Skip to main content

Games


When you play with children, choose to lose.  Winning means a whole new world to children.  

When you play with religious leaders, choose to lose.  If they don’t win against you, you are damned.  Read history if you don’t believe me.  The best scientists, the best artists, the best writers, all chose to lose to religion.  Remember Galileo, for example.  Or Leonardo da Vinci. Salman Rushdie is a living example.  There are infinite examples in between. Religious leaders are children.  With the difference that some of their physical organs have grown beyond childhood.

When you play with politicians, never lose.  If you lose, you are doomed.  The best is never play with politicians, unless you are an incorrigible crook or you are desperate enough to be shot dead in some encounter-killing-game staged with the help of the state machinery.

Now imagine playing with a religious leader who is also the chief minister of your state.  Having watched some of the TV appearances of Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of UP, I understand that the people of UP are moving into some very interesting games.  I wish the people all the best.  


The game is getting popular day by day.  I foresee an interesting future for India.  ‘Interesting’ is a terrible word. 

Comments

  1. To accept your defeat requires a big good heart. All those people are like frogs in the well. They think what they see is great and are not ready to accept that there lies a vast ocean beyond their well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I sincerely mean to be impartial when I say this, and believe me I'm NOT taking sides, but the fact is that the pathetic state of U.P. does need an iron hand (read fist) to tackle the situation..be it Yogi or a bhogi, an elected politician or an appointed bureaucrat..and the current CM is being applauded even by opposition (aside though:))

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm watching. Let me share your hope that things are going to be better.

      Delete
  3. Amitji is right, sir. UP indeed needs an iron hand and Yogi has proved all right till now. Each day is a small step towards future. And, things haven't yet taken the turn towards worse, in spite of your repeated dire prophecies. I suggest, let's wait and watch. It is indeed possible that things may change!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Still waiting and I know changes are slow processes.But whatever reports reach in this part of the world from UP are not very encouraging. We get video reports about people being tortured in the name of cow protection and other similar causes. Religion seems to be becoming more brutal in that part of the world.

      Delete
    2. Well, I would like to point out the maxim 'Power Corrupts'. It's a rare mortal, who remains unaffected after suddenly being bestowed with power. A little anarchy is predictable, though inexcusable. What we need to see is a trend of of improvement. It's the same with the corrective facilities, as well as hospitals all over the world. They don't expect a miracle that the criminals will reform overnight. What matters is the improving trend. The anarchy will be controlled.

      As you said that news and videos of Yogi is reaching to your part now... tell me, sir! Did you ever notice the news and videos during the SP reign? I would just suggest you to go through the news and the status of the state during their reign and then compare. You will find a marked improvement. It's that upward trend, which
      builds hope.

      BTW, I'm not sure if this news article was missed by you... Please go through this.

      http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31821&articlexml=Traders-feel-Yogi-not-against-abattoirs-02042017018018

      Delete
    3. Yesterday I spoke to a number of friends who are all originally from UP though now settled in many parts of the country. They all told me what you are saying: that the state is improving. OK, I have decided to leave aside UP politics for a few months in my writings.

      During the previous regimes also news did reach. But no particular section of people felt threatened because the news was about appeasement of one section or another. Appeasement is unfair to those not benefited by it. But it doesn't create communal polarisation. So people outside the state left it at that.

      I had read that news [the link you've attached]. Seen from one angle, it gives the impression that the present govt is against not only Muslims but also Dalits! Well, BJP does have that reputation. And then the hypocrisy mentioned in the report is obvious too. The BJP candidate contesting in a by-election in Kerala now promised his audience (mostly Muslims - Malappuram district) that he would ensure the availability of beef for them. He was reprimanded by the party and hence amended his statement later as politicians always do. Such hypocrisy is also not very befitting the religious habit worn by certain leaders of the party.

      PS. I prefer vegetarian food. I detest beef eating which is a herculean exercise for the teeth and jaws. So I have no personal interest in the affair of cow slaughter.

      Delete
  4. It depends on what you mean by religion.

    You mention Galileo, but choose to ignore Schrodinger, Heisenberg. Secondly, it must be noted that the best art, architecture, literature is associated with religious works -- all over the world.

    I read the first paragraph, and went no further.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mercifully we have not yet reached a "state" which forces us to read anything though the force has entered our lives with respect to food, dress, love, and so on. Until it affects reading, you can safely choose to read whatever you wish. :)

      I still stand by my claims about religion. My observation is in general; there are exceptions. It still remains a fact that religion is the largest torturer in the world as it always was.

      Today scientists may be at a vantage point. But that doesn't make religion any better, any more humane. In fact, religion continues to be a killer, a regressive force which upholds obscurantist views and makes people fight each other in the name of those views.

      Delete
    2. I think that you are confusing 'Religion' with 'Religious', aka 'Fanatics'. If you have gone through religions, please enlighten me with just one religion, which advocates murdering non-believers. A single example will do.

      It's the fanatics who have created that impression, be it Islam or medieval Christianity.

      As I said earlier, power corrupts.

      Delete
    3. Can we separate religion and the religious? I'm reminded of Yeats' line: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

      Yesterday a friend told me that Hinduism was always tolerant tolerant and hence was subjugated easily for 1400 years. Now comes the necessary retaliation. Is retaliation necessary in religion? Secondly, was Hinduism really tolerant towards the lower castes and women? Fanaticism has myriad forms.

      Delete
    4. In the Independence Day procession in 1947, an old lady caught Jawaharlal Nehru by collar and screamed, 'Ae Nehru! You were claiming that we will be free! Where's your freedom?'

      Nehru smiled and said, 'Mother, you are grabbing the Prime Minister of your country by collar and still are looking for freedom?'

      The fact that people dish out so much garbage about Hinduism and still go happily about there way is the proof of tolerance. Have you ever tried insulting or mocking fun of Islam? You may learn a few things about tolerance. The least will be arrest. :)

      I'm not decrying tolerance, neither am advocating militancy. Christians and Hindus have been most tolerant in the world. And, if you see it data wise, tolerance in religions is always directly proportional to progress. All I object is to hypocrisy. Either be truly secular and treat everyone alike, or leave the pretense.

      Delete
    5. No pretense, brother! Haven't I proclaimed my hypocrisy from the rooftop time and again? But my meaning of it differs from yours and further explanation will be waste of time for both of us.

      I think my latest post is a better answer.

      https://matheikal.blogspot.in/2017/04/good-bye-politics.html

      Delete

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

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...

Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Book Review Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity Author: Manu S Pillai Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2024 Pages: 564 (about half of which consists of Notes) There never was any monolithic religion called Hinduism. Different parts of India practised Hinduism in its own ways, with its own gods and rituals and festivals. Some of these were even mutually opposed. For example, Vamana who is a revered incarnation of Vishnu in North India becomes a villain in Kerala’s Onam legends. What has become of this protean religion of infinite variety and diversity today in the hands of its ‘missionary’ political leaders? Manu S Pillai’s book ends with V D Savarkar’s contributions to the religion with a subtle hint that it is his legacy that is driving the present version of the religion in the name of Hindutva. The last lines of the book, leaving aside the Epilogue titled ‘What is Hinduism?’, are telltale. “Life did not give Savarkar all he...