Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malviya, both deserve the Bharat Ratna.  One is an eminent statesman and the other is a reputed freedom fighter.  Nevertheless there is something sinister about the motive. Ever since the Modi government took charge there has been a concerted effort to distort history and manufacture a monolithic culture.  Sanskrit being forced upon certain students midway through an academic session and making the Christmas day a working day indirectly are just two examples. The motive is clear: make India a nation of people believing in a single religion and possessing a single culture. It is neither possible nor desirable an objective. Majoritarianism is just another version of fascism. At any rate, when pluralism has become a necessity in a globalized world why would India seek to eliminate diversity? Even more significantly, can all Indians really be Hindus? Should they?  Why? The BJP already has much to answer.  It will soon have too much to answer, i

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 commodity for sale.  I’m ready to buy it too

“I came alone and I go as a stranger.  I don’t know who I am, nor what I have been doing.” Azam listened.  He knew his father, Aurangzeb the Great, was blabbering on his deathbed.  Everybody blabbers on the deathbed.  Everybody blabbers in old age. “I conquered.  I defeated.  For what?” Aurangzeb continued holding on to Azam’s hand.  Azam was the legal heir.  But in a family with six official wives and their sons.  Forget the daughters, they are born to be wives and son-bearers.  Sons fight.  Sons make the rules.  Sons conquer and rule. My father is dying, realised Azam.  All my siblings will fight for the throne.  Fighting is all that they had learnt. Is there nothing more than fighting that life can offer?  Aurangzeb asked himself lying on his deathbed. Too late to learn lessons.  It’s only when you lie down helplessly, unable to fight, unable to put on the armour, you realise the futility of all.  How many temples did I demolish?  How many people did I ki

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has two sharply contrasting faces.  One looks westward, to the capitalist economy and technological advance.  The other looks backward into history and clings to ossified fossils that will stand out like monstrous gargoyles on the edifice of any modern thinking. Thus the party has a leader who hops on and off airplanes that take him places which have absolutely no affinity for his or his party’s ideologies and long term objectives.  Back home in the country, his colleagues go on harping on one and the same string of ancient – very ancient – history producing a tedious monotony ad nauseam. The latest pronouncement is from the urban development minister, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, who wants to rename Delhi as Indraprastha or Hastinapur.  How far back does the BJP want to take India?  How forward, on the other hand?  Is the party suffering from a split personality disorder?  Some kind of political schizophrenia? I wonder if Mr Naidu has some bas

More than a hundred innocent children were killed by the Taliban today in Pakistan’s Peshawar.  Many were injured.  Teachers were burnt alive.  All in the name of religion. Nurturing a cruel thought in your mind implies you are cruel.  I remember having read something to that effect long ago in Dag Hammarskjold’s little classical diary, Markings .  How cruel must one be in order to line up innocent children and fire bullets into their hearts?  And they call that religion! Like most religious fundamentalist organisations, the Taliban was born out of a conflicting mix of passions: hatred towards certain sections of people and a childish longing for an ideal world .  Mullah Omar was a barely literate jihadi who had lost his right eye fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.  In 1994 he witnessed a local warlord eliminating an entire family, not before raping every girl in it.  The incident put the fire in the romantic soul of Mullah Omar.  He vowed to restore the true sha

She, the Producer Today, 15 Dec, is observed as International Tea Day by countries producing tea.  What the Day brings to my mind primarily is the picture of a tea picker I came across in one of the undulating tea plantations in Darjeeling when Maggie (my wife) and I were on a holiday trip in June 2010.  When the woman noticed us, she came rather shyly and offered her basket to Maggie asking if she wanted a photo with that basket on her back.  In the conversation that followed, the worker listed her grievances.  She was paid a pittance by the plantation owner.  She had to work for endless hours and walk down the hill to the factory where she had to deposit the collected leaves.  She pointed at a distant building and said, “That’s the place I have to take these leaves to.  A long and arduous walk down the hill.  And then the return climb...”  The tourists who paid her Rs 10 for lending her basket for a photo were a very munificent source of income for her in contrast to her empl

Satire “Why did you write this?” Narendra questioned Ashoka. They had just walked by one of the many rock edicts erected by Ashoka.  It said: But the Beloved of the Gods does not consider gifts of honour to be as important as the essential advancement of all sects. Its basis is the control of one’s speech, so as not to extol one’s own sect or disparage that of another on unsuitable occasions... On each occasion one should honour the sect of another, for by doing so one increases the influence of one’s own sect and benefits that of the other, while, by doing otherwise, one diminishes the influence of one’s own sect and harms the other... therefore concord is to be commended so that men may hear one another’s principles . * “Conquest is imposing one’s ideas on others.  One gets sick of that eventually,” said Ashoka with a weary smile. “You used religion to make your mark in history.  I’m doing the same.  How can you blame me?”  Narendra asked. “History is a seri