Skip to main content

Not in my name




The various demonstrations that took the country by surprise yesterday show that India is not lost yet.  People gathered in thousands in various places to show their protest against the attacks on people belonging to a particular religious community.  From the time Mr Modi came to power in Delhi, certain criminal groups emerged under the banner of right wing religious activism and attacked certain sections of people.  Unfortunately the Prime Minister never condemned any of those attacks.  It appeared that the attacks had his tacit blessings.  It also came to light that the BJP and its allies are spending huge sums of money on spreading malicious information on social networks.  Those states ruled by BJP are changing the history textbooks in order to present the new generation with distorted histories.  In short, falsehood and hatred were being foisted on the nation very liberally.  It was an alarming situation.

The latest protest in the form of #NotInMyName gives hope to the nation.  If the people refuse to accept falsehood and hatred, no one can foist it on them.  India deserves a far better government than one which insists on selling balderdash to the people. Let movements such as #NotInMyName rise and spread throughout the country so that the 2019 general elections will teach the right lessons to our politicians (most of whom are hard-core criminals). 

The BJP’s contribution to the nation has been a neurosis.  The party took the nation from one stereotype to another, one contradiction to the next, one paranoia to another, never achieving anything beautiful, elegant, vibrant and swinging.  So much rubbish was heaped on the collective psyche of the nation.  As a result, certain animals became more sacred than certain human beings.  Human minds became polluted with filth that was given religious colouring. 

Let that change.  Let the Prime Minister and his teams learn that Indians still value life and its beautiful forms such as harmony and creativity.

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniJune 29, 2017 at 8:04 AM

    Yes such movements are a need of the hour, when elections are not that far away. But, I am telling you now, two years from now we will see the biggest mockery of elections ever happened on this soil.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 29, 2017 at 7:44 PM

      That's something I fear too. The way things are going, it is more likely that the elections will be rigged heavily. But the people have so little choice. There is no viable alternative to the BJP and the party is really taking advantage of the situation. What a pathetic situation in a country of 1.3 billion people!

      Delete
  2. Jose D. MaliekalJuly 7, 2017 at 6:26 PM

    I still very much believe in the subversive potential of Soial Movements and critical Civil Societies, not of course, those constructed and stage-manged by the State and the Market. As David Harvey, the Marxist,Human Geographer envisioned, " There should evolve Little Pockets of Resistance."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 7, 2017 at 8:48 PM

      No doubt movements like #NotInMyName have a tremendous subversive potential. But strong leadership is what's missing.

      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
44 comments
Read more

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...
10 comments
Read more

Butterfly from Sambhal

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged from your contemplation with beautiful wings.” “I’m sorry, my dear Nandiarvattam ji. Did I have a choice? The only purpose of the existence of caterpillars is to eat leaves. Eat and eat. Until we get into the cocoon and wait for our wings to unfold. A new reality to unfold. It's a relentless hunger that creates butterflies.” “Your new reality is my painful old history. I still remember how I trembled foreseeing my death. Death by a worm!” “I wish I could heal you with my kisses.” “You’re doing that, thank you. But…” “I know. It hurts, the history thing. I’...
10 comments
Read more