Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Like Vaclav Havel, I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist.   Everything does not end well.   Nor does everything end badly either.   I have felt the constant surge of hope in my breast that things will improve.   Like, maybe we will have a good political leader who can unite the nation while preserving its endless variety.   Or that poverty will be eradicated and people will live with dignity.   “Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life,” said Havel. We cannot strive for anything without a fair share of hope within us.   However, one of my favourite authors, Albert Camus, derided hope as “the last item in Pandora’s box.”   Pandora’s box brought all the evils to mankind, according to Greek mythology.   Zeus kept the last evil, hope, hidden in the box.   Hope is the greatest source of trouble, philosopher Nietzsche had argued and Camus borrowed the argument.   Hope makes people anticipate an ultimate reward like heaven.   Such hope diminishes the value of thi

In his article in today’s Indian Express , Vijay Singh laments the jingoism that marks election speeches of presidential candidates in France.   “Once upon a time, presidential candidates making election speeches spoke of lofty ideals, their vision of history and the world,” he reminisces.   One of the French presidential candidates, Marie Le Pen, harped on the strings of “xenophobia, Islamophobia, immigrant-phobia, anti-Europeanism, anti-globalisation.”   ‘France for the French’ is a popular slogan now. Image from OutlookIndia Donald Trump wants an America of only Americans. The right wing in India is going out of its way to create Hindustan in place of the heterogeneous India. Various Islamic organisations have been trying for quite some time to fabricate a Caliphate in the whole world. It’s interesting to ask the questions like who the Americans are really or who the Indians.   With German ancestry from his father and Scottish ancestry from his mother, Trump is

There should be no difference whatever between man and woman when it comes to dignity.   Both are the same species.   Both are required to reproduce the species if nature’s rules are respected. They are counterparts of each other.   The concept of Ardhanarishvara in Hinduism eloquently illustrates the quintessentially complementary nature of man and woman.   Yet women have been suppressed and oppressed in most parts of the world for a very long period of history.   The morning prayer of the Jewish men may be the most blatant outrage perpetrated on women theologically.   “Thank you, Lord, for not making me a woman,” the man prays every morning.   The woman is the cause of the human sinfulness, according to the Old Testament which is sacred to both the Jews and the Christians.   There is no female Rabbi in Judaism and there is no female priest in Christianity, though the discrimination is slowly relenting. Islam is worse than its two Semitic predecessors when it comes t