Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“If you keep doing the same things, you will keep getting the same results,” Dave Ramsey said. It doesn’t matter who Dave Ramsey is. I don’t know, in fact. Albert Einstein could have said that as well. From the time BJP came to power in Delhi, India has been doing more or less the same thing: sectarian politics which favours one particular community and marginalises all others. Since the majority of Indians belong to the community favoured by BJP, no other party could arrive at an effective strategy for winning elections. People obviously want favours from those in power. And BJP is giving those favours to the majority. The majority will then vote BJP. BJP continues to rule. Happily. Till date. And so some genius in the other camp struck upon a strategy. Divide the majority community along caste lines. This is not a new strategy at all. This was effectively made use of in all the Hindi belt states earlier many times by many parties. What is new now is that almost all the non-BJP

Image from The Hindu Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh is today’s India’s national symbol. He is a hardcore criminal who is treated by the ruling party as a valiant hero. In one of the interviews , this present national and nationalist hero describes how he killed a man once. “I held him by the hand, put the rifle to his belly and fired.” As simple as that. This killer is a six-time elected member of India’s parliament which makes rules and regulations for 1.5 billion people. He is not the only criminal in that place which is now converted as an emperor’s palace with a sceptre installed at a prominent place by none less than a man who regards himself as the Vishwaguru, the teacher of the cosmos. Half of the members of India’s parliament are criminals. Hardcore ones. Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh is their iconic symbol. Let there be any number of protests against him, any number of charges, nothing will affect him. He is a murderer, swindler, mafia leader, rapist, and a lot more. But for

Shyam was grazing his goats on the hillock when a group of men stopped their SUV on the roadside and walked towards him. “If we tell you the exact number of goats in your flock, will you give us one of your goats?” Shyam was amused. “Yes,” he nodded. One of the young men took out his smartphone, fingered with it for a while and said, “123.” [The notorious IT cell of the party had apparently accessed Shyam’s flock too.] “Right,” Shyam agreed. “Pick your goat.” The men picked up a goat and carried it to their SUV. “Are you from any right-wing organisation?” Shyam asked as they moved on. “Yup,” one man said. “How’d you know?” “Simple. First of all, you came to me totally uninvited. Secondly, you taxed me for telling me something I already know. Thirdly, you don’t know a thing about goats. This creature you’re carrying is my dog.” This is an old story that I have adapted for this post. This story was kicked up in my memory by another adaptation of

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is yet to gain any significant political clout in Kerala.   Yet the party is already mired in charges of corruption.   In order to save its image the party has been forced to expel R S Vinod, the party’s cooperative cell convener in the state.   Vinod was accused of having accepted a bribe of no less than ₹5.60 crore from R Shaji, chairman of an educational trust who paid the amount for securing Medical Council of India’s (MCI) clearance for his medical college.   According to reports, the amount was routed through Delhi as a hawala transaction.   The report also mentions M T Ramesh, general secretary of Kerala BJP, as a recipient of bribe from another medical college.   Ramesh has denied his involvement in the scam and the party has chosen to stand behind him since it cannot afford to oust too many leaders.   It is a question of waiting and watching before more names of BJP leaders come up in connection with the scam and possibly other scams

Professor Mukul Manglik of Ramjas College, Delhi concludes his interview to Frontline with a quote from historian Howard Zinn: “Human history is not only a history of cruelty, but also of compassion, courage and kindness... and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is inhuman and cruel around us, is itself a marvellous victory.” Struggle against Right Wing cruelty Source: India Today The students’ union, ABVP, had unleashed a lot of cruelty on the campus and the Professor was speaking about that.  He mentions in the interview that he as well as many other teachers feels intimidated by ABVP which physically assaulted some teachers during the agitation.  ABVP is a student organisation that is affiliated to RSS and nurtured by BJP both of which take pride in Hindu culture and civilisation.  The teacher is placed on a par with god in the ancient Hindu tradition.  It then becomes extremely ironical and darkly comical that teachers in a

What is he? Sakshi Maharaj thinks that one particular religious community in the country is responsible for the population rise.  “The population has risen because of those who support the concept of four wives and 40 children,” he declared.  Our Prime Minister said much the same thing when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.  A few months after the notorious Gujarat riots, Mr Narendra Modi spoke to a jubilantly cheering crowd and said among other inflammatory things, “We want to firmly implement family planning.  Hum paanch, humare pachees [We five, our 25].  Who will benefit from this development?”  Mr Modi  has grown up since.  Sakshi Maharaj is not likely to grow up in the same way.  Who is the real Sakshi Maharaj? His original name is Sachchidanand Hari Sakshi.  He won the Lok Sabha elections in 1991, 1996 and 1998 on BJP tickets playing a caste and communal card.  He was involved in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and seldom had the courage or integrity t

Sunday Musings BJP’s Kerala state general secretary, Surenderan, has an opinion that is quite different from that of his party about women’s entry to the Sabarimala temple.  He thinks that Lord Ayappan, the presiding deity at Sabarimala, is not a misogynist though he is a “perpetual celibate.”  But his party was quick to distance itself from the Facebook post of the state general secretary.  The state president, Kummanam Rajasekharan, dismissed the secretary’s view as “personal.” How many compromises can we make between our personal views and those of the organisation or party or system to which we belong religiously? I am an absolute hypocrite when it comes to religion.  I find it impossible to believe anything of what religions teach.  My very being rebels against the teachings much as I acknowledge the inevitable role of delusions and illusions in a normal man’s life.  In spite of the nausea they germinate in me, I participate in certain religious rituals. I partic

A relatively new trend that is gaining much popularity in the Indian online journalistic media is the posting of vituperative comments anonymously.  Most such comments are overtly communal in nature and support or attack a particular religion.  If these comments are analysed in sufficient detail, we may suspect that there are paid writers who post comments for the sake of defending a particular party and its religious ideology.  Some comments by one 'Ram' in the Indian Express Hitler and his Nazis made use of similar strategies for propaganda.  Some of the most effective strategies used by the present dominant ideology in India which considers certain animals more sacred than human beings are very similar to those employed by the Nazis. For example: Posters and slogans, Anti-Semitism/antinationalism, Use of the mass media for propagating distorted truths, Mythologising the political party and its history, Projection of one individual as the only efficient leader.

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it,” said one of Terry Pratchett’s characters in his witty fantasy novel, Diggers .   An open mind belongs to the seeker of truth.  Truth being as elusive and deceptive as happiness, it keeps the seeker going on and on endlessly.  Most people don’t like such endlessness.  People like to snuggle down in the cosy warmth of the status quo.   Religion is the most staunch supporter of the status quo.  And religion insists on putting things into open minds.  And shut them. The cosy warmth of the status quo is what turns the BJP and its allies against Jawharlal Nehru University and Hyderabad Central University, says Kancha Illaiah in his article in the Indian Express .  Both JNU and HCU have produced numerous thinkers and scholars because their academic environment encouraged the liberal pursuit of truth. Banaras Hindu University, on the contrary, has failed to prod