Tomichan Matheikal's blog

His hobby was watching spiders chase flies. Spiders wove their webs and waited. Sooner than later some fly was sure to be trapped in the treacherously gossamer web. There’s a preordained affinity between flies and spider webs, he thought as he watched the spider rush with the glee of a conqueror to devour the trapped fly. ‘I’m like this fly,’ he muttered to himself. His religion was the spider web and its priests were the spiders. The Lords of the Ma’amad, having known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza, have endeavoured by various means and promises, to turn him from his evil ways... (1632-1677) He remembered the verdict passed on him by the Ma’amad, the Council of Elders, when he was just 23 years old. His crime was that he had questioned their truths. Their truths were falsehoods for him. Their truths were illusions. Their truths were fabricated gossamer webs. He showed them the real truths. Truths, naked and unembellished, which would set them fr

A relatively new trend that is gaining much popularity in the Indian online journalistic media is the posting of vituperative comments anonymously.  Most such comments are overtly communal in nature and support or attack a particular religion.  If these comments are analysed in sufficient detail, we may suspect that there are paid writers who post comments for the sake of defending a particular party and its religious ideology.  Some comments by one 'Ram' in the Indian Express Hitler and his Nazis made use of similar strategies for propaganda.  Some of the most effective strategies used by the present dominant ideology in India which considers certain animals more sacred than human beings are very similar to those employed by the Nazis. For example: Posters and slogans, Anti-Semitism/antinationalism, Use of the mass media for propagating distorted truths, Mythologising the political party and its history, Projection of one individual as the only efficient leader.

We become like our enemies. The Sangh Parivar is proving the saying right if the latest issue of Outlook is to be believed.  The Parivar which never tired of accusing the Christian missionaries and the Islamic fundamentalists of converting people into their respective religions is now indulging in the same activity much more ruthlessly and heartlessly, according to the Outlook cover story.  Children between the age of 5 and 12 are weaned away from their parents under fraudulent promises and with fake documents and taken to institutions in Gujarat and Punjab.  Most of the children belong to various tribes in Assam and other North-eastern states.  According to the Outlook reports which quote official sources, about 5000 children were taken away from Assam alone in 2012-15.  These and other similar children from other states are sent to the various institutions run by Sewa Bharati which was set up in 1978 by Balasaheb Deoras with the purported goal of promoting the welfare