Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Amit Shah is a chatur baniya . His political career is mired in filth and blood.   He has used devious methods to bring his party to power in his own as well as other states and also to eliminate enemies.   He is the master of trickery and even encounter killings are part of his arsenal.   He knows how to get what he wants.   Recently he was in Kerala where he hurled an ultimatum to the party workers: win at any cost.   Clashes broke out in Kerala from the very next day.   Sooner than later, Amit Shah can take pride in destroying the communal harmony that existed in Kerala for decades. Courtesy C P Sharma Amit Shah knows how to use power effectively.   His party is changing the history textbooks wherever it is in power.   In the new textbooks, the tin heroes of RSS like Savarkar have displaced the real heroes like Mahatma Gandhi.   The entire freedom struggle is being shown in a different light.   The history of the country is being rewritten entirely.   Fair becomes fo

“Who’s Shakespeare?” John asked when I mentioned the bard in a casual conversation. “Didn’t you study an extract from Julius Caesar a few months back?” I asked with concealed consternation.   John had just passed class ten from CBSE. I come to bury Caesar and not to praise him “Yup!” he remembered.   “ I come to bury Caesar and not to praise him ,” he quoted Shakespeare’s Mark Antony from memory. “What makes that line memorable to you?” “Mark Antony was lying,” said John. “He did just the opposite?” Coming from a fifteen year-old boy, that was quite a brilliant answer.   “Did your teacher say that?” I asked. “Not exactly.   But I liked Mark Antony.   He’s a good politician.” “Good orator, you mean?” “That too. But a good politician,” he persisted. “Because he lied effectively?” He thought for a while.   “He achieved what he wanted.”   In his own style John went on to tell me that he admired Mark Antony for subverting the entire parad

Book Religious fundamentalism has existed for centuries.   For any secular person who seeks to be guided by reason rather than myth and scriptures, the history of religious fundamentalism will tower like a daunting vampire that has sucked too much human blood already. Why does so much violence continue to plague the human civilisation in spite of the tremendous progress we have made in science and technology which are antithetical to religion?   What prompts our scientists to offer coconuts or milk to granite idols for the successful take-off of a scientific marvel like a satellite launcher?   Why does religion, especially the fundamentalist version of it, linger on persistently and stubbornly when it has wreaked more havoc than done anything substantially good for mankind? Karen Armstrong’s book, The Battle for God , answers these questions. Originally published in 2000, the book is subtitled Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam and traces the history