Skip to main content

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini


Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither.

Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god.

From Vayalar of 1967 to the lawyer of 2025, India has come a long way: from liberal secularism to emotive fanaticism. If Vayalar were to write today, he would be killed by the country’s right-wing riffraff.

When North India silenced the shoe-flinging incident because the lawyer who committed the atrocity was high caste and the Chief Justice a Dalit, another far more bone-rattling case emerged in Vayalar’s own Kerala. Half a kilogram of gold went missing from the most famous temple of the state: Sabarimala. The deity was incapable of protecting his own property! What use are such gods? Chief Justice Gavai would wish to ask.

B R Ambedkar, father of India’s Constitution, declared a century ago that “God is a useless thing for the purposes of the human life.” B R Gavai, the Chief Justice of India today, is an Ambedkarite. On multiple occasions, Gavai has publicly reaffirmed Ambedkar's vision of an inclusive and just India. He has emphasized that the Indian Constitution, as a living document, continues to uphold the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity that Ambedkar championed. Constitution, not the 33 crore gods of the country’s pantheon.

Ambedkar’s portrait was removed from the Delhi Chief Minister’s office soon after BJP’s Rekha Gupta assumed office in February 2025. This lady had the audacity to state that the Brahmins who “ignited the flame of knowledge in the country” also worshipped weapons. “Only through weapons and scriptures can we protect society and the country today,” she said reinforcing the obsolete caste system.  

Unnikrishnan Potti, a Brahmin, was stealing Lord Ayappan’s gold when Rekha Gupta was proclaiming the glory of Brahmins.

Helpless Ayappan. Do our other gods fare any better?

Gods who can’t open their eyes, who can’t laugh or cry… the poet laments. And the politicians laugh all the way to their respective thrones.


When a politician kneels publicly, check your wallet—and your rights. They're usually reaching for one or the other.


PS. This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2025

 

Comments

  1. Jose D. MaliekalOctober 25, 2025 at 5:23 AM

    Great and Deep Reflections for the morning. I like the Chief Justice's attitude of non-chaklance, over the incident. " Let us carry on with the work. Things like this do not bother me.. " Perhaps, if he had penned the Babari Masjid Judgement and owned it by signing it, Indus's secular Face would stood out better. Far cry from Chandrachud's cryptic but blatant Brahminism.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 25, 2025 at 9:19 AM

      The CJ displayed greatness of personality with that nonchalance. The lawyer didn't deserve any attention but that solemn indifference. Chandrachud pretended to be liberal.

      Delete
  2. Liz A.October 25, 2025 at 7:18 AM

    Very true. Your wallet or your rights. Or both.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HaddockOctober 25, 2025 at 10:34 AM

    A blogpost worth reading. Anyone with a little common sense can judge what is right and what is wrong. But the ones with common sense are being scarce now a days in our country (and in the world at large)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yamini MacLeanOctober 25, 2025 at 2:41 PM

    Hari Om
    My thoughts went along the same lines as Haddock's... and clearly the shoe thrower cannot see himself as observers do... as nothing more than a toddler having a tantrum. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 25, 2025 at 8:45 PM

      That's why I suppose the CJ just ignored it. The best he could have done.

      Delete
  5. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuOctober 25, 2025 at 8:37 PM

    An amusing read I must say ! Common sense has left the room in the current times I would say.

    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
47 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6 th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible.   Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4 ...
10 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
10 comments
Read more

Five Microtales

1.        Development             Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and many others stood at a distance, along with their families, and watched their huts being pulled down by a bulldozer. They were asked to leave the place where they had been living for decades. “The government has taken over this land for development works,” an officer said. Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and the others spread their bedsheets under a flyover over which flew opulent vehicles of development.   2.        Impersonation             The old woman went to the Women’s Welfare office. She wanted to register herself for the Prime Minister’s monthly welfare scheme for the old and unemployable women. She placed her thumb on the scanner for Aadhar authentication. “Not matching,” the officer said. She was arrested for trying to impersonate. Sitti...
8 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
7 comments
Read more