Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Ghar Vapsi in Keral: Courtesy The Hindu Converting to Hinduism is the latest fad in India, it seems.  It is amusing to watch people asking the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or other organisations like the RSS to convert them.  I can now understand why many people converted from Hinduism to Islam in the heyday of the Mughal Empire.  There are some material benefits by joining the people in power.  In other words, for the first time in the history of independent India we have a party in power which resembles the Mughal Empire.   30 Christians from 8 families in Kerala are the latest black sheep that have returned to their true family.  The Hindu reports that these families are “not traceable.  Local VHP organisers said they had been moved to another location.”  That’s interesting.  Is the VHP afraid that the converts will sell their religion yet again to a higher bidder? The VHP and the RSS seem to be converting Hinduism into a ...

Poverty has many uses.  One is that the poor can be made vote banks easily.  Many political parties have ascended the stairs of power by bribing the poor with gifts during election time.  The Congress is one party that now carries the charge of having used the entire poor of the country as vote banks through what is rather imaginatively called “appeasement”. When the Congress and other political parties stand accused of having “appeased” the poor, the new dispensation is proving that it is indeed “a party with a difference.”  It is not using the poor as a vote bank; it is wrenching their religious identity from them. Rulers with imperial ambitions have always used the strategy of stripping people of their religious identities.  The Muslim conquerors and the Christian imperialists found their own unique ways of implementing religious conversion in regions captured by them.  While the former relied on brute force, the latter made use of gentler mi...