JAGRIT BHARAT
‘Awareness Through Knowledge’
Vision
Jagrit Bharat is an online portal for dissemination of knowledge on the socio-cultural history of India from an authentic Indic perspective and a fact-based, objective commentary on its present political and social dynamics.
Identity
Our assumed appellation Jagrit Bharat, which means in Hindi ‘Awakened India’ conveys the underlying thought, that only through clear discernment and articulation about our origins, our journey through time and our present course can we arrive at self-awareness, and only through this well-founded idea about ‘what we are’ can a nation and people achieve its full potential and true greatness.
The Turf
The present narration on Indian society, culture and history suffers from a definite bias which tends to narrate these according to how outsiders have perceived it and interpreted it to fulfill and justify their relation to it, as also through the lenses of various ideological streams of thought which arose in the 20th century that have attempted to force fit it into their pre-determined framework and distorted it to an extent that it is inconsistent with the socio-cultural reality of India.
These readings about India, standardized and fed to generations of Indians roughly over the past century-and-a-half, through an education system introduced by the colonial administration which supplanted the native knowledge system and its modes of instruction, served to sever Indians’ connect with their past, eroding their sense of identity with their civilization that has evolved through millennia of interactions and internal churn as a unique and resplendent ecosystem.
The Challenge
These descriptions about India established and perpetuated through the dominant academia have persisted in the discourse, as well as in the perceptions of people both outside and even those who are part of the Indian collective but trained to view it through ideological lenses rather than a factual position.
This has remained largely unchallenged since an alternative disquisition was neither admitted nor tolerated by those firmly entrenched within academic circles in the field of Indological studies and the prevailing information media which endorsed their version.
Our Mission
The proliferation of electronic media in recent times has however permitted these voices to be heard and spread. Jagrit Bharat is an endeavour to collate new sociological, historiographical research of individuals by sifting of original sources and evidences hitherto disregarded and through these factually sound accounts engender a fresh and authoritative retelling of the story of India.
How We Get There
With the thought that only a shift towards a heightened overall consciousness about their true legacy can enable a people to realise their true potential, the site is designed as an e-journal, with the intention to evolve and present with lasting imprint, a well-rounded, emic view on the Indian social milieu, spiritual traditions and the historical landscape, and its manifestation in the present socio-economic and political scenario in India, with the ultimate aim to steadily expand this awareness among an ever wider base of the heirs of the Indian heritage, as well as those with a stake in and genuine inquisitiveness and love for it.
Goals
Jagrit Bharat examines the myriad issues afflicting Indian society and polity in the present, evaluating the background and factors that produce conflicts and the chaotic discourse surrounding them, and attempts to bring clarity and suggest possible ideas for their resolution by neutralising the noise of rhetoric from a knowledgeable position.
Jagrit Bharat seeks to address the glaring inconsistencies that impair Indians’ self-concept and the way the world regards them, which hinder them from gaining control over their narrative and destiny. It would try to identify the deficits in restoration of India’s civilisational integrity and the inimical forces that assail her sovereignty as a unit.
Jagrit Bharat dedicates space to features of regeneration of India’s cultural consciousness and means of instilling self-confidence and reinforcement of national character.
One of our distinct aims is to give a voice and platform to ‘what thinking Indians think.’ To keep the discourse from getting hegemonised within a select group of opinion makers, we attempt to bring to the fore the opinions and expressions of more and more Indians who chime with Jagrit Bharat’s core theme of Indian civilisational ethos (dharm) and its prime motive of strengthening the physical entity that represents it (Bhārat desh).
Principle
Jagrit Bharat retains a position fiercely independent of political allegiances and believes in bringing out genuine viewpoints unmarred by agendas. We owe fidelity only to the truth as known to the best of our conscience – from fact to fact, build the edifice of Truth.