This is my World

Dear feminists(both men and women),  I appreciate you on taking up this noble venture. Your efforts in fighting for the rights of women who have been oppressed in our  society for long and your yearning for equality are laudable. However, I feel many of you have lost direction off late and you are  simply clinging on to the feminist raft to find shore rather than to set sail. I wouldn't blame you, the precedents are bad.  Feminism demands political, economical, cultural and social equality for women. Fair demands, I believe. In the west, feminist  movements began with the calls for equal representation in polity, voting rights, right to education and property, workplace rights  such as maternity leave and equal pay, reproductive rights and things alike. In the east particularly India, feminism started out as a  movement aimed at abolishing sati, killing of girl children and child marriage while promoting the rights of a woman in marr...

Today, politicians go around talking about austerity and good governance when they live in palatial residences, travel by bullet-proof benz', run billion dollar businesses while they sleep in the parliament. They talk of serving the society selflessly when they illegally stash away money in their Swiss bank accounts and junket around the world in private jets. In these times of looting and selfishness, it might be strange to know that only a half a century ago, there lived a great man who reigned over the country for about two decades and he still died with just 130 rupees in his account. The name of that great man is Kamarajar. He has been forgotten, ignored and written away by us and INDIAN historians. The least we could do is remember him on his birthday while we try to learn a few lessons from the life of this mighty man.  Chapter 1: Early years Kamarajar was born into a family of traders in Virudhunagar(yes, my native) on July 15, 1903. His fath...

India knows a lot about the so-called first war of independence and Mangal Pandey. Least does it know that it was not the first uprising of its kind. In fact, the first large-scale revolt against the British took place a thousand and eight hundred kilometres south, in a town called Vellore in 1806, twenty-one years before Mangal Pandey was even born. The revolt: On July 10, 1806, at three in the morning, five hundred Indian soldiers from the Vellore fort, armed with hundreds of muskets and two small cannons, slithered out of the Indian barracks and stole their way to where the Europeans were stationed. Briefly, they waited outside the European barracks for a signal to be issued. Finally when the signal came, the doors of the Europeans barracks were blown away. Some Indian soldiers rushed into the barrack and opened fire on the British soldiers who were asleep. Others blasted the barrack from the outside. The British soldiers who were stationed in the Vellore fort did not fight back....

In the late 1940s, when Potti Sreeramulu began protests to carve out a separate state for Telugu speaking people from the Madras presidency, he demanded(more like pitched in for a demand that had been there since 1920) that Madras be made the capital of Andhra. Though the then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, favoured reorganisation of states based on administrative convenience rather than on linguistic lines, he promised Potti Sreeramulu a separate state, but there was little progress made because of the demand for Madras. Tamils were opposed to annexing Madras with Andhra and this led to stalemate. It was during this time, the Telugu leaders launched Madras Manade(Madras is ours, in Telugu) movement. Countering this, another movement was launched in Tamil Nadu by the organisation Tamil Arasu Kazhagam. It was called Madras Namade(Madras is ours, in Tamil). The Tamil Arasu Kazhagam under the leadership of its founder organised various protests and rally against annexing Mad...

Mythology is one of my childhood fixations. These fairy tales have never stopped to amaze me till this day and I have always  wanted more in the end. In my time, I have read a little bit of mythology from different cultures and the parallels that can be drawn  between them are innumerable. Some of them are fairly well-known while others are not. I have tried to compile them both here  while adding a bit from my own reading.  I have also decided to keep out from this article comparisons between nature gods and their stories. Early man was a nature worshiper and wherever he migrated to, he took his gods with them. No matter what culture he adapted, he always found a place  for mother nature in it and it is not surprising that the most ancient religions of the World like the Egyptian, Greek and Indian have  innumerous similarities between themselves when it comes nature worship. In the space of a blog, it would be futile to cover this  vast to...

Most of us would have read about the Black hole tragedy in primary school. But have we been taught the real facts? Read on.  The story: In 1752, four years before he died, the Nawab of Bengal, Alivardi Khan, declared his grandson Siraj ud-Daulah as his successor. When the Nawab died of dropsy in 1756, there was a clash for power between Siraj ud-Daulah, his maternal aunt, his cousin and his uncle Mir Jafar (then paymaster of the army who later became the Nawab of Bengal). By then, the British East India Company had already established its presence in India and was expanding its military capabilities in the country, foreseeing a french offensive. Fearing such an eventuality, they backed Mir Jafar to take the throne over Siraj ud-Daulah who they perceived would align with the French. This along with the growing power of the British and the never ending expansion of forces in the region did not go well with Siraj ud-Daulah who thought the British were planning to overthrow him. In ...

The Indian independence movement brought to fore great souls who were selfless and honest. While many of them resigned back to peace after independence, others ventured into politics. Not to make money or name for themselves, but to provide a better life for the suffering and the unprivileged. Though a few of them are still remembered today, most of them have been wiped off from the pages of history. One such man is P. Kakkan.  Personal life: Kakkan was born into a Dalit family on 18 June 1908 in a small village called Thumbaipatti near Madurai. He did his primary schooling in Melur - the town closest to his village - before moving to Thirumangalam or Madurai(there is some confusion over where he studied) for higher secondary education. He seemed to have failed the SSLC exam and thereafter, worked as a teacher before becoming a social worker. He was married to Parvati with whom he fathered five sons and a daughter. He was deeply religious and rejected Periyar's ideologies and me...