Tomichan Matheikal's blog

As English has become the language of the world, capitalism has become the world’s religion.  Wealth is the only real god.  Unlike the jealous Yahweh of the Bible whose very first commandment was “I am the Lord your God; you shall not have any other god besides me,” the god of capitalism says, “I am the only God who can buy up all other gods.” Apart from a god (or many gods depending on their tolerance level), a religion requires certain norms and values by which people organise their lives.  Capitalism has its own system of ethics and morality.  Egotism and profiteering are the elementary lessons in the catechism of capitalism.  Every child is taught that it is special.  It is brought up like a prince or princess.  Pampered by parents at home, the educational system at school, and the businesses and their advertisers in the society, the child grows up seeing itself as the centre of the universe.  The child grows up to be a monarch, the monarch of a little kingdom which is

Christmas, the festival of jingle bells, plastic pines, polymer stars, carols and donations, is round the corner.  As long as I lived in Delhi, the festival meant little more to me than a plastic Christmas tree and a plastic coated star.  Now that I live in a place that will resonate with carols for a few days, I’m tempted to ask this question: What does Christmas mean to me? Jesus was an enlightened person like the Buddha was.  An evolved brain.  One of the few persons who are born once in a few centuries [ Sambhavami yuge yuge ?] with a mutated brain. Normal human beings are descendants of the ape.  The ape continues to dominate our hearts though we have a slightly better brain which can do more things than the ape like learn the formula of (a+b) 2 .  The heart didn’t evolve much.  It carries all the savagery of the ape.  Jesus, like the Buddha and many others, tried to civilise that heart.  This is what I love most about such people. Take this story about Jesus

Book Review This is one of those rare books which challenge the reader’s perspectives again and again unabashedly.  Every chapter (there are 20 of them in all) wages a war with some of our pet beliefs and concepts.  Religious people who are particularly sensitive about their faith and religious sentiments will find this book highly disturbing.  The rational thinkers and those who are guided by the scientific temper will find their perspectives being reinforced. The author is a historian by education and profession.  But the book is multidisciplinary drawing copiously on various subjects such as biology, psychology and anthropology.  Starting with the evolution of man from the ape, the history of mankind moves on through the myths and gods our ancestors created, the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and so on, to “The End of Homo Sapiens.” Man is a myth-making animal.  Myths have enormous powers.  Myths can bring millions of homo sapiens together and

BJP has made a clean sweep of the Chandigarh municipal elections by winning 20 of the 26 seats.  Amit Shah has already declared the victory as the people’s approval of the demonetisation.  We should not disregard Shah’s declaration as the Hanuman’s natural devotion to his god.  In fact, BJP’s sweeping victory is an indication of things to come.  The party may end up winning many more elections in the coming months.  As many as seven states are going to assembly elections in 2017. “An economic measure should be, and normally is, judged on the basis of how it  benefits  the people, and any measure that brings distress to the people is derided for that reason. What we find in the present case however is just the opposite:  the more demonetization brings distress to the people, the more it is applauded for its wisdom and courage.”   Prof Prabhat Patnaik wrote recently in The Citizen .  [emphasis retained from the original] There is nothing surprising about people accepting the

“(W)hereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something .” Yuval Noah Harari says that in his book Sapiens , which I have been quoting extensively of late.  The emphasis belongs to the original. Religion asks us to believe in a god or many gods.  It may ask us to believe in a lot more things such as heaven and hell, or that a bath in a particular river will wash away all our sins, or that you can’t be part of the community unless you part with your foreskin, and so on.  Money demands a much simpler faith from us: that other people have faith in its value.  Without that faith, money is as useless as the waste paper in your dustbin.  Remember what Prime Minister Modi said to the nation on Nov 8?  “From midnight today, all the five hundred and one thousand rupee notes with you will be worthless paper .”  Worthless paper, that’s what one speech from one particular individual made out of some twenty lakh crore rupees i

Hi(story) Hernan Cortes was proud of his conquest.  His ambition had taken him all the way from his country, Spain, across the rage of the oceans, to the Caribbean islands.  Along with his men, Cortes invaded each of the islands and established Spanish rule over them.  More significantly, he had exterminated the entire native Caribbean population in just about twenty years.  The Spaniards imported African slaves to fill the vacuum left by the extinction of the Caribbean people.  Slaves will not rebel, Cortes knew that.  Every bit of rebellion is wiped out by the time the slaves reach their destination from their homeland.  Long voyage and excruciating torture.  Homeland becomes an impossible dream.  A dead dream.  Dead dreams hang heavily in the memory like taunting disgraces.  They emasculate the best of men.  Then there is the physical pain.  Together they, the disgrace and the pain, kill the soul.  Then there’s only the body left.  Body without a soul is a slave.  Cortes

Our ancient forefathers were nomadic foragers.  They went from place to place in search of food.  Animals which were not dangerous were hunted.  At some time in history, some of those foragers decided that they were tired of the constant chasing after food.  They chose to settle down and cultivate their own food.  Some animals were domesticated too. Animals were not used to domestic life.  They were used to roaming freely without any master to boss over their movements except the laws of nature which demanded constant vigilance against predators.  Man was one of those predators. But man was different from the other predators because he had a more evolved brain which told him that it was to his advantage to hunt the male sheep or the old ones, leaving the females to breed and also to provide milk.  But male sheep were also required for the breeding process since there was no genetic technology in those days.  Hence man resorted to selective killing of the males.  The aggre