Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“We want to tell him (Rahul Gandhi) that we are honoured to be called followers of Savarkar…he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the British. He jumped into the sea, escaping from the clutches of British soldiers and swam for 10 km, and fought for Independence.”  Amit Shah thundered while addressing a farmer’s rally in a Surat village .   This is yet another instance of his party’s relentless efforts at rewriting the history of India.  What kind of a person was this ‘Veer’ Savarkar in reality? Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was brought to the Cellular Jail in the Andamans in 1911 after his conviction for the murder of A.T.M. Jackson, Collector of Nashik district, who was "sympathetic towards Indian aspirations."  Within six months of his imprisonment, he submitted a petition for mercy to the British government in India.  In 1913, he submitted his second petition in which he wrote: " I am ready to serve the (British) Government in any capacity th...

According to Chetan Bhagat, a liberal in India today is a person who was born in an upper class family, received English education, absorbed the world culture, carried hotdogs to school in their tiffin box, visited Disneyland, and ridiculed those who spoke English in India with a vernacular accent.  The popular writer said this and much more in his Times of India article yesterday.  He goes on to reduce the current communal disturbances and acts of intolerance to a mere class struggle between the privileged and the underprivileged, the latter being the present-day nationalists whom the former refer to derogatorily as the right-wing, or sanghis, or bhakts, or chaddiwallahs.  “There is a reason why liberals are derogatorily referred to as pseudo-secular, pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-liberal,” claims Bhagat. “For their agenda is not to be liberal. Their agenda is to look down on the classes that don’t have the global culture advantage.”  He goes on to say ...

The Times of India reports today (13 Jan) that Mr Amit Shah is going to issue a show cause notice to Sakshi Maharaj for continuing to make noises that are inconvenient for the BJP though they are in tune with the theme of the party’s hidden agenda.  People like Sakshi Maharaj and Sadhvi Jyoti are the religious faces of the party, while Mr Modi and Mr Shah are the political faces.  For the former certain medieval beliefs and practices are the truths, while for the latter those beliefs and practices are mere ploys for attaining and retaining political power.  It is possible that those beliefs and practices have some value for Mr Modi and Mr Shah too since they seem to be harbouring a hidden agenda: creating a Hindu Rashtra in India.  But transforming a nation from one constitutional system to another is not very easy, they know.  Bringing about the transformation by force will engender violence and bloodshed.  Neither Mr Modi nor Mr Shah want a civil war...

Courtesy The Hindu I happened to stop by a wayside dhaba in the fringes of Delhi this evening.  While waiting for someone there, I watched the cooks prepare tandoori rotis and other tandoori items including chicken tikka and paneer puran.  If you actually watch how these dishes are prepared, especially in the summer heat of Delhi, you won’t ever eat it.  Human sweat mingles with the dusty dough and sliced paneer liberally.  One of the tandoor operators approached the cashier and asked for drinking water.  “Order a bottle of mineral water,” he demanded.  Obviously there was no good drinking water in the restaurant – at least not good enough for the insider!  The cashier fumed, “How can I buy water?”  He was not the proprietor, after all.  He was just another employee earning a pittance from the boss who would be riding the bullet train promised by the Prime Minister’s new rail budget. The tandoor operator went back to wo...