Tomichan Matheikal's blog

India is governed by a political party which draws its sustenance from the Us-Them divisiveness.  From the infamous Gujarat riots onwards, India witnessed about 7000 incidents of communal violence engendered by the Us-Them thinking. The Us-Them thinking is as old as known human history.  Every people always loved to make some distinctions between themselves and the perceived others .  Look at our movies and you will see how people belonging to other cultures or speaking other languages are made to look like either fools or villains.  Such division achieves many purposes at the same time.  One, it enhances our own sense of identity.  Our group identity becomes stronger when the rival group is portrayed as weak, illiterate, villainous, etc.  Two, it tilts the struggle for the limited resources in our favour.  We turn the tables so that the resources will fall to our side.  Three, it prepares the members of the community to fight against perceived threats from the others. 

The primary objective of power, particularly political power, has seldom been social service.  A peep into the history of political powers of various types will convince us of that without any doubt.  Political power is an intoxicant: as good as a drug is to the addict.  People don’t capture power by spending billions of dollars or crores of rupees on image building and propaganda in order to render service to anyone.  People ascend the rungs of political power because the heights intoxicate.  Putting it in a more acceptable way, success gratifies or gives one a sense of fulfilment. The Hindu Self-actualisation is the highest goal for any individual, according to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory. Alexander the Great had as much right to make his conquests as Diogenes had to sneer at those conquests.  Albert Einstein would have been as out of place on a Prime Minister’s chair as a Prime Minister would be in Einstein’s shoes. So, let each person gratify himself.  But let

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka’s [1883-1924] novel, The Castle , tells the story of a man called K who is on a futile quest.  K arrives as a land surveyor in the village which is under the jurisdiction of the Castle.  But his summoning is caused by a bureaucratic mistake committed in the Castle; a land surveyor is not required in the village now.  K meets Frieda in the inn meant exclusively for the Castle’s bureaucrats though others are allowed to buy food from there.  Frieda becomes K’s fiancée, leaving her job as a barmaid in the inn as well as her enviable position as the mistress of Klamm, the Chief of the Castle.  Nobody in the village can enter the Castle though everybody’s life is controlled by the Castle.  K wants to meet Klamm but never succeeds.  Finally Frieda leaves him and goes back to her former job in the inn and also accepts one of the two assistants of K as her new man. The Castle towers above the village as a symbol of both spiritual and temporal powers.  It

Darkness is a pervasive theme in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth .  The play opens with three witches one of whom says ominously, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” The protagonists are Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth both of whom are described as ‘children of darkness’ by the Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley.  It is worth quoting Bradley in some detail. “These two characters are fired by one and the same passion of ambition ; and to a considerable extent they are alike.  The disposition of each is high, proud, and commanding .  They are born to rule, if not to reign.  They are peremptory or contemptuous to their inferiors .  They are not children of light, like Brutus and Hamlet; they are of the world.  We observe in them no love of country, and no interest in the welfare of anyone outside their family .  Their habitual thoughts and aims are ... all of station and power.” Ambition in itself is a good thing.  But when ambition is coupled with the characteristics highl

The English translation of Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose , was originally published 30 years ago.  It’s the only novel of Eco that sold millions of copies.  I started re-reading it during this brief winter break in order to re-live the thrills I had gone through reading it about a quarter of a century back. While I’m about half way through the brilliant novel set in a Benedictine monastery in medieval Italy, I would like to share a thought from it on why certain new teachings, especially religious ones, gain popularity among the masses. In the medieval Europe, any new religious teaching [what other teaching was there in those days?] would be viewed as heresy, a challenge to the authority of the Pope.  Eco’s protagonist argues that the majority of those who flock after the new teachers are the “ simple” people (who lack “subtlety of doctrine”) who are also marginalised by the dominant classes.  The marginalised people are powerless in any society.  What th

Very few Popes of the Catholic Church were saints.   Far from being saints, many of them were remarkably depraved compared to the common layperson whom their religion promised to redeem from sinfulness.   It is not easy to combine worldly power and spiritual sanctity.   Authentic spirituality is a highly personal affair though it can and does wield much power over other people.   The power that Mahatma Gandhi wielded over many of his followers was spiritual to a great extent.   The Buddha and Jesus also wielded spiritual powers.   Unlike them, Gandhi did not become a god because of the time in which he lived.   Like Jesus, however, he was martyred by his own truth. The power that Jesus, Gandhi and others like them wield is quite different from the kind wielded by, say, Hitler or Osama bin Laden.   It is the power of the truth they believed in and put into practice in their life.    The power that Hitler and Osama possessed was political and hence worldly.   The power that most

Can you empower yourself with the energy from those electric lines? "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" Robert Browning

Have a nice ride! But remember: being on top is always a risky job.