Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Religion has always been a tool for oppressing sections of people so that the oppressors can uphold their own interests easily.  In our own country, some clever men ( men , and not women) invented a supernatural creature in order to establish the caste system which was highly oppressive for the vast majority of people.  A small minority became the most powerful people who controlled gods, the scriptures (rubrics and canons as well as truths), politics by subordinating the kings and their warriors, and everybody else.   From the time Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, it ceased to be a religion of love and compassion.  Thousands of people were eliminated labelled as heretics, witches, pagans, and so on.  Islam has its own jihads of all sorts which oppress and even eliminate whole sections of people. Connected with the oppressor role of religion are the material benefits it brings.  The priestly classes always enjoyed infinite benefits.  The Brahmins

Professor Mukul Manglik of Ramjas College, Delhi concludes his interview to Frontline with a quote from historian Howard Zinn: “Human history is not only a history of cruelty, but also of compassion, courage and kindness... and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is inhuman and cruel around us, is itself a marvellous victory.” Struggle against Right Wing cruelty Source: India Today The students’ union, ABVP, had unleashed a lot of cruelty on the campus and the Professor was speaking about that.  He mentions in the interview that he as well as many other teachers feels intimidated by ABVP which physically assaulted some teachers during the agitation.  ABVP is a student organisation that is affiliated to RSS and nurtured by BJP both of which take pride in Hindu culture and civilisation.  The teacher is placed on a par with god in the ancient Hindu tradition.  It then becomes extremely ironical and darkly comical that teachers in a

Irom Sharmila in Santhi Gramam Sixteen years of youth is the price that Irom Sharmila paid for learning the lesson that politics is not meant for idealists.  She has reasons to feel disillusioned and dejected.  She has reasons to seek shelter in Santhi Gramam in Kerala.  “Politics is dirty by nature,” she learnt the hard way.  There’s no place for idealists in politics.  The age of the Mahatma and his hunger strikes are fairy tales today.  We live in a world of hardcore pragmatism of the kind espoused by none other than Lord Krishna in Kurukshetra.  Politics is war.  Strategies matter, not idealism.  “Dharma is subtle,” the great idealist can only philosophise. And perish for that Dharma.  Ms Sharmila blamed money power and muscle power.  It’s much more than that, dear Ms Sharmila.  It’s brain power.  And there’s divine power too.  There is a whole pantheon of gods involved in this war called politics today in our country.  It’s a war to redeem Bharat from all kinds

Vast majority of people are ideal followers.  Ask them what they are following and you will get blank looks.  For example, ask a person why he believes in his/her religion or why he/she votes for a particular party.  I’m ready to bet that you won’t get satisfactory answers unless some quotidian blah-blah is enough for you.  People want other people.  Not merely for company.  People want other people in order to get on in life.  From the simple drinking water problem to the complex games that people play, everything becomes much easier to deal with if you have other people to help you.  Other people throw in support if you belong to their religion, political party or some such group.  Religious beliefs and political convictions are not much more profound than that.  If you don’t believe me, probe a believer’s knowledge about his/her religion.  In 9 cases out of 10, you will meet with ignorance.  Politics is likely to fare better. Even if there is awareness, probe a littl

I share the cynicism of George Orwell’s donkey, Benjamin, in Animal Farm .  When the revolution took place on the farm, Benjamin with his asinine stubbornness refused to be enthused. “Life would go on as it had always gone on,” he said, “that is, badly.”  The animals were so much overjoyed by the revolution that they did not bother to label him antinational.  Eventually, Benjamin was proved right.  The original motto, “All animals are equal”, changed into “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal.” I congratulate Mr Narendra Modi and his Sancho Panza Amit Shah on BJP’s sweeping victory in UP and impressive performance in the other states. Though impulsive actions like demonetisation bring to my mind the images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Orwell’s Animal Farm may be a more apt metaphor. Dreams are galore.  Promises abound. In the end, however, some chosen animals remain more equal. I love the dreams, however.  I am a dreamer myself.  I would love to see

A country is really free only when its citizens are free.  Freedom is not merely deliverance from foreign occupation.  Freedom is deliverance from poverty, injustice and other social evils as well as personal evils such as greed and jealousy which give birth to corruption of all sorts.  India is yet to be free.    There are millions of people in India who go to bed hungry even after seven decades of independence.  There are millions who don’t have access to basic healthcare.  Our public distributions systems and primary healthcare systems are abject failures.  The country is still enslaved by poverty.  Can we call it a free country? A man who has to carry the dead body of his wife on his shoulders for kilometres because he cannot afford to hire a vehicle should shake us out of our smugness.  He is a poignant symbol of the callousness that marks a governance which gives more importance to cows, idols and myths. India needs deliverance from its holy cows and myths.  It i

The worst sin is the refusal to confront one’s inner demons.  Redemption lies in accepting those demons and learning to grapple with them.  This is the fundamental theme of Khaled Hosseini’s celebrated novel, The Kite Runner . “... a boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who won’t stand up to anything.”  Rahim Khan, one of the characters, tells Amir the protagonist. Rahim was actually quoting the words of Amir’s father who had assessed his son when the latter was a boy.  Amir never stood up for himself because there was always Hassan, his childhood friend, to stand up for him.  Hassan had no inner demons shelved away neatly in any inner recess of his consciousness. He confronted life as it presented itself to him.  When it was necessary to fight bullies, he did so bravely.  He did the fighting on behalf of Amir too.  But Amir betrayed him.  Amir surrendered to the demon of cowardice.  Every surrender to the inner demons leaves one with guilt.  Amir’s father