Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...

Javed Akthar in 2012 Octogenarian Javed Akthar, celebrated screenwriter and lyricist of Bollywood, was asked a question recently by a group of youngsters. Will art and literature have much relevance in the future? Akthar’s answer was an allegory. Millions of fish are caught every day by humans. They are skinned brutally, cut into pieces, cooked in infinitely varied ways, and savoured on dining tables all over the world. We, humans, raise our voice in defence of a lot of animals: cows, dogs, and wild animals too. But no one raises even a feeble cry of protest on behalf of the fish. Do you know why? Because the fish don’t cry. In fact, they do cry; but their cries have no voice. No one hears their cries. The fish are voiceless. The cry of the voiceless is literature. Art is the music of the voiceless. And so they will continue to be relevant as long as there are voiceless creatures on earth. The Jews were the voiceless fish during Hitler’s march of racial triumph – six million of the...

I am scared of religious people.  Source Come to think of it, the world has never become a better place for all the religious people it has had for centuries.  From the time Moses gave the ten commandments to Yahweh’s chosen people or Manusmriti revealed the sanatana penal code to the chosen race a little more eastward, god’s people have been trying to make man’s world better.  A few thousand years of preaching.  Thousands of gods.  Millions of laws.  Countless places of worship.  Burning candles.  Smoking incense.  Inspiring sermons from infinite pulpits. Religion comes home round the clock on satellite TV channels.  Our very breathing is regulated by religion.  Our food is becoming religious: Prakriti ka ashirwad, for example.  So much religion all around.  So many gods.  Too many gods’ own people.  But dark matter continues to dominate the universe.   Darkness explodes like bombs i...

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. ...