Tomichan Matheikal's blog

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Kerala Governor Rajendra Arlekar asked the state to observe ‘Partition Horror Day’ on 14 Aug instead of celebrating the country’s Independence. His organisation, the RSS, as well as its ideological sibling the Hindu Mahasabha, had explicitly directed its members not to celebrate the Independence on 14-15 Aug 1947. From Bombay Chronicle, 9 Aug 1947 Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins gave us a graphic description of what the RSS did on 15 Aug 1947, in their classic book Freedom at Midnight . When the rest of India celebrated its new Independence, the RSS hoisted its own flag, “an orange triangle, emblazoned upon which was the symbol that, in a slightly modified form, had terrorized Europe for a decade, the swastika.” About 500 RSS men stood saluting the swastika on 15 Aug 1947 in Poona. Lapierre and Collins describe the RSS as a “para-fascist movement” whose members “saw themselves as the heirs to those ancient Aryans.” Rajendra Arlekar is an RSS man. He has been doing whate...

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

On 2 Oct 2025, when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS] celebrates the centenary of its foundation, India may cease to be a “secular and socialist” nation. All steps are being taken to remove those two words from the Preamble of the country’s Constitution, though the apex court had rejected a petition for the same on 25 Nov 2024. Though those two words were added to the Preamble by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, the ideals have only done good to the country, the Supreme Court observed. Ironically, the very next day of the SC’s verdict, the President of India spoke on the occasion of the 75 th anniversary of the Constitution and refused to mention those two words: secular and socialist . The President, the Prime Minister, all ministers except George Kurien in the PM’s cabinet are all Hindus. (There are two Sikhs and Buddhists each, but they are Hindus, according to the Sangh). Many of them share the opinion of the General Secretary of the RSS, Dattatreya Hosabale, that Mus...

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...

India's Armed Forces hunting the Maoists Recently India, particularly the media, celebrated two events: (1) the success of Operation Sindoor which was a quasi-war on Pakistan, and (2) the killing of the Maoist chief Nambala Keshava Rao and 27 of his warriors. Personally, I felt uneasy about both the celebrations. Neither of them is a victory, something within me kept whispering to me. They are both tragedies masquerading as victories in the history being fabricated by certain vested interests. The truths about the Pak affair will come to light only much later. Perhaps, they may never see the light of day. This post is going to look at the second affair. With the killing of the Maoists, especially its Supremo, Maoism in India is all set for its last rites. That is what excited the Indian media. I didn’t come across any TV channel or other significant media agency that probed the reality from the perspective of the Maoists. I hasten to add that I don’t endorse any kind of vio...

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...

Neeti Nair Book Discussion The epigraph of Neeti Nair’s book, Hurt Sentiment [see previous two posts for more on the book, links below], is a quote from Pakistani poet Fahmida Riaz (1946-2018).             In the past I used to think with sadness             today I laughed a lot as I thought             you turned out exactly like us             we were not two nations, brother! ‘We’ refer to Pakistan and India. India has now become a Hindu Pakistan with a Hindu Jinnah as prime minister. It is said that we tend to become like our enemies. The Hindu Jinnah’s India has proved that even nations can become like their enemies. Neeti Nair’s book has only four chapters plus an introduction and an epilogue. I discussed the first two chapters in the last two pos...

Book Discussion The Indian National Congress Party is repeatedly accused of Muslim appeasement by Narendra Modi and his followers. Did the Congress appease Muslims more than it did the Hindus? Neeti Nair deals with that question in the second chapter of her book, Hurt Sentiments , which I introduced in my previous post: The Triumph of Godse . The first instance of a book being banned in India occurred as an effort to placate a religious community. That was in 1955. It was done by none other than the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. The book was Aubrey Menen’s retelling of The Ramayana . Menen’s writing has a fair share of satire and provocative incisiveness. Nehru banned the sale of the book in India (it was published in England) in order to assuage the wounded Hindu sentiments. The book “outrages the religious feelings of the Hindus,” Nehru’s government declared. That was long before the Indira Gandhi’s Congress government banned Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses ...

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...

According to the data presented in the Rajya Sabha by the government of India’s ministry of external affairs, more than 200,000 Indians are giving up their citizenship every year. The number is increasing rapidly year after year even when the prime minister keeps telling us that we are going to be a $5-trillion economy. Well, Indians have stopped taking their prime minister seriously, it seems. When we realise that Indians are choosing to be Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalis, and Burmese, we may think the news is fake. But the information is given by our own government and it is true. Too many Indians are leaving India. “For rich Indians, home is no longer where the heart is,” writes Prabhu Chawla in the Sunday Standard , pointing out that 4300 millionaires including stars like Virat Kohli and family have abandoned India in 2024. Last year, the figure of such millionaires was 5100. In other words, it is not only the ambitious middle class that chooses to quit India. They are no...

India’s Prime Minister has promised to make the country a $5-trillion economy by 2027. My knowledge of economics is zilch. Even if I try to learn it, I don’t think I will understand. For example, economists will take the total assets of Mukesh Ambani and mine, calculate the average, and say that my average assets amount to $52 billion, half of Ambani’s $104 billion. Mukesh Ambani’s assets amount to INR 87,31,75,68,00,000. I don’t even know how to count that figure, let alone calculate the average. Even if you find the average of that and my assets [ridiculous suggestion?] and tell me, still the figure will remain beyond my grasp (both literally and metaphorically). [Black monies don’t count in economic stats, I guess.] But India may become a $5-trillion economy by 2027. Because, as I understand, the average assets of each Indian are calculated the way I described in simplistic terms above. If you google India’s skewed economy , you will understand better what I’m saying. Here is a ...