Skip to main content

India, Religion and Noise

Japan's latest maglev train
 When Japan was test-running the fastest maglev train in the world, India was discussing whether Taj Mahal was originally Tejo Mahalaya, a Hindu temple.  In spite of all the great slogans like ‘Make in India’ that the Prime Minister bestowed on the nation, nothing has changed for the better since the BJP came to power.  Many things changed for the worse, in fact.  There is more communal polarisation, for example.  There is increasing disgruntlement among the economically weaker sections.  And history is being twisted out of shape.

History as social science is being replaced by history as fantasy and myth, says the editorial in today’s Hindu.  Why is India still so much obsessed with religion and its infantile myths and rituals, when countries like Japan are making rapid progresses in science and technology in spite of the conservatism that runs deep in the people’s veins?

The BJP wanted to come to power and used religion as an easy tool.  Fine.  One can understand the game given the history of the country’s politics.  Having achieved the goal, why does the party still cling on to the tool?  It’s like the hunter searching for the shot bullet instead of the fallen game. 

Why can’t India grow up?  Is it because the right wing is suffering from an acute identity crisis?  No one feels the need to assert a particular identity raucously unless one feels insecure or inferior on account of that identity.  Even the strident assertions of the superiority of one’s religion and culture usually have their roots in some painful feeling of inferiority.

Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 22, 2015 at 12:42 PM

    That's true. The last line is very powerful. It must be some sense of inferiority that makes people assert their superiority on others. Or else why a person would leave the path of peace and development if not due to the insecurities penetrating deep within. India should move on. The time has come when the youth shall act. BJP is hopeless. Any political party is hopeless. They are still clinging to their rotten fundamentals.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 22, 2015 at 12:50 PM

      So much aggressiveness is also a sign of inferiority complex, Namrata.

      Delete
  2. K V V S MURTHYApril 22, 2015 at 6:56 PM

    Indian politicians simply want power to rob the people easily, and they use different tools howsoever temporary and destructive.And don't under estimate common people,they also seek their own share in it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 22, 2015 at 7:50 PM

      True. Without the common man's support the game can't go on. Perhaps some people also suffer from serious identity crisis.

      Delete
  3. Brendan DabhiApril 23, 2015 at 12:10 AM

    The last time anyone tried to assert their identity on a nation, they ended up losing the Second World War.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 23, 2015 at 7:13 AM

      And there are a lot more parallels between the two situations....

      Delete
    2. Brendan DabhiApril 23, 2015 at 8:56 AM

      I'm actually waiting for you to publish an entire comparative study between these 'situations' as they are.

      Delete
  4. Ismail.April 24, 2015 at 10:00 PM

    Nice blog as well as posts. I have become a fan of you. Please visit and give your valuable suggestions for my blog as well.
    www.differentcolorsofindia.blogspot.in

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 25, 2015 at 7:17 AM

      Thank you.
      My knowledge of Hindi is not good enough to understand your blog. I'll keep trying :)

      Delete
  5. UnknownApril 27, 2015 at 2:11 PM

    When there will be equality things will change, I heard an amazing speech by a farmer now a MP and a weaker class by caste too and was in agreement to his suggestions and woes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD1-arWXGFU

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 27, 2015 at 8:43 PM

      Equality is an impossible dream given the socio-economic system we are following.

      Delete
  6. Arun MuthusamyMay 5, 2015 at 9:44 AM

    What's your view on C missionaries spending millions in converting poor tribals instead of spending on development?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 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
47 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

Truths of various colours

You have your truth and I have mine. There shouldn’t be a problem – until someone lies. Unfortunately, lying has been elevated as a virtue in present India. There are all sorts of truths, some of which are irrefutable. As a friend said the other day with a little frustration, the eternal truth is this: No matter how many times you check, the Wi-Fi will always run fastest when you don’t actually need it – and collapse the moment you’re about to hit Submit . Philosophers call it irony. Engineers call it Murphy’s Law. The rest of us just call it life. Life is impossible without countless such truths. Consider the following; ·       Change is inevitable. ·       Mortality is universal. ·       Actions have consequences. [Even if you may seem invincible, your karma will catch up, just wait.] ·       Water boils at 100 o C under normal atmospheric pressure. ·    ...
11 comments
Read more