Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Image from Republic World Communal hate has been a national pastime in Uttar Pradesh for quite a while. Now they have made it official and legal too with the promulgation of the ordinance against ‘love jihad’. Other BJP-ruled states will soon follow suit. Cows always belong to the herd. There are so many interfaith couples in India just as in any other country today. When Sharmila Tagore married Mansoor Ali Khan, the sky didn’t collapse, the earth didn’t quake. Nothing happened except that they made love like any other couple and begot three very normal children one of whom followed the parents’ example and married from a different faith. There are numerous such couples who live happy lives though their allegiances are to apparently irreconcilable gods. When Kamala Harris became the vice president-elect of the US, India’s right wing celebrated her Indian origins though her father was a Jamaican-American-Christian. This same right wing has no problems about Indian Hindus leaving

  Book Review The Tyranny of Merit Author: Michael J Sandel Merit is not always right. It generates winners and losers and often creates hubris among the winners and resentment among the losers. Moreover, there is something immoral about handing over the world to a group of people who possess certain qualities (merits) just by luck. Michael Sandel is a political philosopher at Harvard University and author of many books. His latest book, The Tyranny of Merit [2020], is an incisive critique of meritocracy. Our world places much premium on merit . Students are admitted to premier institutions on the basis of their merit which is assessed by highly challenging tests. Jobs are allotted also on the basis of merit. Merit is important, no doubt. It ensures efficiency and fairness. Those who are more capable should be given greater responsibilities. It also promotes aspiration and individual freedom (freedom to forge one’s own destiny). It is also morally comforting: we feel that w

  If only this goodness could grow with us Yuval Noah Harari’s celebrated book, Sapiens , ends with a pregnant question: “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?” We, human beings, are those dissatisfied and irresponsible gods. We evolved a long way from our ancient simian ancestor. We became gods, so to say. We are able to transmute nature’s creations. Harari gives the example of the giraffe. The long neck of the giraffe was a product of evolution by natural selection. “Nobody, certainly not the giraffes, said, ‘A long neck would enable giraffes to munch leaves off the treetops. Let’s extend it.’” But today a scientist can do such intelligent designing. Twenty years ago, Eduardo Kac created a fluorescent green rabbit in the laboratory with the help of science. A gene from a green fluorescent jellyfish was implanted in an ordinary white rabbit embryo and the outcome was the green fluorescent rabbit which was named A

  A scene from the Jan strike The government kept the country locked down for three-quarters of a year. Now the people have called for a lockdown of their own. Today is a national strike called by all the trade unions together except Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh which is affiliated to RSS. What are the grievances of the people, the working class? First of all, we should remember that this is the second such strike called all over the country. The first was on 8 Jan which saw 30 crore workers joining in. India’s total labour force, including the workers in agriculture, is 56 crore. So the figure of 30 crore is significant. Also remember that the farmers have been agitating in many parts of the country in the last many months, Punjab being the latest example. BJP may keep winning elections (who knows how?) but people aren’t happy with them. That’s quite obvious. Why? Let us look at some of the problems raised by today’s strikers. In the last strike – the January one – the workers want

  Salman Rushdie’s latest short story, The Old Man in the Piazza , is a moving plea for bringing elegance back to our public discourses. And truth too. It is not the elegance of total assent that is desired. Everyone saying “Yes” to everything all the time is not a utopia. Language sits sulking in a corner of that utopia in Rushdie’s story. She endures the obsequiousness of all the yes-people for five long years and then, unable to bear the vulgarity of such invertebrate bhakti, stands up and lets out “a long, piercing shriek”. Language rebels against the total assent. Assent is not a virtue, except in religion maybe. When the leader says that the moon is made of ancient Hindustani paneer, all the bhakts asserting their assent in unison is not the beauty of human life. Diverse are the beauties of language. Shakespeare and Kalidasa have their own places in her kingdom. [Language is presented as a woman in Rushdie’s story.] Vikram Seth’s inter-religious lovers can have their kiss

Money has become the measure of everything. Your social stature depends on your wealth. Your health depends on it too because our hospitals have become expensive multi-speciality industries. Your children’s education depends on it because what the top schools charge as annual fees is more than what majority of people earn in ten years. Interestingly, even your spiritual salvation depends on how much money you can contribute to the earthly reps of your heavenly gods. Economy became the heart of our socio-political system in the last few decades. We thought economy was the panacea for all our problems. Creation of more and more wealth was the ultimate goal of globalisation. More wealth would mean more happiness. We were told so. When wealth became the ultimate goal of life, everyone obviously chased it heart and soul. That chase became the new pilgrimage. Not only is your worth measured by your wealth but wealth is the very purpose and meaning of your life. The means you resort to

  I stopped counting the days when the lockdown entered the third month. I started counting the books I would love to read. I read them one by one. One book per week approximately. Books are good friends and entertainers: the best in that category perhaps. But I also love travelling to see places. When the lockdown that put an end to my travels completed eight months, an irresistible itch gripped me. When I suggested Inchathotti, a place 40 km from my home, Maggie didn't resist. She was aware of the restlessness that had gripped me for quite a while now.  Inchathotti is just an ordinary village in Kerala on the shores of the mighty Periyar River. What attracts tourists there is only a suspension bridge, the longest of its kind in Kerala with a length of 181 metres. It was not built for tourists at all. When it was built nobody would have imagined that it would draw tourists one day.  The Hanging Bridge (as it is known) was built for the people of Inchathotti village to cross the ri