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....