Skip to main content

Bigots and Selfistan




In Salman Rushdie’s novel, Shalimar the Clown, a Muslim boy and a Hindu (Pandit) girl are in love.  When the matter is brought to the attention of their parents as well as the panchayat, nobody finds anything seriously wrong.  Abdullah, the boy’s father, mentions Kashmiriyat, “the belief that at the heart of Kashmiri culture there was a common bond that transcended all other differences.” Pyarelal Kaul, the girl’s father added, “There is no Hindu-Muslim issue.  Two Kashmiri (…) youngsters wish to marry, that’s all.”

This is the Kashmir of the early 1960s as presented by Rushdie.  Half a century later, we know how far Kashmir is from such a broadminded understanding of religion and life.

It’s not a problem confined to Kashmir or a few places.  The more the world advances towards the utopian global village, the more the people’s minds seem to shrink.  A recent New York Times report lays bare the bigotry of a Lutheran pastor in America.  The pastor had to apologise for participating in an interfaith service.  His explanation highlights the bigotry that plagues the Lutheran church.  He explained that he had spent hours with his congregation educating them about the differences between Lutheran teaching “and the teachings of false religions such as Islam or Baha’i,” both of which had clergy members at the interfaith service. (emphasis added)

What can an interfaith service mean if the participants come with such prejudices?  It will only be a mere sham meant to hoodwink people into accepting a pseudo tolerance of other religions.  Such hypocrisy will not achieve any noble goal.  It’s better to live in the small circle of one’s own religion than pretend to make friends with believers from other religions.  Pretensions are more lethal than open bigotry. 

The bigots should not stretch out hands of pretended friendship.  As one of Rushdie’s characters says in the novel quoted above, “Why not stand still and draw a circle round your feet and name that Selfistan?”  Bigots should be confined to their own Selfistans. 
Labels:

Comments

  1. PanchaliFebruary 9, 2013 at 11:04 AM

    Well said!This reminds me of a famous quote:
    "“What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.”
    ― Albert Einstein

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 9, 2013 at 6:11 PM

      Indeed. And prejudices wreak more havoc too than atoms!

      Delete
  2. The MukhtiarsFebruary 9, 2013 at 5:19 PM

    well said

    ReplyDelete
  3. mandakolathurFebruary 9, 2013 at 7:22 PM

    So, you see as well as or better than I do, religion is bigotry-distiller. Vive la religion!

    RE

    ReplyDelete
  4. Vishal RathodFebruary 9, 2013 at 9:09 PM

    absolutely true

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownFebruary 11, 2013 at 9:57 AM


    It's the season of love and everyone is busy planning special ways to make their Valentine's Day memorable. Check out personalized photo calendars & t-shirts on http://www.facebook.com/VistaprintIndia that will have your special one appreciating your thoughtfulness. And if you like our FB page, consider a Flat 25% OFF as our Valentine's gift to you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. VetirmagalFebruary 12, 2013 at 11:45 PM

    Beautiful!

    I once heard a Priest , doing theology in Rome express humbly " All religions seem to the same".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 13, 2013 at 9:45 AM

      And, perhaps, they do! How many religious people are genuinely willing to admit that their own religion is nothing better than any other?

      Delete
  7. RoshanNovember 16, 2020 at 10:50 PM

    The way you explain is very easy to understand. You can also check our blog : photo calendar

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

The Lights of December

The crib of a nearby parish [a few years back] December was the happiest month of my childhood. Christmas was the ostensible reason, though I wasn’t any more religious than the boys of my neighbourhood. Christmas brought an air of festivity to our home which was otherwise as gloomy as an orthodox Catholic household could be in the late 1960s. We lived in a village whose nights were lit up only by kerosene lamps, until electricity arrived in 1972 or so. Darkness suffused the agrarian landscapes for most part of the nights. Frogs would croak in the sprawling paddy fields and crickets would chirp rather eerily in the bushes outside the bedroom which was shared by us four brothers. Owls whistled occasionally, and screeched more frequently, in the darkness that spread endlessly. December lit up the darkness, though infinitesimally, with a star or two outside homes. December was the light of my childhood. Christmas was the happiest festival of the period. As soon as school closed for the...
14 comments
Read more

A Government that Spies on Citizens

Illustration by Copilot Designer India has officially decided to keep an eagle eye on its citizens. Modi government has asked all smartphone manufacturers to preinstall a government app, Sanchar Saathi , on every phone in such a way that no citizen can ever uninstall it. The firms have been also ordered to install the app on existing phones too using software-update technology. The stated objective is to strengthen cybersecurity and protect users from fraud. The question is why any government should go out of its way to impose “security” on its citizens. For over a month now, I have been receiving a message every single day from the Government of India’s Telecom Department to install the app on my phone. I wanted to block the sender, but there is no such option. Even that message is an imposition. I don’t trust any government that imposes benefits on me. “ Beneficent beasts of prey ,” Robert Frost would call such governments. When Modi government imposes security on me, I ha...
8 comments
Read more

Schrödinger’s Cat and Carl Sagan’s God

Image by Gemini AI “Suppose a patriotic Indian claims, with the intention of proving the superiority of India, that water boils at 71 degrees Celsius in India, and the listener is a scientist. What will happen?” Grandpa was having his occasional discussion with his Gen Z grandson who was waiting for his admission to IIT Madras, his dream destination. “Scientist, you say?” Gen Z asked. “Hmm.” “Then no quarrel, no fight. There’d be a decent discussion.” Grandpa smiled. If someone makes some similar religious claim, there could be riots. The irony is that religions are meant to bring love among humans but they end up creating rift and fight. Scientists, on the other hand, keep questioning and disproving each other, and they appreciate each other for that. “The scientist might say,” Gen Z continued, “that the claim could be absolutely right on the Kanchenjunga Peak.” Grandpa had expected that answer. He was familiar with this Gen Z’s brain which wasn’t degenerated by Instag...
10 comments
Read more