Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken,” Oscar Wilde said with his characteristic wit. It was tough to be Wilde and it got him to the prison in the end. Those were different days. Today Wilde would have been a hero of the LGBTQ+ community. Is it easy to be yourself even today? Ask Teesta Setalvad and R B Sreekumar. Quite many others are in jail too for the crime of being themselves. Some died there, in the jail. Remember Stan Swamy? Some died without ever getting a trial even. Heard of Gauri Lankesh? More than half a century ago, Simon and Garfunkel sang about “People talking without speaking / People hearing without listening / People writing songs that voices never share…” “No one dared / Disturb the sound of silence,” they sang. Today no one dares to disturb the sound of sounds. The Great Sound. We can’t be ourselves today. We wear multiple masks. There is a Covid mask. And there are other masks: of religion, political leaning, of survival itself. If you question the...

Book Review Title: Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy Author: Christophe Jaffrelot Narendra Modi has already achieved his goal of making India a Hindu Rashtra. In practice, India today is a country where all non-Hindus face the threat of being sent to prison for as little a ‘crime’ as frowning at the Prime Minister or his party or their holy cows. Soon India will have a new Constitution too and the transformation will be complete. The irony of it all is that Modi started with the slogan that the Hindus are in danger [ Hindu khatre mein hai ]. Today all non-Hindus in India stand stripped of all rights as citizens. Christophe Jaffrelot’s book takes a deep look at this Hindu Rashtra that Modi has moulded. Jaffrelot argues that Modi has converted his country into an ethnic democracy where the ethnic majority coincides with the electoral majority, thereby relegating the minorities to the margins. The strategy employed by Modi for achieving this objectiv...

German writer Bertolt Brecht wrote a poem titled ‘The Chalk Cross’ about a maidservant who had an affair with a man in Hitler’s SA. The guy told her one day how they caught ‘antinational’ people. He took out a stump of chalk from his tunic pocket and drew a cross on the palm of his hand. He would stand in the queue of the unemployed people in the country waiting for government’s favours. Some of them would curse the government. He would join the cursing and appreciate them by patting on their back. The pat would leave on the back of the man a mark of the white cross. That man would soon be taken away by the SA. Soon this man from the SA took over the “savings book” of the woman. He said he’d keep it safe. He said he was a patriot who only had honest intentions. As he said that he laid his hand on the woman’s shoulder to calm her down. She “ran away terrified. At home / I looked at my back in the mirror to see if it didn’t bear / A white cross.” In Hitler’s Germany antinational pe...

Maggie and I with a student - all smiles I am a loyal critic of Modi. Hence those people who don’t know me personally tend to see me as a disgruntled citizen, a grumpy old man always finding fault with his government. Those who know me personally will laugh merrily at that virtual image of mine. Especially my students. I am a merry person in the classroom. A friend more than a teacher. I smile most of the time. I laugh whenever there is an opportunity. I encourage my students to create occasions for smiles and laughs. I appreciate even the smallest achievements of theirs in the most generous terms possible so much so once a student asked me why I think everything they do is “very good” or “excellent”. I answered her with the wisdom borrowed from Marcus Aurelius that I wanted them to look at the stars so that one day they would be running with them. Appreciation is a miracle-worker especially with youngsters. How many thousands of times have I seen faces blossoming like fragrant f...

Safe distance Narendra Modi and his India love Vanvasis, not Adivasis. The reason is that they believe India belongs to the upper caste Hindus, not anybody else, not even the original inhabitants of the land, the Adivasis. The problem with Modi’s Hindutva is precisely this exclusionism. It believes India belongs to a particular group of Hindus. Not all Hindus, let alone the non-Hindus. Draupadi Murmu’s nomination as the next President of India is only an eyewash. She is going to be a decorative piece of the Dalits, a museum item chosen by Narendra Modi whose love for Vanvasis became too clear in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case and the subsequent arrests.   The annual celebration of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon is a celebration of the Dalits. Modi’s India does not like any celebrations by any organisation other than those associated with the right wing, the Sangh. In the new history that is being written by Modi and his ‘scholars’, only upper caste Hindus will be on the pedestal...