Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Defence of Constitution and Democracy: Need for Democratic Unity

  15 April 2016, by Anil Rajimwale

  History often teaches through events the lessons not learnt through theory. To forget the serious history of Germany, Italy and Europe of the 1930s and other events is a serious lapse on the part of the progressive forces. The JNU events, particularly those related to Kanhaiya, and events elsewhere in India have once again strongly emphasised the need for the broadest cooperation of the progressive forces. The recent events in fact reflect the deeper processes going on in the political and (…)

• India’s Cost of Evading ‘Western Enlightenment’

  15 April 2016

  by Arup Maharatna
  In this essay we seek to posit that many of the major ills that presently afflict Indian politics, society, and culture are attributable, in a large measure, to its resolute escape from the core ideational and attitudinal influences of the Western enlightenment, the mainspring of the modern industrial democratic civilisational world. We use the term ‘escape’, because India has neither wholeheartedly rejected, nor sincerely embraced, the basic insights, wisdoms and (…)

• BJP’s Duplicity and Artful Demagogy

  15 April 2016

  COMMUNICATION
  The BJP, the ruling party at the Centre, has earned notoriety for duplicity, artful demagogy for non-implementation of promises and tall talk. It has been implementing the RSS agenda of transforming India from a secular democratic republic into a Hindu state. It aims at destroying our precious composite national culture.
  Its Ministers and leaders have launched a hate campaign against Muslims and deliver highly provocative speeches against them; these speeches are (…)

• Real Face of Hindutva Leadership

  10 April 2016

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  As the pre-election tension grips several States going to polls to elect Assemblies where electoral campaign is on in full swing, the latest incident in Srinagar’s National Institute of Technology (where clashes took place on March 31 when two groups fought over India’s defeat to West Indies in the T-20 World Cup Cricket semi-final) has caused legitimate consternation across the country.
  The Central Government is currrently being run by persons suffering from an acute (…)

• Money Makes the Mare Go

  10 April 2016, by Kuldip Nayar

  That the Indians have stashed money abroad was known even when I began my journalism career almost 60 years ago. The West German Government once provided us with the list of depositors. But nothing came out of it because the people involved enjoyed political patronage. The much-hidden Swiss accounts were also given to the government when it made an official request. No action followed since it was once again seen that the people who had kept their money were influential.
  I recall the Union (…)

• SC Decision to Release Saibaba on Bail

  10 April 2016

  The Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr G.N. Saibaba wholeheartedly welcomes the decision of the Supreme Court of India to release Dr G.N. Saibaba on bail forthwith. This is indeed a much-needed and long-awaited relief for Dr Saibaba, who has been languishing in the anda cell of the Nagpur Central Jail since December 2015, when the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court cancelled the bail granted to him by the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court and ordered him to surrender within (…)

• The Kolkata Flyover Collapse: Some Questions

  10 April 2016, by Barun Das Gupta

  Till the afternoon of Thursday, March 31, the Hyderabad-based construction firm Iragava-puru Venkata Reddy Construction Ltd., better known by its initials IVRCL, was not a very high-profile company. But the sudden collapse of a huge slab of a flyover the company was building in Burra Bazar, the thickly-congested business district of Kolkata, brought it into the limelight. Many vehicles and pedestrians got trapped under its debris. Till the time of writing, 26 deaths have been confirmed and (…)

• Celebrating a People’s Historian in Terrible Times

  10 April 2016, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  On Monday, March 28, the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Historical Studies hosted a day-long convention—Jashn-e-Azaadi: Remem-bering Bipan Chandra... celebrating the people’s historian, Bipan Chandra, and celebrating the Indian Freedom Struggle. It was simply heart-warming to see that josh/that surcharged warmth, spread out in and around the venue, JNU’s Convention Centre. Discussions, talks, short plays together with lectures on the pluralistic traditions and performance (…)

• Randhir Singh: A Life Dedicated to Keeping Alive the Idea of Socialism

  10 April 2016, by Gilbert Sebastian

  TRIBUTE
  Prof Randhir Singh, a well-known Marxist activist-intellectual who used to be a teacher at the Department of Political Science in Delhi University, passed away at the age of 94 on January 31, 2016. I had met him for the first time in 1992 when he came to the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. He stood out as someone different as a critical scholar thinking of contemporary issues from within the framework of classical Marxism. In March 2010, a friend of mine from Punjab (…)

• Shame on You!

  10 April 2016

  by K. Narayana
  “I feel ashamed of you now, after all these years of admiration. What is your status and what is Kanhaiya’s level? Why did you go to the airport to receive him?”—complains a well- wisher of mine.
  “A person who had praised deshadrohi Afzal Guru, is getting your support! Shame on you!”— another friend of mine expresses his ire.
  “You had followed Kanhaiya to the Central University. Did you ever realise what impression it will create?”— one more Leftist friend enquires.
  I (…)