Skip to main content

Sins of Omission

India's Sin


There are sins of commission and sins of omission, my catechism teacher taught me when I was young. Theft and murder are sins you commit. There are infinite sins of commission from feeling jealous of your neighbour’s possessions to worshipping a god other than the one your religion gave you. I was more fascinated by the sins of omission. When you omit doing the good that you should do, that’s a sin too: the sin of omission. A grave sin.

Our world would have been a much better place if we all did what we could do. We can do so many good things and yet we don’t do them just because we are afraid. Afraid of our boss at the workplace. Afraid of our religion and its god[s]. Afraid of the dominant political ideology.

Cowardice is the gravest vice. Fear withholds us from achieving what we want to achieve. Bullies rule today’s world merely because most of us are cowards who don’t dare to stand up to bullying. Contrast today’s political leaders with those of a generation or two back and you will immediately understand the difference between bullies and statesmen. Why have we given all the power to bullies? We are cowards, that’s why.

That’s not only why, however. We are selfish too. We think that our gods are the only legal entities in the supernatural realms. We think that our caste is the only one that deserves the privileges. Our language is sacred because its ancestry goes back to some divine revelations.

Our selfishness is even more practical, in fact. Otherwise we wouldn’t lynch people for herding their cows home. We wouldn’t garland rapists and at the same time cry for the blood of social activists. We wouldn’t shout slogans for a system that oppresses certain sections of the country’s population.

Our selfishness makes us communal. The word communal has highly positive meaning anywhere in the world except India. In India, we have made communities mere tools for personal aggrandisements. We have mastered the art of using people for our own personal benefits. Consequently we have a few individuals who are becoming gods on the earth. Idiotic as we are, we are ready to kill for the sake of those few individuals who live in palaces that would make our ancient Maharajas blush with envy. The palace can be more metaphorical than Antilia. It can be even imported mushrooms.

Ignorance is a grave sin of omission. Even the law would tell you that. You won’t be able to escape by pleading ignorance if you have broken a traffic rule, for instance. It’s your duty to know certain rules. Most Indians are ignorant even about their own rights. Hence they are exploited by silly politicians who wear religious robes but are actually born criminals. Ignorance is a grave sin that is succoured by people who wear religious robes.

A much more cardinal sin is the sin of the intellectuals and knowledgeable people in India. They choose silence because that is expedient. In a system that arrests honest people and throws them into jails, it is understandable that the intellectuals choose to be silent. Is it cowardice? Is it selfishness? Or is it expediency?

If only the honest and intelligent people of India come out of their safe nests, this country would be what the Father of the nation dreamt of: a nation of free citizens. Citizens who are free from cowardice, primarily. And then, free from the other vices. A nation of happy citizens, honest citizens, cooperative citizens.

“Silence is not always a virtue. When there are serious wrongs happening, it is our duty to speak up. Otherwise we become part of the wrongdoing.” This is the theme of In[di]spire’s latest edition. This post is dedicated to that edition. India is passing through a dangerous phase when honest and intelligent people have chosen silence out of cowardice or selfishness. Hence we have the reign of bullies. Lynching has become a national pastime. Other crimes are even more vocal. Your silence may be adding to the spreading venality. Come on, come out, and speak up. Refuse to support evil by speaking the good word. Speak up. Speak up.

#DangerousSilence





Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. wingsSeptember 1, 2018 at 11:11 PM

    Very thought provoking, sir. I admit. It is expediency on our part.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 2, 2018 at 7:03 AM

      Expediency and lies rule the world. People fight for imaginary truths like gods.

      Delete
  2. Purba chakrabortySeptember 2, 2018 at 4:30 AM

    A very thought provoking read. It is important to speak up against injustice. This post reminded me of a poem of Tagore.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 2, 2018 at 7:04 AM

      Where the mind is without fear...

      How we've betrayed those lines!

      Delete
  3. voicesSeptember 2, 2018 at 1:25 PM

    Sir In hindi they sat hamaam may sab nange hai. Your bold blog has unmasked all. Let us at least try to retrieve modesty

    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
37 comments
Read more

Everything is Politics

Politics begins to contaminate everything like an epidemic when ideology dies. Death of ideology is the most glaring fault line on the rock of present Indian democracy. Before the present regime took charge of the country, political parties were driven by certain underlying ideologies though corruption was on the rise from Indira Gandhi’s time onwards. Mahatma Gandhi’s ideology was rooted in nonviolence. Nothing could shake the Mahatma’s faith in that ideal. Nehru was a staunch secularist who longed to make India a nation of rational people who will reap the abundant benefits proffered by science and technology. Even the violent left parties had the ideal of socialism to guide them. The most heartless political theory of globalisation was driven by the ideology of wealth-creation for all. When there is no ideology whatever, politics of the foulest kind begins to corrode the very soul of the nation. And that is precisely what is happening to present India. Everything is politics
14 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

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart
13 comments
Read more

Kochareekal’s dead springs

“These rubber trees have sucked the land dry,” the old woman lamented. Maggie and I were standing on the veranda of her house which exuded an air of wellbeing if not affluence. A younger woman, who must have been the daughter-in-law of the house, had invited us there to have some drinking water. We were at a place called Kochareekal, about 20 km from our home. The distances from Kochi and Kottayam are 40 and 50 kilometres respectively. It is supposed to be a tourist attraction, according to Google Map. There are days when I get up with an impulse to go for a drive. Then I type out ‘tourist places near me’ on Google Map and select one of the places presented. This time I opted for one that’s not too far because the temperature outside was threatening to cross 40 degrees Celsius. Kochareekal Caves was the choice this time. A few caves and a small waterfall. Plenty of trees around to give us shade. Maggie nodded her assent. We had visited Areekal, just 3 km from Kochareekal [Kocha
8 comments
Read more