.  When one goes through the speech given by Pt. Nehru in the Constituent Assembly while presenting the Objective Resolutions which later grew into the Preamble of our Constitution a thrill is experienced and heart is filled with empathy for our fellow countrymen. Each and every word of the Preamble has been so well thought of that the Preamble gives a unique world view to us. But as time passed we have failed to live up the expectations of our Constitution . It's admitted fact that we have not moved in the direction desired by the  Preamble of our Constitution. But never in Indian Politics there has been any debate on public platforms like on the floor of our legislatures, in our leaders' speeches, in election campaigns, in movies, etc. The fact is that  in our Country party politics grew  faster than co...