Tomichan Matheikal's blog

I have often been awarded epithets such as Rice Bag by some people in social media who have no idea of what I am. My disapproval of the Right wing politics in the country provokes too many people. So I thought of explaining why I can never endorse BJP and its policies particularly under the leadership of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.    My only real objection to BJP lies in that party’s hatred of certain sections of citizens. In fact, the entire superstructure of BJP is built on hatred. They think that the Hindus have been discriminated against by the Congress after Independence. They think that the Muslim rulers discriminated against the Hindus before Independence. They think that the British discriminated against them by bringing Christian missionaries to the country.    Some of these notions are not entirely wrong. But they are only fractional truths. First of all, if the Muslim rulers were indeed as ruthless as the Right wingers in India believe them to be, India woul

Dancing Girl If I were to time-travel, one of the persons I would meet is the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro. I have a few questions to ask her. After all, she had the guts to stand stark naked with her chin up looking smug. Was she rebelling against something? How did she get away with that aplomb some four millennia ago? Were the men of the Indus Valley civilisation so broadminded as to accept such naked self-confidence of a pubescent girl?    Well, I have some more serious questions for her or her people. Since I don’t know anyone else from that time, I’m just choosing the Dancing Girl. Some elder would suit me better. I have some serious questions to ask. For example, I would like to enquire about the writings discovered from the site of that civilisation. Some 400 characters have been identified in those writings. Each one looks like a word and none of them has any resemblance to Sanskrit, the classical language of India which was quick to lay claim to the Indus Valle

I have been associated with CBSE for the last 17 years, both as a teacher and an examiner. When I completed just one year of teaching with that Board of education I was appointed as an examiner. I hesitated to take up the duty and informed the concerned authority about my lack of experience. “You have 15 years of experience as a teacher,” the authority told me on phone. He had my entire CV in front of him, apparently. I was forced to join the duty. On the very first day, I got just what I wished to avoid. As soon as I completed checking the first answer script, I was ordered to be magnanimous. The Head Examiner as well as the Nodal Officer (the authority who spoke to me on phone) re-examined that script and showed me how I had awarded much less marks than the examinee “deserved”.    I realised that CBSE was as magnanimous as the North-Eastern Hill University for which I evaluated answer scripts for a year or two. I learnt the lesson quickly. I’m a quick learner when it comes t

Book Review Image from DCBooks Title: Why I am a Hindu Author: Shashi Tharoor Publisher: Aleph, 2018 Pages: 302 “The harm religion does when it is passionately self-righteous – wars, crusades, communal violence, jihad – is arguably greater than the benefits religion produces when it does well (teaching morality, answering prayers, providing balm to troubled souls).” That is one of the concluding remarks in Shashi Tharoor’s latest book, Why I am a Hindu . The book takes a very intellectual and simultaneously pragmatic view of the author’s religion.    The book is divided into three sections: My Hinduism, Political Hinduism , and Taking Back Hinduism . The first section tells us what Hinduism means to the author. It is both a personal interpretation of Hinduism and an objective presentation of what that religion really is (as distinguished from the distorted versions we get these days). The author’s admiration for his religion stems from his realisation that it i

Photo by Joshi Daniel I love smiles. They make a huge difference to the way people perceive and communicate. A smile can melt the snow that envelopes the indifferent heart. It can douse fires and sprout blooms. I consider myself particularly fortunate because my days begin with a thousand smiles. The way from the parking space to the staffroom of my school is strewn with angelic smiles.    One of the unwritten rules in my class is that everyone should keep a smiling face. Smiles make the classroom almost paradisiacal. Both teaching and learning become fun with all those smiles lighting up the air.    Once a student decided to exhibit her displeasure with me by presenting me the most stoic indifference possible because I had given her less marks in a test than she thought she deserved. My explanation that her answer did not match her potential did not convince her. I waited for her natural beatific smile to return to her naughty cheeks below her dancing eyes. But her resolv

Image Courtesy here Though Pranab Mukherjee not-so-subtly denounced the basic tenets of RSS in his speech at the RSS training camp today, his description of the RSS founder Hedgewar as a “great son of Mother India” betrays the ambivalence of the former President’s attitude to the fundamentalist organisation. Is he suffering from senility? Probably yes. Or he may be playing a wily political game at which he was always an expert.    Is Hedgewar great in any way? He founded an organisation on the principle of hatred. Hatred cannot make anyone a “great son of Mother India” unless you subscribe to the right wing policies that have come to dominate Indian politics from 2014.    Hedgewar hated Muslims. That hatred was and still is the raison d'être of RSS. Hedgewar hated Indian National Congress simply because it stood for secular inclusiveness. His hatred of the Congress and what it stood for made him and his organisation a tacit supporter of the British Raj.    When

From Indian Express There is no way to rule innocent people, as Ayn Rand said. How do you put any sort of control on innocent people? And ruling is all about putting controls, isn’t it?   “The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals,” said Rand. If there aren’t enough criminals, the government will make them. You declare more and more things as illegal and then it becomes impossible for people to live without breaking laws.    From the time the Modi government came to power in 2014 an endless list of laws has been implemented. A facile taxing system called GST, Real Estate Regulation Act, laws for recovery of debt, insolvency and bankruptcy, linking almost everything under the sun with Aadhar… It’s a formidable list. Then there are the unwritten rules implemented by all sorts of volunteers like the various Senas: what food you can eat and cannot eat, what dress you may wear, who you can marry, which god you can worship, in which language you s