debater

Jail Bharo has become the new dictum of anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare at present. If the agitation against corruption moves ahead with this present mantra a sizeable number of Indian citizens will start the New Year in jails.  It seems natural to me to think that education has a greater share in bringing about a just, humane, egalitarian society. It is one thing to be concerned about the immediate results in the society by way of showing our discomfort to the culpable by way of hunger-strike and through other non-violent protests. This cannot go on. Our method of tackling the social menace also must change and take into account the future of the country. One of the best ways to work for a just society is to turn our attention to the field of education. We need to tell our younger generation School bharo and learn karo! The Problem of Illiteracy Soon after the independence of India the political leadership swore to achieve the goal of primary education for all by 1960.

“To you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” Lk 2:10-11. Dear fathers and brothers this is how the angels announced the good news of our Lord’s birth to the poor, illiterate shepherds of Bethlehem. I wish to reflect on the manger in which our Lord was born. First of all, the Scripture says there was no place in the inn for Jesus to be born. As the popular world turns its back on the son of God, the manger, the cave of animals offers a place. A manger is anything but a place for a baby to be born. It is the place for beasts. Animal nature is often equated with violence; but our Lord’s birth in the manger tells us that sometimes better sense can prevail even in the animal world. Another interesting thing about the manger is how men enter into it. Obviously the entrance into it is lower and those who wish to enter in have to stoop and enter. In t

Until last Sunday I thought of everything that have happened to me ever since as an experience. Barat Kumar taught me otherwise. Barat Kumar is from a southern most part of India, Tiruchy, Tamil Nadu. He is sixteen. He came to work in Nashik to feed his family members, more so to find a temporary heaven from his step-mother's tortures. He is kept in the juvenile home for the thing he says he didn't commit. Almost all  the minors who land up in the juvenile home say the same thing but their attitude towards life is one of fatalism; however this boy proved to be different. He learnt the language in less than ten days and began to move with the inmates. He has not taken to drugs as most of the  adolescents do it by all means. He keeps writing something. He thought me a big lesson for life:  Experience is not that which happens to you but what you do with that which happens to you. One of the ways of finding meaning in life is to foster a healthy attitude according to Victor Frank

Many acclaim Darwin's theory of evolution. No doubt there are insights in Darwin's theory to understand human anatomy. However, I find it intriguing whenever I hear the dictum Survival of the Fittest. It may be true that in the animal kingdom the strongest prey on the weak ones. This can't be with human beings. For we have feelings, we feel for the other. We feel morally impelled when one of our fellow men is abused. The higher form of human evolution would mean a kind of social responsibility, otherness, and empathy.  

Meena Kandasamy in an article to Time (titled the Fallen Angel)  tells the tale of of Kanimozhi, one of the accused in the infamous 2G Spectrum case. Something got my immediate attention when I was reading through her article.She tells how the DMK Patriarch M. K. had double standard of dealing. This much revered leader of Tamils once upon a time considered the people, the Tamils, entirely different from his own children. When bombs were raining in Vanni this leader had set a stage with air-conditioner to lay down and occasionally make a political rhetoric. All that he did was to fill a few pages with his eloquent poetical language for the suffering Tamils in the Island nation. But when his daughter was jailed for swindling the public money, misusing the trust of the people he did pay occasional visits to her in Delhi, pleaded for her in the highest of the places. Worse thing happened when the tainted M.P. was released on bail. She had a grand welcome in the home state. Definitely all t

Technology, for certain is a god-sent gift to the human world. It has made our lives easier to live and communicate. It would be truly difficult, impossible for many even, to think of a world devoid of modern technology. Technology, particularly communication technology has revolutionized the world. God-men of all religions are becoming increasing open to the virtual world. The Catholic Church is not an exception to it. However something needs to be set aright in our being in the virtual world. It seems to me that most of our church sermons are information Googled. It is imaginable that humans will not think in some years from now. Everything will be done by a thinking machine. Though technology such as Google search engine is a valuable help in coming to know different things what is posted in a website cannot be just read out in our churches. Preaching is not to give information but for transformation of lives. Transformation comes when we proclaim God with conviction than with Googl