Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The Sabarmati Ashram Now that India has proved its might to the world by flexing her muscles on its pet enemy’s national borders as well as TV screens, she can get on with regular affairs like rewriting history. One of the places where history is going to be reshaped is Mahatma Gandhi’s own beloved Sabarmati Ashram. A sum of INR1200 crore (12,000 million) has been allocated for the purpose. The Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson, Tushar Gandhi, has filed a petition against the project in the court saying that “the proposed project will alter the topography of the century-old ashram … and corrupt its ethos.” Some 200 buildings in the place will be destroyed or rebuilt. In other words, Sabarmati won’t have anything to do with Mahatma Gandhi’s spirit after the project is completed. In other words, the project aims at evacuating Gandhi from his own home. Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon is preserved as a museum and tourist destination. All efforts have been made to main...

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...

Mahatma Gandhi, whose death anniversary is commemorated today, is still relevant precisely because of the gulf between him and our contemporary leaders.  What sets Gandhi poles apart is the harmony or congruence that existed between his thought, word and deed.  He called that harmony ‘truth’.  He was a man of truth.  Since truth is not a fixed entity he experimented with it.  That is, he was constantly discovering truth.  His life was an ardent pursuit of truth.  He might have erred occasionally as any human being does however noble he or she may be.  But his pursuit was genuine.  He was genuine. The absolute lack of masks is what makes Gandhi as relevant as any genuinely spiritual leader would be at any time, even centuries after his or her death.  It is those who put on different masks to suit various occasions that need to separate religion from politics, public life from private life.  “My life is my message,” Gandhi a...

A recent report by the Institute for Economics and Peace found that there were only just ten countries in the world which were currently free from conflict or war.  Peace is a distant dream on our planet which is still inhabited by people who are no better than the primitive savages.  Use of sophisticated weapons does not make the violence civilised. On the contrary, our weapons as well as our attitudes are infinitely more destructive than those of the savages. 13.3 percent of the globe’s total economic activity, $13.6 trillion, is spent on wars and related activities.  That is the equivalent of $1876 for every person in the world.  In Indian terms, everyone in the world could get Rs 125,000 if we could build up a world of peaceful coexistence. Mahatma Gandhi was the greatest apostle of peace during his lifetime if not in the entire history of mankind. Wars begin in the minds of people.  Gandhi said that in slightly different words.  The P...

I say 90 per cent of Indian are idiots.  You people don’t have brains in your heads.... It is so easy to take you for a ride.  You mad people will start fighting amongst yourself (sic), not realizing that some agent provocateur is behind a mischievous gesture of disrespect to a place of worship. Today 80 per cent Hindus are communal and 80 per cent Muslims are communal.  This is the harsh truth, bitter truth that I am telling you.  In 150 years, you have gone backwards instead of moving forward because the English kept injecting poison. Justice Katju Justice Markandey Katju, retired judge of the Supreme Court of India, said those words in a seminar organised by the South Asia Media Commission on 8 Dec 2012 in Delhi.  Now he tells us in his blog that Mahatma Gandhi was “an agent of the British.” He lists three reasons. 1.      By injecting religion into politics, Gandhi helped the British policy of ‘divide and rule.’ 2. ...