Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some...

Book Title: October 1947: Wails of Fallen Autumn Leaves Author: Ankush Sharma Publisher: Notion Press, 2023 Pages: 319 Religion has never ceased to baffle me ever since I said good bye to it in my twenties. On the one hand, we are told that religion is meant to foster goodness in the human heart, while on the other, what we actually witness is incessant brutality perpetrated in its name day after day. Why is there such an appalling gap between the professed objective and the actual reality? I am yet to find a satisfactory answer. Ankush Sharma’s novel, October 1947 , is not about religion. It is about the Poonch Rebellion that followed India’s Independence. What runs throughout the novel, however, is a Hindu-Muslim conflict. Rather a Muslim onslaught on Hindus. The novel projects Muslims, too many of them at any rate, as heartless rapists and bloodthirsty murderers. The Hindus are all their victims in the novel. The initial leader of the Muslim Conference in Poonch is M...

The short story titled ‘Power’ written by well-known Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha is a metaphor on the nature of political power and the pragmatism of people who are subjects of that power. In this story there is magistrate who is the favourite of the King. The magistrate is so beloved of the King that he is more powerful than the King. The subjects are all scared of the magistrate. He has no children though he has seven wives. He blames the wives for his childlessness. Finally he adopts a dog named Koel. All the people of the country love Koel. Rather, they pretend to love Koel. They sing Koel’s praises. Koel’s life is cut short by a disease. The magistrate, rendered unable to bury or cremate the dead dog by his great love for it, gets the dog stuffed and embalmed. When he expresses his desire to have a golden cage built for Koel, the people instantly donate whatever jewels and ornaments they have. Soon miracles begin to take place because Koel has attained a divine status...

Two and two is not always equal to four, my young friend Tony says. 2 + 2 ≠ 4, he reasserts. Tony doesn’t think linearly though his thinking has the precision of mathematical logic. See these two, Tony offers an illustration, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Then add another 2 to them, Ambani and Adani. What do you get? I smile in answer. It’s dangerous to answer Tony verbally. Now, Tony continues, let’s take two beggars from the street. And then add you and me, another two, to them. What do you get? Tony goes on with more arithmetic because he thinks I didn’t get it. (Modi + Shah) + (Ambani + Adani) = 4 persons (Beggar 1 + Beggar 2) + (You + I) = 4 persons Is the first 4 equal to the second 4? T oday is Good Friday. Good Fridays are sad because they are about the victory of vicious political power over simple goodness. Just a few days back, on what’s known as Palm Sunday among Christians, Jesus was led like a hero to Jerusalem, a political fulcrum in those days, by a hu...

The new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, is someone who has given an entirely new dimension to the word ‘yogi.’  People like me belong to a period which saw yogis as ascetics, people who dwelt in a world of spiritual contemplation, who established a profound relationship with the entire universe based on understanding and compassion.  But I realise that the universe has undergone a sea change. We have a lot of yogis, babas, sadhus, and what not, along with their female counterparts who have redefined the nomenclatures . Take our latest hero, Yogi Adityanath.  He has been elevated to the highest post in the state though a traditional yogi would not have touched such a position with a barge pole.  His supporters in the state shouted slogans such as: “If you want to say in India, you have to chant ‘Yogi, Yogi.  Those who refuse to say it will not stay in India.”  So we have an entirely new yogi who is dividing the nation into two cle...

Donald Trump is an exceptional man in many ways.  He proved that during his swearing in ceremony too.  He took the oath placing his palm on two bibles one of which was presented by his mother and the other was used by none other than Abraham Lincoln. I have always wondered what religion really means to people like Trump whose hearts are awash with hatred (in addition to greed, lust, and much else).  Trump has his own ‘amen corner’ in Paula White’s place of worship.  Ms White is one of the spiritual advisers of Trump.  In fact, no less than six such religious persons including Ms White prayed for Trump during his swearing in ceremony.  Two bibles and six preachers.  And a lot of allegations of the sleazy kind behind the backdrop.  Trump is indeed an exceptional man. The religious people who prayed over him are also exceptional.  Paula White uses religion as a commercial enterprise.  She is a Prosperity-gospel preacher....

India is passing through a historical period of self-purification.  Our Prime Minister is putting an end to black money and corruption.  Our Supreme Court is feeding patriotism into our hearts via cinema halls.  Now the apex court has weaned our politics from our gods.  125 crore Indians may go down in history as the people who sanitised a whole polity. Can politics exist without corruption?  Can greed be washed out of human hearts?  Can religion be separated from public affairs especially politics? Politics and Corruption Corruption is an integral part of politics simply because politics is about power and power is about subordination of most people by a few.  Subordination, swindling, manipulation, exploitation... these are the normal synonyms of power unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool idealist.  There is no power structure without bribery, cronyism, nepotism, extortion, parochialism, embezzlement, and whatever helps one climb up...

Sunday Musings BJP’s Kerala state general secretary, Surenderan, has an opinion that is quite different from that of his party about women’s entry to the Sabarimala temple.  He thinks that Lord Ayappan, the presiding deity at Sabarimala, is not a misogynist though he is a “perpetual celibate.”  But his party was quick to distance itself from the Facebook post of the state general secretary.  The state president, Kummanam Rajasekharan, dismissed the secretary’s view as “personal.” How many compromises can we make between our personal views and those of the organisation or party or system to which we belong religiously? I am an absolute hypocrite when it comes to religion.  I find it impossible to believe anything of what religions teach.  My very being rebels against the teachings much as I acknowledge the inevitable role of delusions and illusions in a normal man’s life.  In spite of the nausea they germinate in me, I participate in certai...

I salute Mr Modi for his latest speeches.   On Saturday, he lambasted the gau rakshaks in no uncertain terms.   He called them anti-socials who are trying to masquerade their maleficence with feigned religiousness.   He has appealed to the state governments to take stern action against such criminals. Today addressing a rally in Hyderabad, he said, “If you want to attack, attack me and not Dalits. If you want to shoot, shoot me and not Dalits.”  Better late than never.  The PM should have spoken out long ago when certain sections of the country’s population or their religious places were attacked right from the time he took over the highest political authority in the country.   The PM should have spoken out when Kalburgi, Dabholkar and Pansare were murdered brutally for supporting the causes of secularism.  Not even the protests from eminent writers of the country who returned their Sahitya Akademi awards provoked the PM into taking t...

The easiest way to earn fabulous wealth in India today is religion.  There are quite a few godmen and ammas who have amassed more wealth than the Ambanis and Adanis by selling gods to people. What happened in Mathura yesterday should open the eyes of both the people and the authorities.  The followers of one Baba Jai Gurudev illegally occupied 280 acres and used violence when the police tried to evict them.  The ‘religious’ people used swords, knives, guns, grenades and even automatic weapons. Exemplary cooperation between a Baba and his Government The Baba who died in 2012 (at the age of 116 as claimed by his followers) started off his divine career making the fraudulent claim that he was Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.  That was in 1975 when people were not as willing as they apparently are today to be hoodwinked.  The Baba’s fraud was greeted with a shower of slippers, rotten eggs and tomatoes.  But Babas being some of the most ingenious pe...

Once I presented a copy of the book, Amen , by Sister Jesme to a couple who visited me.  A few days later I came to know that the husband had flung it out of the car as they were returning home.  “I won’t let such books in our home,” he said as he stopped the car near one of the many garbage heaps belonging to the Municipal Corporation. Sister Jesme’s book is not a particularly outstanding work in any way.  It shows that the Catholic Church is as corrupt as any human institution is.  It elaborates on the sins and human weaknesses that exist in the religious congregation to which the nun (Sister Jesme) belonged until she left it in disgust as well as the realisation that it was meaningless to continue living a life of sheer hypocrisy.  I gifted it to the couple because the lady had shown some interest in it when she saw it on my book shelf and also because the gentleman was very closely associated with the Church and would not allow any criticism of the C...

The godman brought the world to the banks of the Yamuna and proved that India is a tolerant country.  He invited even Boutros Boutros Ghali who passed away a month ago and thus showed that India’s tolerance extends even to the world beyond.  The Prime Minister stood beside the godman and proclaimed that India had much “to offer to the world because of its cultural diversity.” When the PM was declaring his tolerance to the whole world from the banks of the Yamuna, the Milli Gazette published an article by Pushp Sharma with the headline: “ We don’t recruit Muslims”: says Modi govt’s Ayush Ministry .  The journalist had received the information through an RTI filed by him.  The godman’s Cultural Fest presided over by the Prime Minister was open to international diversity.  Is the country open to diversity within it?  If not, what was the Cultural Fest but a mere show, a gigantic exercise in hypocrisy?  Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was an ard...

Source “I am happy dead than being alive,” said Rohith Vemula in his suicide note.  He “loved Science, Stars, Nature.”  His country gave him superstitions, communal hatred and hollow slogans.  He died feeling hollow in a country whose Prime Minister keeps mouthing beautiful slogans about development.  The other day, senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha compared Mr Modi to Indira Gandhi with respect to the dictatorial style that marked both.  Of course, he had to retract later for obvious reasons. Is Mr Modi converting India into Police Raj as Indira Gandhi did during Emergency?  The way the protesters in Delhi were attacked by Mr Modi’s police indicates that the Prime Minister is trying to re-create Gujarat in Delhi.  He probably hopes to extend it gradually to the entire country.  Or, maybe, it’s just the only way he knows to handle dissension with.  Senior leaders of the party were sidelined long ago by Mr Modi.  Not th...

‘Secular’ and ‘communal’ are bad words in India unlike in any other part of the world.  Most countries in the world are secular in the sense they don’t have state religions; they keep politics and religion apart from each other.  ‘Communal’ means belonging or related to a community and has no negative connotations except in India.  Source We Indians are queer indeed.  We elected a party to power in the Centre because it promised to deliver us development .  But from the time the party started governing us, we started entertaining ourselves by abusing some people as ‘secular’ or ‘pseudo-secular.’  The latter term seems to have gone out of fashion. The country is polarised today into the ‘secular’ and the ‘communal.’  If you believe in some religion or god, you are communal.  If you demand peace and prosperity, you are filthy secular.  Rajnath Singh, our Home Minister, wants to cleanse the Indian vocabulary of secularism....

Fascism is an act of contempt.  Albert Camus made a detailed analysis of that contempt in his book, The Rebel .  Conversely, said Camus, “every form of contempt, if it enters politics, prepares the way for, or establishes, fascism.” Those of us who are not victims of selective amnesia may remember certain mock-slogans such as Hum paanch, humara pachees which won the sloganeer tremendous popularity in the country.  If from Mein Kampf the road led straight to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, the mock slogans of the country’s most eloquent orator have brought us to Dadri.  Leaving aside a Nayantara Sahgal and an Ashok Vajpeyi, the intellectuals in the country are lulled into stupor by the eloquent contempt.  Have we reached that stage where –  as in Camus’s analysis of fascism – one leader, one people translates into one master, millions of slaves ?  Finally when the orator broke his silence on the issue he took recourse to the counsel given ...