Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Europe was labouring under the weight of a socio-political system when Enlightenment dawned on it in the 17 th and 18 th centuries.  Most European countries had a hierarchical system with the King or the Queen occupying the top position claiming to have derived his/her power directly from none other than God.  Then there were the priests of the Church who not only brought God’s power to the King or the Queen but also enjoyed a lot of benefits of that power in their own royal ways.  Below the clergy reclined the aristocrats.  All these three together sucked the blood of the common people who did all the work and paid all the taxes. The philosophers who questioned this system usually belonged to the aristocratic classes.  But they possessed the sensitivity to feel the inhumanity of the system.  Thus Rousseau (1712-1778) lamented the chains that shackled man everywhere.  The encyclopaedists redefined ‘political authority’ and ‘natural liberty’.  The coeditor of the Encyclopaedia

Book Review Title: Our Moon Has Blood Clots Author: Rahul Pandita Publisher: Random House India, 2013, 2014   ISBN: 978-81-8400-513-4 Pages: 257 Price: Rs 350 History has to be saved from the mediocre.  The mediocre rule the world.  And their vision extends little beyond their own noses.  Their memory goes as far as the comforts and wellbeing of themselves.  “… my memory must come in the way of this untrue history,” as Rahul Pandita paraphrases Agha Shahid Ali.  The memory of those who find it difficult to accept convenient truths that ensure the present wellbeing must come in the way if history is to be redeemed.  Rahul Pandita’s book is an endeavour to redeem the history of the Kashmiri Pandits who were driven out by the Muslim fundamentalists.  The book deserves to be read by every Indian, especially by the Muslims of India. Kashmir was a paradise where people belonging to two different religions, which later became bitter enemies, lived together in exe

The first thing that Rohan noticed when he entered the campus of New India Public School was a network of cables and wires.  Telephone wires, Internet cables, TV cables and intercom wires dangled in the air mingling effortlessly with one another.  Above them all lay stretched tight and rather majestically the electric wires.  Wires played a vital role in New India Public School. In the hostel they did play an undeniably vital role as Rohan realised within a few days. As soon as the Supervisor, Mr Rathode, left after making a perfunctory but imperious announcement through the PA system that it was the lights-off time, all lights would go off, for some time at least, and then the wires would come alive. There was a frantic rush to the switchboard by the students who wanted to charge their mobile phones.  Mobile phones were forbidden to the students in New India Public School, “a fully residential school for boys for overall development of your child’s personality.”  But every student