Valson Thampu
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Articles by Valson Thampu
CJP’s challenge is to be differently different and translate public support into lasting change
CJP’s challenge is to be differently different and translate public support into lasting change Translating momentum into real change hinges on its ability to resist political opportunism and partisan capture
CJP’s challenge is to be differently different
CJP’s challenge is to be differently different Translating momentum into real change hinges on its ability to resist political opportunism and partisan capture
Satya Niketan: More than a building collapse
The deaths of seven young students in a Delhi PG collapse cannot be reduced to illegal construction and negligent owners.
Is The Equilibrium Lost? Need For Humanity To Reawaken Its Humaneness
If we care to look closely at the people around us, study their attitudes and the tones of their statements, we are apt to sense something unsettling. Smiles seem to have faded from their faces. They sound forever high strung. Patience in short supply, their minds seem toeing on anger and intemperance. Kindness as a human emotion seems to have become obsolete. People appear more reactive, more hostile, and more fragile.
HT Syndication: Crushed by Celebration: A mirror to our misplaced priorities
India, June 23 -- At a time when our society is overwhelmed by daily concerns, chaos, and confusion, the Chinnaswamy Stadium tragedy - like so many heartbreaking incidents before it - will soon fade into oblivion. As always, we will return to our routines, and the media will quickly move on to newer topics of debate and distraction. What will remain in the cricketing records, however, is Royal Challengers Bengaluru's (RCB's) long-awaited and well-deserved Indian Premier League (IPL) triumph.
Crushed by Celebration: A mirror to our misplaced priorities
At a time when our society is overwhelmed by daily concerns, chaos, and confusion, the Chinnaswamy Stadium tragedy — like so many heartbreaking incidents before it — will soon fade into oblivion. As always, we will return to our routines, and the media will quickly move on to newer topics of debate and distraction. What will remain in the cricketing records, however, is Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB’s) long-awaited and well-deserved Indian Premier League (IPL) triumph.
Bengaluru Cricket Stampede: A Mirror To Our Misplaced Priorities
At a time when our society is overwhelmed by daily concerns, chaos, and confusion, the Chinnaswamy Stadium tragedy in Bengaluru—like so many heartbreaking incidents before it—will soon fade into oblivion. As always, we will return to our routines, and the media will quickly move on to newer topics of debate and distraction. What will remain in the cricketing records, however, is Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB’s) long-awaited and well-deserved Indian Premier League (IPL) triumph.
Spot the similarity
There seems to be a curious parallel between the war on terror and the war on corruption. Both presuppose faith in the efficacy of might. Consider the war on terror. The perversity of terrorism is that it reposes faith in violence. The war on terror, too, does likewise. The difference pertains only to who resorts to violence. Not infrequently, the war on terror becomes a mirror image of the war by terror. The insignia of the State is that it enjoys the exclusive right to resort to violence.
Murderers and Worshippers
There is an insight in the Bible that is least noticed by most Christians. That insight pertains to the deep but hidden connection between worshippers and murderers. The earliest hint is in the book of Genesis, chapter 4: Cain invited Abel, his brother, to join him in worship, when he wanted to kill him. And Cain did kill Abel, his brother.
Mahakavi K. V. Simon
The first English study of poet K. V. Simon (1883-1944), with sample translations, including of his 12,000-line epic Vedaviharam,and a critical biography. Opening with the story of South Indian poet laureate (or mahakavi) K. V. Simon's heroic life, this book escorts its global reader through the legendary Malabar Coast, transiting into the densely rich Simon verse in translation, and closing with a comparative reading of a rewarding range of texts from Simon and Milton.
In PM Modi’s Easter visit to a cathedral in Delhi, an outreach to Kerala
Political events are like icebergs, nine-tenths of which remain hidden from view. The hidden need not be altogether inscrutable. But, to discern their faces aright, one must rid oneself of prejudices. As a rule, human beings understand emerging events in light of past experiences. This makes them blind to new beginnings. This aberration can be obviated in part by reading events in their contexts. Human beings, barring rare exceptions, act only out of self-interest.
St Stephens vs DU face-off shows minority rights have become management rights
In religious contexts, there is a tendency to equate uniqueness with separateness; whereas they are contraries. Individuals are unique only when they are faithful to their individual qualities and develop them for the greater good. The obsession with being unique for oneself is self-indulgence, which is incompatible with the religious culture of all communities. Persons deem themselves ‘separate’ or exclusive when they are self-seeking and entertain biases.
A THOUGHT ON SABARIMALA
I am not an expert on Sabarimala. I am not an expert on anything. If anything, I am a generalist. I dabble with whatever comes my way. So for this post, I am exploring a question that may interest you as well: Why does the Sabarimala tradition deem the presence of women within the fertile period of their life -which is concretised as menstruating- incompatible with what the deity there, Ayyappan, symbolises? Let’s keep in mind that the motto of Sabarimala is: Tat Tvam Asi, or That thou art.
IN THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF GOD?
Familiarity is the deadliest religious disease. We feel at home with the familiar, because the familiar does not make any demand on us. It excludes the need to think. Thinking has the potential to unsettle us in our settled ways. It is when the unfamiliar hits us that, thank God, our brain begins to tick! So, it is good, as Jesus said, that hard days come. Blessed are you when you get into trouble. Adversity, wrote Francis Bacon, is the blessing of the New Testament.
THE COCOON VERSUS THE HIGH ROAD, OR THE INN VERSUS THE WAY
Last Updated on May 8, 2022 by Technical Administrator From childhood, whenever I heard that ‘there was no room in the inn’ for Jesus when he was born in Bethlehem, I used to feel sad. It is only recently that I realized how stupidly wrong I was! Here is the reason, in case you are interested (it will take only2 minutes of your time). How did Jesus describe himself? You will recollect that he did not describe himself as the Inn, but as the Way (Jn.14:6).
St Stephen’s must not insist on admissions interviews
The path of confrontation that St Stephen’s College has adopted towards Delhi University in respect to conducting undergraduate admissions is avoidable. It betrays an unthinking adherence to antiquated privileges. It is well-known that St Stephen’s attaches much value to interviews as a partial tool for selecting candidates. The main rationale for this, till recently, was that candidates seeking admission to it came from different boards that varied widely, even wildly, in standards.
Why Christmas is universal
Cribs, carols, cards, cakes are not universal. Manger is rural and the Magi, King Herod and Caesar Augustus have all vanished from sight. But, Christmas remains, and is deemed universal. Only what addresses the core human condition can be universal. The clue to this universality is provided by St. Luke. Jesus was born in a cattle-shed and laid in a manger, he writes, because there was “no room for him in the inn”. This might seem just a factual statement, which it is not.
Politics by other means
Diversionary tactics like ‘love jihad’ or ‘narcotics jihad’ will not wash anymore | Published 04.10.21, 01:04 AM According to Joseph Kallarangatt, the Catholic bishop of Pala, Muslims in Kerala are pursuing a sinister plot against his flock. They make matrimonial forays and narcotic infiltrations into the fold and lure gullible youths to their doom. A senior priest, Roy Kannanchira, also alleged that nine Catholic girls were lured away by Ezhava ‘enemies’, especially trained for the purpose.
Swami Agnivesh liberated bonded labourers as well as slaves of religion
This memory goes back to 1996. The Anglican bishop in Jerusalem was addressing a packed audience in New Delhi. He made an emotional appeal to Christian powers of the world to make Jerusalem the Christian capital of the world by annexing that city. His arguments elicited a thunderous ovation from the audience, except from two people, who had, till then, never met each other — Swami Agnivesh and I.
Snooping: Power thrives on mistrust
Unilateralism characterizes all unethical instincts and practices | Published 09.08.21, 01:20 AM Even though instances of snooping erupt into the public consciousness occasionally, they are pervasive in the modern world. States that do not spy on other States are deemed quixotic. Snooping on citizens, if done by the State, follows the same logic. The Pegasus snoopgate, thus, has nuances that merit attention, which can help contrast snooping with dialogue.
The Sister Lucy case shows why exclusive religious laws cannot be allowed to subvert spirit of Indian Constitution
Written by Valson Thampu | July 16, 2021 3:06:25 am Sister Lucy Kalapura. (Credit: ieMalayalam) A historic struggle is underway in Kerala, with Sister Lucy Kalapura as the pivot. The issue at stake is simple. Isn’t a nun also a citizen of India, entitled to personal freedom and justice? Or, is she only a religious slave? Can an Indian citizen be punished for writing poems, publishing books, learning driving or supporting struggles for justice?
Kerala HC verdict on payment of taxes by nuns and priests is revolutionary
The Kerala High Court order dated 13 July 2021 on an appeal by the Provincial Superior of the Nirmalrani Provincial House and others regarding the applicability of TDS to salaries earned by nuns and priests from government-aided institutions has significant and far-reaching ramifications. The judgment reiterates that canon law, which is the personal law applicable to the religious in the Catholic Church, cannot override the law of the land.
Dissent-mukt Bharat? This is the model of reality Modi’s India follows
File photo | PM Narendra Modi in New Delhi | Praveen Jain | ThePrint Text Size: Every government is based on a model of reality. So is Narendra Modi’s India and the logic of dissent-mukt Bharat. Tolerance, as well as intolerance, also exist on their own ways of reading reality. No ideology, political style, or religious mode can be understood without reckoning their underlying models of reality. Everyone agrees in theory that a vibrant, vigorous opposition is vital to the health of a democracy.
Twitter counters the vision of India as a parivar. That’s why the govt wants to control it
IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar release the new rules for digital media, OTT & social media platforms at a press conference in New Delhi on 25 February 2021 | ANI Text Size: How are we to read the growing tension between the all mighty Indian State and the global social networking giants like Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, among others?
A fatal hubris: Covid-19 second wave
| | Published 17.05.21, 02:52 AM “Oh, I have taken too little care of this!” — King Lear This quote is from Shakespeare’s King Lear. The megalomaniac king is plucked out of his palace and schooled on the heath, exposed to the ‘pitiless pelting’ of realities. He experiences life as his subjects do. Why did Lear fail to read the obvious? This question brings us face to face with the unfolding human tragedy in the second wave of the pandemic.
Greta storm in a tea cup
| | Published 01.03.21, 02:14 AM When the controversy over Greta Thunberg’s tweet on farmers’ protests erupted in India, Charles Dickens burst into my memory. One of the unforgettable moments in the Dickensian oeuvre is in Oliver Twist. Oliver, famishing in the parish workhouse, dares to plead, ‘Please, Sir. A little more gruel.’ Bumble, the parish beadle, sees this timid cry as an insurrection. As per the workhouse rules, the inmates were required to be absolutely silent at meals.
Democracy & radicalism
© Provided by The Statesman Democracy & radicalism 6January 2021 marks the highpoint of irony in the history of American democracy. Puritanism, a stiff, exclusive and zealous version of Christianity, was the foundation of America. It was one of the Pilgrim Fathers who imaged America as a ‘city set on a hill’. Secular democracy developed and came to itself in due course in the US on this foundation. But, over the years, Puritanism gave way to fundamentalist evangelicalism.
Man Of Spirituality & Reason
September 14, 2020 12:38:13 am His heart was with the poor. I was not surprised, therefore, that he was labelled a communist — a sort of saffron-clad Trojan horse in religion. Swami Agnivesh (1939-2020) spent the last two months of his life in hospital. During this period, we talked to each other almost daily on phone. Never once did he mention the health crisis he was battling. Every word he said was about what needed to be done. He lived and died a quintessential activist.
Clad in fire, not saffron, his last words to me: ‘They will resist’
The last time I heard from Swami Agnivesh was a week ago. He was in hospital, sinking. In the few moments of lucidity he had gained, he had his assistant connect him to me. “I had a great vision early this morning,” he said. I was eager to know. I had been in continual contact with him ever since he had been admitted to the ILBS Hospital in New Delhi two months ago.
The battleground of love and faith
By Valson Thampu The deadliest misconception in religion is that it harmonises faith and love with God as their common source. Love is among the four attributes of God: The rest being truth, justice and compassion. But, faith is the driving force of religion. Faith does not, however, inhere in God. Faith is a human attribute. It is the investment individuals make in God. This explains why custodians of religions exalt faith over love. Love is universal whereas faith is exclusive.
A crime against humanity
| | Published 01.07.20, 12:24 AM Donald Trump set himself out to make America rich again. Powerful again. Great again. It is a bitter lesson in history that every society progresses at the expense of the poor and the vulnerable. To fatten a tiny section of society, a large section of people has to be bled and degraded. In the age of barbarism, one tribe became richer by conquering another and enslaving its able-bodied men. In the age of civilization, one race does the same to another.
Emancipated By Virus
Written by Swami Agnivesh , Valson Thampu | Updated: June 30, 2020 12:40:48 am Misusing faith, religious establishments and the priestly class distorted religious culture and made the life of religious communities centred not on God, but places of worship. We are living, said Pope Francis, not so much in an era of change as in a change of era. The COVID-19 pandemic is a watershed moment in history.
Online instructions: Reckoning Pros and Cons
To Kerala belongs the distinction of being the first to set off with on-line classes for the whole spectrum of school students. Every new idea or initiative goes through three stages of public reaction. The first is opposition or scepticism. The second, indifference. Third, the posturing: “Well, there is nothing new about this, after all.” The introduction of a new measure also brings to light latent fissures and deprivations in the system. First, the obvious thing about online learning.
Is it religion or politics: the contour of a Christian dilemma
I think often of Bishop Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel. He is Victor Hugo’s sketch, in his novel Les Miserable, of what a bishop could be, or ought to be. Bishop Myriel is the ideal. The function of the ideal is to critique the real. I wonder what bishops today think of Myriel. He exchanges his official residence—the bishop’s palace—for a far smaller, ramshackle accommodation—the next door hospital.
On-line instructions: Reckoning Pros and Cons
To Kerala belongs the distinction of being the first to set off with on-line classes for the whole spectrum of school students. Every new idea or initiative goes through three stages of public reaction. The first is opposition or scepticism. The second, indifference. Third, the posturing: Well, there is nothing new about this, after all. The introduction of a new measure also brings to light the latent fissures and deprivations in the given system. First, the obvious thing about on-line learning.
Godmen syndrome decoded
In the childhood days of humanity, gods and human beings were nearly identical. They hobnobbed with each other. If you heightened the good qualities of human beings, you got gods, as in Homeric gods. The virtue a people held dearest to themselves was also the supreme virtue of their God. Two instances would suffice to illustrate this. For the Greeks, at a time when the city-states were in chronic power-struggles, as well as surrounded by menacing nations, the cherished virtue of God was strength.
Let’s debate the idea of religion
Religion is the only thing that we may live, and die for, without knowing what it is. It is deemed a basic human necessity, but no one really cares to know what need it should really serve. Religion is the most complex and mysterious of all things. It is centred on eternity. Even cutting-edge astrophysicists, esoteric philosophers and mind-boggling geniuses in a variety of other disciplines admit that they are illiterate on eternity.
The truth, at last, about demonetisation is out
By now we know. Or, ought to know. Forty days is not a short period of time. What, then, is this demonetisation about? The most significant thing about the way demonetisation has been played out so far is its choppy variableness in processes. Every day a new regulation. On many days, several course corrections. Consider an illustration to see this in perspective. Demonetisation, let us say, is like a mission to land Indian astronauts on Moon.
Let’s felicitate the couple
Veena and Mohammad will be man and wife on the 15th of this month. This is not just another wedding. It is an epochal event; a signpost to the future, wiser for the aberrations of the past and the many wounds they inflicted. My life, burdened with the stigma for being the offspring of an inter-religious marriage, makes me keenly sensitive to a painful truth: religion distrusts and despises love. That is because the small god of religion—the god of the priestly class—is quite a control-freak.
The witch-hunt of the Principal is unjustified
Many people become wise in hindsight. In their abruptly gained enlightened infallibility they know what others should have done, whether or not they were required to do so. But, pardon me, hindsight is not available to those who are handling a situation; else it will not be hindsight. So, it happens that college principals these days are required to have hindsight before the event happens. This is an unfair eligibility requirement. I too have been a college principal.
Remembering Rohit Vemula; Protests failed to disrupt the status quo | KochiPost
“My daddy,” exclaimed a five-year old girl in the US, “has changed the world!” Her dad’s name was George Floyd, by now a household name even in India. The child knows what adults choose to overlook: the world needs to change. Change is the hope of the oppressed. But there’s a problem. Change is the oppressors’ nightmare; for it is in the logic of change that oppressors could end up as the oppressed at least for a while.
Anatomisisng the MG University Controvery
Some of us would have died of boredom, but for a regular supply of controversies. Like the Lady typist in Eliot’s Waste Land. She is so bored with her husband, with whom she tries, but fails, to have a conversation, that she screams: “I shall walk the streets with my hair down so.“ In plain words, I will go mad. I’m nearly there already! Women in Kerala, especially those who keep in touch with the on-goings, won’t reach such a stage of desperate disequilibrium.
Church opening debate: Like a neurotic parent, Church unwilling to allow spiritual independence
I am glad that Jesus is not alive today in flesh and blood. He would have looked naïve beside the smart ones who manage his spiritual legacy. They would have found him hopelessly unrealistic. He would seem, besides, a tactical disaster. He stood for precisely the opposite of what the church leaders today bank on as the working principle of church-centric Christianity. ‘It’s good for you,’ said Jesus, ‘that I go’.
The Irreverence of Bible-wielding Donald Trump
You have to give it to Trump: the cake for frankness. He is religious. But he will not let religion stand in his way. Nor does he pretend that he does. So, he is free from hypocrisy. He doesn’t play-act. A hypocrite is, literally, one who play-acts. You saw him the other day in his raw faith. Held a Bible aloft. Not his Bible. So what? “A Bible,” as he said glibly. The Trump brand of frankness strikes us as refreshingly truthful. We pretend that there is a difference between ‘my Bible’ and ‘a Bible’.
The difference between boundaries and limits
By Valson Thampu That peace among peoples is impossible without peace among religions is now a truism. This does not have to be argued. But what needs to be reckoned is: Why is religion, presumably a vehicle of peace, being turned into an endemic hindrance to peace? What is it that perpetuates this perversion of role? Can it be reversed? The confusion among religions involves the two seemingly similar, but utterly contrary, concepts of limits and boundaries.
Women and children are facing unprecedented levels of domestic violence during Covid-19 lockdown
Human beings are creatures of habit. Disturb settled habits, and you can knock them over. Reports from various parts of the world indicate that domestic violence is rising alarmingly in the wake of the lockdowns in force. Much like the coronavirus, it was China that reported this social malady first. Women and children are facing unprecedented levels of domestic violence, ranging from physical abuse and threats of murder to the denial of medical help for those who have caught the infection.
Religion and the corona pandemic
For representational purposes (Photo | Vinay Madapur/EPS) A crisis is like a wind. It separates the chaff from the grain. Till then, they seem similar. The need to separate them is keenest with regard to sowing. The key difference between chaff and grain is that the former is irrelevant to human needs. My attention was drawn the other day to the ‘feet-washing ceremony’ conducted in a church in Kerala, commemorating what Jesus did at the Last Supper.
In Good Faith: Virus And I
coronavirus india lockdown, coronavirus update, corona, coronavirus update in india, coronavirus in india, coronavirus india, coronavirus cases in india, coronavirus latest news, coronavirus news update, coronavirus latest news update, corona virus, corona virus in india, corona virus news update An aspect of the cultural conditioning that human beings suffer in a consumerist-materialistic culture is that depending almost entirely on the external means and props becomes second nature to them.
In Good Faith: Virus And I
Written by Swami Agnivesh , Valson Thampu | Published: April 6, 2020 3:01:00 am An aspect of the cultural conditioning that human beings suffer in a consumerist-materialistic culture is that depending almost entirely on the external means and props becomes second nature to them. (File Photo/Representational) The coronavirus has forced us to fall back on ourselves. It will, for the duration of the lockdown, put the cart of civilisation back by decades.
How shall we respond to the pandemic?
As the killer virus tightens its grip on humankind worldwide, the question presses itself upon us: What shall we do? How shall we respond to this peril? Respond, we have to. Even refusing to respond is also a response, the response of denial. On occasions like this, it could help to recall how such calamities were faced in the past. The Plague—or the Black Death—that ravaged the world in the 14th century offers an instructive case study. Giovani Boccaccio’s Decameron serves our purpose best.
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