Tomichan Matheikal's blog

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

A country is really free only when its citizens are free.  Freedom is not merely deliverance from foreign occupation.  Freedom is deliverance from poverty, injustice and other social evils as well as personal evils such as greed and jealousy which give birth to corruption of all sorts.  India is yet to be free.    There are millions of people in India who go to bed hungry even after seven decades of independence.  There are millions who don’t have access to basic healthcare.  Our public distributions systems and primary healthcare systems are abject failures.  The country is still enslaved by poverty.  Can we call it a free country? A man who has to carry the dead body of his wife on his shoulders for kilometres because he cannot afford to hire a vehicle should shake us out of our smugness.  He is a poignant symbol of the callousness that marks a governance which gives more importance to cows, idols and myths. India needs deliverance from its holy cows and myths.  It i

Professor Jie-Hyun Lim, Director of Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture (RICH) at Hanyang University in South Korea thinks that nationalism is “an act of treason.”  He also says it limits the capacity of imagination which is really why it is treason. The only real purpose of nationalism is to gain power , argues the Professor. Mussolini, Hitler, Fransisco Franco of Spain and all other dictators used nationalism in order to consolidate their political power.  All of them divided the country into an in-group and an out-group.  Mussolini used culture to divide people while Hitler relied on race.  For Franco, the out-group consisted of those who did not speak Spanish language, the non-Catholics and the communists.  The in-group was characterised by the members’ loyalty to the nation coupled with a marked hostility towards other nations as well as the out-group irrespective of their nationality. The in-group was used by the leader to consolidate his own power.  Is

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

We are the beggars begging for our own money Standing in serpentine queues before Automated bureaucratically heartless machines. The boss will charge a cess For giving us our own money and peddle us promises in return. There is food in the market. Vegetables rot on the stands For want of money to be bought. Fruits rot. Fish and meat rot. Money rots in our accounts. We live in a rotten country. Having everything, we have nothing. Not even voices to speak out. We mistrust the very air we breathe. The person standing behind or in front in the queue Is my enemy in all probability. There are only patriots with burning hearts And traitors to feed the passion’s blazes. My government is the wizard of words. Words conjure up a utopia, paradise, in people’s fancy, Swachh Bharat where wealth and all else is white, Whose godman sells  miraculous   fairness creams For whitening all that is black. Whiteness is Prakriti ka ashirwad. The

Speaking during a function in Raigad yesterday, Prime Minister Modi threatened the nation with more “difficult decisions.”  From today's Times of India A couple of days back, Steve Forbes, Editor-in Chief of Forbes magazine condemned Mr Modi’s demonetisation as immoral and theft of people’s property.  A few days back, Wall Street Journal wrote that “Instead of factory openings or large new investments, the images that tell India’s current economic story include snaking lines outside banks, distressed workers migrating back to their villages, and tax raids on jewelers and officials caught with hoards of allegedly illicit cash.” Today is Christmas, a festival that marks the birth of a man in whose name a major religion came to be founded.  Christianity has always upheld suffering as a virtue.  It has relished imposing more and more rules and regulations, restrictions and penalties on its people.  Its priests and other leaders love to threaten the faithful with omi

BJP has made a clean sweep of the Chandigarh municipal elections by winning 20 of the 26 seats.  Amit Shah has already declared the victory as the people’s approval of the demonetisation.  We should not disregard Shah’s declaration as the Hanuman’s natural devotion to his god.  In fact, BJP’s sweeping victory is an indication of things to come.  The party may end up winning many more elections in the coming months.  As many as seven states are going to assembly elections in 2017. “An economic measure should be, and normally is, judged on the basis of how it  benefits  the people, and any measure that brings distress to the people is derided for that reason. What we find in the present case however is just the opposite:  the more demonetization brings distress to the people, the more it is applauded for its wisdom and courage.”   Prof Prabhat Patnaik wrote recently in The Citizen .  [emphasis retained from the original] There is nothing surprising about people accepting the

“(W)hereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something .” Yuval Noah Harari says that in his book Sapiens , which I have been quoting extensively of late.  The emphasis belongs to the original. Religion asks us to believe in a god or many gods.  It may ask us to believe in a lot more things such as heaven and hell, or that a bath in a particular river will wash away all our sins, or that you can’t be part of the community unless you part with your foreskin, and so on.  Money demands a much simpler faith from us: that other people have faith in its value.  Without that faith, money is as useless as the waste paper in your dustbin.  Remember what Prime Minister Modi said to the nation on Nov 8?  “From midnight today, all the five hundred and one thousand rupee notes with you will be worthless paper .”  Worthless paper, that’s what one speech from one particular individual made out of some twenty lakh crore rupees i

Our ancient forefathers were nomadic foragers.  They went from place to place in search of food.  Animals which were not dangerous were hunted.  At some time in history, some of those foragers decided that they were tired of the constant chasing after food.  They chose to settle down and cultivate their own food.  Some animals were domesticated too. Animals were not used to domestic life.  They were used to roaming freely without any master to boss over their movements except the laws of nature which demanded constant vigilance against predators.  Man was one of those predators. But man was different from the other predators because he had a more evolved brain which told him that it was to his advantage to hunt the male sheep or the old ones, leaving the females to breed and also to provide milk.  But male sheep were also required for the breeding process since there was no genetic technology in those days.  Hence man resorted to selective killing of the males.  The aggre

Rahul Gandhi regaled the nation with the threat of an earthquake-like assault on PM Modi.  Far from an earthquake, there was not even a wind that could stir the slenderest willow stem.  That’s one of the deadliest tragedies the country is facing today: no opposition worth the name.    In Kerala where I now live there is a species of birds whose Malayalam name translates as ‘Bum-shaking bird’.  This little bird’s bum keeps on shaking whenever it alights from flight.  The typical Malayali humour has it that the Bum-shaker thinks that there is an earthquake because it shakes its tail.  Rahul Gandhi has become the Bum-shaker of contemporary Indian politics. It's time Rahul learnt that his grandmother and her present successor share too many personality traits One wonders why Rahul Gandhi issued the threat of exposing no smaller a figure than the Prime Minister of the country only to back out leaving the entire nation baffled.  Mr Gandhi owes an explanation to the natio

An Uttarakhand court has fined Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Rs 11 lakh for fraudulence.  In 2012 the District Food Safety Department had found that many food items such as mustard oil, salt, pineapple jam and honey sold by Patanjali failed quality tests.  In fact, many of these items are not even produced by Ramdev’s Ayurvedic units; they are produced by ordinary commercial enterprises and then given Patanjali labels.  Such is the Baba’s fraudulence.  There are scores of legal cases filed against the godman and his so-called Ayurvedic industry.   The Baba is guilty of manifold crimes ranging from misleading people to evading taxes.  In 2012, when the godman was asked to pay up Rs 120 crore as penalty for various offences, Digvijay Singh remarked, ““I have seen many frauds in my life but Baba Ramdev takes the cake. He may be occupying more space in media now but I do not visualise Ramdev making an impact on our society for long.  Such people do not last long in public life.” Mr S

Patriotism is the desire to see your country as one that promotes the welfare of every citizen irrespective of religious, cultural and other differences.  Patriotism has nothing to do with killing people whose eating habits differ from yours.  Patriotism has nothing to do with playing the national anthem in cinema halls or wearing the national flower on your sleeve.  The recent order of the Supreme Court of India to play the national anthem in the movie halls before the beginning of each movie actually belittles the anthem by making it a prelude to mere popular entertainment.  Worse, most people who visit the cinema halls are not likely to be in a mood to display their patriotic sentiments; they are there for entertainment.  There will be some latecomers who will be still searching for their seats.  There will be physically handicapped or elderly people who may not find it easy to stand at attention.  There are many practical problems, in short.  What was the need for issuing

Thomas Jefferson who drafted the famous American Declaration of Independence which contains the oft-quoted phrase that “all men are created equal” owned about 200 slaves when he wrote that and never set them free even upon his death .  It doesn’t mean Jefferson was a fraud or even a hypocrite.  Rather it points to certain bizarre truths about social systems and the beliefs which create them.  The Americans during Jefferson’s time did not even consider Negroes as human beings.  Negroes were subhuman, according to the beliefs that upheld the American social system of the time. All social systems are built upon certain beliefs most of which may not stand up to rational analysis.  The ancient Indian caste system or many other social practices such as Sati were not based on any objective truths.  Social systems are created by certain individuals in order to protect their interests by subordinating the interests of others.  It was not mere selfishness either.  More than selfishne

Every narcissist loves to leave a mark wherever possible.  Writing is the easiest way to produce marks.  Ink is indelible.  That’s why democracy uses ink to brand every voter.  And now I have a ruler who uses the same ink to brand anyone who takes out her own money from the bank.  Source I have had so many rulers that I am not surprised by anything anymore.  They came from all sorts of places crossing oceans and mountains just for leaving their marks.  They left their marks in the wombs of my women too.  That’s also a kind of writing; a rewriting of history.  The deepest marks are made in history.  The Mughals did it best, I think.  Long, long before them came somebody who wrote in Sanskrit.  They were the best, perhaps.  They wrote the Vedas.  Then they wrote the end of the Vedas and called them Upaniashads though Vedanta was a more logical name.  But the Vedas never ended.  The Vedas continue to live even today while the Upanishads died natural deaths.  Religious ritu

Farmers' Protest in Surat Source: The Indian Express The farmers in PM Modi’s own state poured litres of milk and threw kilograms of food grains on the road two days back in protest against the non-availability of valid currency.  There are protests in other states too against the restrictions put on cooperative banks on which farmers and small traders rely heavily. If we analyse the social media including blogs, we’ll discover that it is the middle class that supports Modi’s tilting at the windmills of black money.  The middle class has its own morality whose hypocrisy was exposed brilliantly by Bernard Shaw in the character of Alfred Doolittle.  The middle class pretends to be moral while it is far more immoral than any other class.  It will discover all the loopholes in any given system and use those loopholes for their most selfish purposes all the while assuming that they are the most patriotic, religious and righteous people in the world. The middle class is t