Skip to main content

Vamana’s Deception


A few years ago, Home Minister Amit Shah infuriated the people of Kerala by wishing them Happy Vamana Jayanti on the occasion of their state festival Onam. While Vamana is the fifth incarnation of God Vishnu for Amit Shah and his counterparts in North India, Vamana is a monstrous impostor for Malayalis. (That’s yet another of the umpteen instances that highlight the impossibility of a monolithic Hindu religion.)

Vamana sent Kerala’s most beloved king, Maveli, to the netherworld merely because of jealousy. Maveli (elision for Maha Bali or Bali the Great) was a demon (asura) king. But he was beloved to his subjects because during his reign Kerala was a utopia. There was fraternity, equality, justice, truthfulness, and so on everywhere in the kingdom. Maveli had become greater than the gods for the people of Kerala. Obviously, gods didn’t like that. So none less than Vishnu took the form of a dwarf, Vamana, and deceived Maveli. That deception was punishment from gods to an asura for being good!

Amit Shah could not have been ignorant of this legend when he greeted Malayalis on Vamana Jayanti. Someone who is an arch-villain for a people was being transmuted into a divine figure with that greeting. Shah and his people are experts at rewriting histories as well as making villains out of heroes and vice versa. But Kerala won’t accept those histories and inversions easily. I wonder whether Shah and his friends have ever tried to find out why their party doesn’t ever win a seat in Kerala’s elections.

Of late, there is some tilt among Kerala’s Hindus towards the BJP. This is achieved by spreading the poison of communal hatred. As I have written in this very space time and again, hatred is a powerful tool, far more powerful than love or any good emotion. Even the people of Kerala can be susceptible to its intoxications. If the nascent sectarianism takes deep roots in the state, that will be a Vamana moment for Amit Shah and his colleagues.

PS. I am participating in #BlogchatterA2Z

Previous Post: Ulysses

Tomorrow: Wiesenthal’s Revenge

 

 


Comments

  1. moondustwriterApril 26, 2022 at 8:30 AM

    To not know the legend or promote anyway - an intentional insult??? Leaders need to respect more.
    U

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 26, 2022 at 9:30 AM

      I'm sure Shah knew what Onam celebrated. He was playing a game as usual.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousApril 26, 2022 at 10:44 AM

    I am just hoping someday, we will be a truly secular country and love will win. It is also ultimately upon us to choose.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 26, 2022 at 11:35 AM

      I would like to share your hope. It's possible but not with the present leadership.

      Delete
  3. Rajeev MoothedathApril 26, 2022 at 10:45 AM

    Must have been testing the waters to see what happens- If it worked good for him and party.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 26, 2022 at 11:20 AM

      That's more likely. In fact, a few BJP people in Kerala went to the extent of defending Shah.

      Delete
  4. Afshan ShaikApril 26, 2022 at 11:15 AM

    That's expected from those who are rewriting history..it almost made me laugh that he wished. So far I have been very happy by seeing how Kerala is handing the political hatred. Now that you say they are falling in their traps...it's painful!!!


    I have written something today which is related to this post. If time permits do read. Little long post though!


    Dropping by from a to z "The Pensive"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 26, 2022 at 11:22 AM

      Politics is a power game and in that game anything is grist to the mill. Since all other strategies have failed, BJP in Kerala is doing what it did in other states: rouse up communal hatred.

      Delete
  5. AnonymousApril 26, 2022 at 4:18 PM

    Sometimes, you suffer less because others are bad and more because you are very good (just too good to be tolerated by the bad ones). People like Amit Shah will only take the side of the tricksters and present them as role models, not the naïve and the nice ones.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 26, 2022 at 4:23 PM

      The wicked are scared of the innocent. But gods getting scared of others' goodness is quite bizarre.

      Delete
  6. Janaki/Ishaan SaiApril 26, 2022 at 9:58 PM

    Well, this could also be a saazhish (not getting teh exact English word for this at the moment) of Amit Shah ji and his friends, for all you know. These guys can do anything!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anagha YatinApril 26, 2022 at 11:28 PM

    Mixing politics and religion is a lethal combination. How I wish, as a common man/ woman, that life could be simpler with live and let live policy. Instead of being religious, if we could just be spiritual wont that suffice? The moment all will understand this, no politician would ever be able to milk the cow of religious hatred politics.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 27, 2022 at 10:13 PM

      Spirituality is obsolete today, made so by a man who sat in meditation in a Kedarnath cave for as many seconds as a mushroom in Badrinath longed to be in a Chinese soup.

      Delete
  8. Stock Trading IdeasApril 29, 2022 at 10:35 AM

    BEST STOCK FUTURE TIPS

    for intraday cash calls whats app on 9039000614

    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
44 comments
Read more

Coming-of-Age Poems

Lubna Shibu Book Review Title: Into the Wandering Multiverse Author: Lubna Shibu Publisher: Book Leaf , 2024 Pages: 23 Poetry serves as a profound medium for self-reflection. It offers a canvas where emotions, thoughts, and experiences are distilled into words. Writing poetry is a dive into the depths of one’s consciousness, exploring facets of the poet’s identity and feelings that are often left unspoken. Poets are introverts by nature, I think. Poetry is their way of encountering other people. I was reading Lubna Shibu’s debut anthology of poems while I had a substitution period in a section of grade eleven today at school. One student asked me if she could have a look at the book as I was moving around ensuring discipline while the students were engaged in their regular academic tasks. I gave her the book telling her that the author was a former student in this very classroom just a few years back. I watched the student reading a few poems with some amusement. Then I ask...
8 comments
Read more

How to preach nonviolence

Like most government institutions in India, the Archaeological Survey of India [ASI] has also become a gigantic joke. The national surveyors of India’s famed antiquity go around finding all sorts of Hindu relics in Muslim mosques. Like a Shiv Ling [Lord Shiva’s penis] which may in reality be a rotting piece of a Mughal fountain. One of the recent discoveries of Modi’s national surveyors is that Sambhal in UP is the birthplace of Kalki, the tenth incarnation of God Vishnu. I haven’t understood yet whether Kalki was born in Sambhal at some time in India’s great antique history or Kalki is going to be born in Sambhal at some time in the imminent future. What I know is that Kalki is the final incarnation of Vishnu that is going to put an end to the present wicked Kali Yuga led by people like Modi Inc. Kalki will begin the next era, Satya Yuga, the Era of Truth. So he is yet to be born. But a year back, in Feb to be precise, Modi laid the foundation stone of a temple dedicated to Kalk...
12 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...
15 comments
Read more

The Triumph of Godse

Book Discussion Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi in order to save Hindus from emasculation. Gandhi was making Hindu men effeminate, incapable of retaliation. Revenge and violence are required of brave men, according to Godse. Gandhi stripped the Hindu men of their bravery and transmuted them into “sheep and goats,” Godse wrote in an article titled ‘Non-resisting tendency accomplished easily by animals.’ Gandhi had to die in order to salvage the manliness of the Hindu men. This argument that formed the foundation of Godse’s self-defence after Gandhi’s assassination was later modified by Narendra Modi et al as: “ Hindu khatre mein hai ,” Hindus are in danger. So Godse has reincarnated now.   Godse’s hatred of non-Hindus has now become the driving force of Hindutva in India. It arose primarily because of the hurt that Godse’s love for his religious community was hurt. His Hindu sentiments were hurt, in other words. Gandhi, Godse, and the minority question is the theme of the...
5 comments
Read more