Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Joseph S Nye, American political scientist, mooted the concept of ‘soft power’ as a means of gaining ascendancy in the world.  Military and economy give a country its hard power.  Soft power is its ability to persuade other countries to want what it wants them to want. Mr Modi is getting the support of many countries against Pakistan using persuasive tactics as well as realpolitik.  He is relying more on soft power and rightly so.  No one but perverted minds would want a war especially between India and Pakistan because such a war is most likely to escalate into a world war. Soft power can be effective only when it rests solidly on the foundation of substantial hard power.  It is also related to culture and ideology.  The Western civilisation spread rapidly across the world because it was firmly established on a secure hard power foundation.  America was a practical El Dorado. Russia’s communism crumpled when its hard power hit the dust.  Soft power becomes impotent wit

As part of the increasing give and take exchanges taking place these days between India and Pakistan, the latter has demanded that the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro be returned to it .   Dancing Girl Dancing Girl is a bronze statuette excavated from the Mohenjo-Daro site before India and Pakistan became two separate nations.  It is just 10.5 centimetres high and is about 5000 years old.  The pubescent girl is stark naked except for a whole array of bangles and a necklace.  The posture looks like that of a dancer though she might have been confidently making a statement to her audience.  She holds her chin up and looks smug.  In short, she is a total contrast to what today’s Pakistan expects of a young girl. Let us visit her briefly at the National Museum in New Delhi to ask her what she thinks of her threatened extradition. “Oh, I think it would be horrible,” says DG losing all the panache that has graced her face for millennia.  “What will they do to me there?  Wil

Book Review “Our country was going crazy.  How was it possible that we were now garlanding murderers?”  (174)*  Malala Yousafzai’s autobiographical book , I am Malala , is the story of how her beloved Swat Valley was overtaken by a bunch of murderers who considered themselves religious reformists.  It is also the story of the Talibanisation of Pakistan in general and the failure of the Pakistani government in dealing with the problem. The book is an eloquent illustration of two conflicting attitudes towards religion: one which tries to understand it rationally and use it for improving the society and the other which wields it as a weapon for oppressing people with the objective of keeping them under its all-pervasive power. As a very young girl Malala started questioning certain aspects of her religion.  Denial of education as well as many other rights to girls and subjugation of women in general were things that she found highly discriminatory and unjust.  She was f

Anita Joshua’s article in The Hindu , ‘ A growing intolerance’ (Aug 21, 2012), shows how Pakistan has become a nation of haters.   The Pakistanis hate not only the Hindus (7 million Hindus live in that country – imagine the magnitude of the hatred!) and Christians (who are, according to the article, changing their names to “Shahbaz, Shazia, Nasreen, Tahira, and such like”), but also the Muslims of denominations other than Sunni.   Shias, says Joshua, “are pulled out of buses and summarily executed in broad daylight in various parts of the country.”   Sufi shrines are bombed. “Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated,” says Undershaft, a Shavian character ( Major Barbara ).   How can there be so many cowards in a country who feel so intimidated as to hate such large numbers of people? Joshua’s article quotes Harris Gazdar of the Karachi-based Collective for Social Science Research: “Some of these crimes might be committed by groups with religious motivation, but mos