Skip to main content

Holy cows and unholy people


The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) is being saffronised.  Two office bearers of RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY) and a former professor who unsuccessfully contested Lok Sabha elections in Manipur last year on a BJP ticket find place in the reconstituted team of ICHR. 

Maharashtra has become the ninth state in India to ban cow slaughter.  We can expect more additions to the list soon. 

The past as well as the future of the country is being altered.  History is written by the victor, as they say.  The destiny is also written by the victor.

The Deccan Chronicle says that the lives of about 20 lakh people will be adversely affected by the ban on beef in Maharashtra.  One assumes that is the ultimate purpose of the ban.  Hitler overtly killed his perceived enemies.  His counterparts in India do it without attracting the attention of other countries whose cooperation is required if the regime has to deliver its electoral promises.

The Holy Holstein
The best breeds of milch cows used in Indian dairies nowadays like the Jersey and the Holstein all had their origin in so-called Christian countries.  Are these 'Christian' varieties of cows holy in the Hindu India?  If they are, can the human beings whose religions originated beyond the borders be tolerated, if not considered holy?

A few days back, a leader of the Madhya Pradesh BJP suggested that Indians should be allowed to adopt tigers and lions as pets.  While we can admire the party’s passion for the feral and the wild, some of us at least may be left wondering why the party does not share at least a fraction of that passion when it has to deal with certain human beings.

But the answer to this must be evident enough.  If it is not, read the first paragraph once again.  Read between the lines. 
Labels:

Comments

  1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 5, 2015 at 1:23 PM

    http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/maharashtra-scraps-muslim-quota/article6962326.ece?homepage=true

    http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/banning-is-not-the-solution/article6959753.ece

    http://www.thehindu.com/news/beef-traders-may-move-court-against-ban/article6959811.ece

    ReplyDelete
  2. English linksMarch 7, 2015 at 3:27 PM

    would like to share another interesting read!!

    My nostalgia about meat was never about beef. That bloody piece of red meat wrapped inside the large teak leaves by the butcher was a rare thing to be brought home. We couldn’t afford it, unless of course for some sundays or festival days when it was cooked with plantain. And there used to be more pieces of plantain than beef in that curry


    http://www.jocalling.com/2015/03/beef-diaries/

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMarch 8, 2015 at 12:24 PM

    Very sad. Shameful, secular India. India is walking backwards, no, running backwards.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

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
44 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more