AS I See It

JESUS AND ENMITY

Valson Thampu A philosopher colleague of mine -Prof. R. K. Gupta, Hindu by birth but agnostic by choice- once said to me, ‘I can make sense of what the founders of religions have said. Everything, except Jesus’ teaching, ‘Love your enemy’. I consider this the ultimate reach of morality; except that it is unattainable by […]

WHAT’S IN A NAME? Random Reflections of Jihads of diverse breeds

Valson Thampu What’s in a name? Wondered Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. If you call a rose by any other name, say excreta, it will smell just as sweet. True. But the problem is that this logic works to different ends as well. If you call excreta rose and smell, you won’t look happy that […]

THOUGHTS, BY THE WAY, ON AFGHANISTAN

Valson Thampu You don’t have to be an expert on Afghan matters, or the tricky internal dynamics of the Taliban, to know that that unfortunate country will not know peace for a while yet. It will suffice if you know the words of Jesus, ‘He who takes the sword shall fall by it’, provided you […]

LEST WE FORGET FREEDOM IN THE FANFARE OF INDEPENDENCE

Valson Thampu Most people equate independence with freedom. Freedom, unlike independence, cannot be turned into a ceremony or an event. It cannot be put down to a date. It is either an ongoing condition of life, or it is nothing. The dawn of independence is an event, an outbreak of aspirations. Outbreaks have their dates. […]

WHAT IF NADIRSHAH IS HOLDING A MIRROR TO US?

Valson Thampu Nadirshah must be laughing all the way home! He has become a household name in Kerala, thanks to Christians; much like the mediocre Danish cartoons on Prophet Mohammad becoming world-famous, thanks to Muslim hotheads. What is Nadirshah up to? More importantly, where are we headed? There are two streams of responses to the […]

THE AFTERMATH OF AN ATROCITY: THEN AND NOW

Valson Thampu Two tell-tale events, separated by a duration of time, constitute a sort of scale on which attitudinal changes towards the person or community affected by them can be measured. We have two such events separated by three decades: the martyrdoms of Graham Staines and his two sons in 1999 and of Fr. Stan […]

MODI’S INDIA AND THE ORDEAL OF THE OPPOSITION

Valson Thampu Models of reality underlie types of government. No ideology, political style or religious mode can be understood aright without reckoning their underlying model of reality. The unwitting disservice that Aristotle did to humankind was via his idea of reality, which comprised three principles: the Principle of Identity, the Principle of Contradiction and the […]

HOW RICH ARE YOU?

Valson Thampu Ours is fast becoming a world of billionaires. For a few billionaires to be born, a billion people may have to be impoverished. But, the welfare of a billion people is not news. The birth of a few billionaires is. During COVID times, when 97% Indians became poorer, a handful entered the privileged […]

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Pope: Red Cross’ humanitarian work shows that fraternity is possible

New Vatican document lists ‘grave violations’ of human dignity