Tomichan Matheikal's blog

O P Dhankar [Courtesy The Hindu ] Farmers are criminals and cowards, according to the BJP.   The party’s agricultural minister in Haryana, Mr O P Dhankar, explained the logic .   “Committing suicide is a crime , according to Indian law.   Any person who commits suicide escapes from his responsibilities and leaves the burden on his wife and innocent children and such people are cowards .”   Mr Dhankar was the former head of the BJP’s Kisan Cell. It is easy to dismiss Mr Dhankar’s view as a personal opinion.  Rahul Gandhi, who seems to have found some enlightenment after his long contemplation abroad, has started questioning the BJP’s anti-farmer policies eloquently if not effectively enough.  His lack of effectiveness stems from his lack of vision.  It is not enough to question a system; one has to suggest an alternative one.  Mr Gandhi is yet to rise to the stature of a leader with any practical vision in spite of rubbing shoulders with the aam aadmi for quite some time.

When the wind played with the mulberries outside my transient residence The wind played among the foliage Bringing down the mulberries prematurely. The wind comes from the heavens Where games are cosmic and frolicsome. Give me a Sougandhikam, bring me the delight; But I’m no Draupadi and there’s no Bhima in sight. Some quests are fated to die before they’re blessed, Some quests are obliged to clash with other quests. The mulberries seemed infinite in their potential And sprouted more and more fruits the very next day. The wind whispered in cosmic frolic: “When everything is lost, is real freedom found.” Note : Draupadi saw a Sougandhikam accidentally fallen at her feet and demanded more such flowers.  Bhima, ever happy to please her, went to fetch them.  He crossed mountains and forests and reached Kadalivana, abode of Hanuman.  

Ludwig Feuerbach  The 19 th century was a century of revolutionary changes in human thinking.  People started questioning religion openly without fear.  The Romantic Movement questioned the absolutisms of classicism.  Karl Marx laid the axe at the root of the traditional social hierarchies.  In spite and because of Marx, capitalism broke a million more traditions. Industrialisation pulled people out of family-based work, colonialism led to miscegenation of different races and cultures, the Enlightenment of the previous centuries conquered new heights in human consciousness, women began to assert themselves against the strictures of patriarchy and religion was forced to take a backseat.   Ludwig Feuerbach is one of the many philosophers who redefined divinity for the thinking man (and woman, of course) in the century of various upheavals.  The leading religions of the time had externalised God and put Him (not Her , significantly) somewhere out there – Heaven or some such p