Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Terror in Europe, Intolerance in India

  27 November 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  Speaking at Kuala Lumpur while addressing the Indian diaspora there, PM Narendra Modi made a significant assertion last Sunday (November 22). This had not come from him in India. He underscored that terror must be delinked from religion, adding: “The only distinction is between those who believe in humanity and those who do not.” A moment earlier he had said:
  Terrorism knows no boundaries. It uses the name of religion to draw people to its cause but kills people of all faiths. (…)

• Kobad Ghandy’s Request for Urgent Appeal to Release him on Bail

  27 November 2015

  ON GROUNDS OF AGE AND SERIOUS HEALTH CONDITIONS
  Kobad Ghandy’s Request for Urgent Appeal to Release him on Bail
  Kobad Ghandy wrote the following note on November 10, 2015 and sent it to us for publication in Mainstream at the earliest. It reached us on November 21, 2015. We are publishing it without delay in our latest issue with the hope that readers will urgently respond to his request. —Editor
  Just today, in response to an RTI, I was sent a copy of the Jharkhand FIR. It seems, after (…)

• From Paris to Beirut: Is the War Against ISIS Losing Sight of its Humanitarian Objectives?

  27 November 2015

  by Sanjal Shastri
  From the recent string of terror attacks in Beirut to the (alleged) bombing of the Russian airliner in Egypt and the carnage in Paris—all these clearly point to a strong ISIS link. It has now been more than a year since the International Coalition Against the ISIS started their bombing campaign. The debate over escalation of airstrikes and widening the scope of the operation is of great relevance today.
  The events of the past week have pushed international public (…)

• Islamic State’s Defeats in Iraq

  27 November 2015, by Harish Chandola

  The Paris carnage of Friday, November 13, could have been a consequence of the Islamic State’s (IS’) major losses in its war in Iraq in the previous month of October. The IS possibly wanted to demonstrate that it is still a force capable of hitting targets of its choice, in spite of those defeats.
  The Iraqi Army on October 7 had succeeded in retaking Ramadi, the capital city of the Sunni Anbar province, west of Baghdad. It also took control of the critical Abu Farraj bridge over the (…)

• Treading Lightly to Freedom in Myanmar

  27 November 2015, by Uttam Sen

  The Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy’s clean sweep in the November 8 elections in Myanmar surprised those who thought that the embers of the 1990 outcome had finally died down. The NLD had stormed those elections as well (if anything, less emphatically) but had been set back by their annulment by the military junta and the house arrest of their all-in-one Burmese “face” and mass leader, at home in Yangon and at Oxford, or Delhi where she did some of her schooling and of (…)

• Self-Destructive Politics of BJP

  27 November 2015, by Sharad Rajimwale

  well under two years of its rule, the BJP Government appears to be fast losing its steam; by all indications it has started huffing and puffing. Before that it found little difficulty in whipping up sentiments in its favour in its tempestuous ascendancy in the Indian masses’ imagination. The ground then was fertile enough for the saffron seeds to sprout into a crop of wild dreams that caused the voters to take the spurious for the genuine. The “fiftysix inches of chest”-brand of wishy-washy (…)

• Protecting Farmers, Reducing Emissions: Integrating Climate Change Concerns with Welfare of Farmers and Food Security in India

  27 November 2015, by Bharat Dogra

  I. Introduction
  The seriousness of climate change and the urgency of related adaptation and mitigation actions are by now scientifically well established. Despite this, its significance in terms of basic changes needed at the policy level has not percolated to the level of governments. This is certainly true of the agricultural policy in India where, despite additions in the form of some new climate change-related initiatives, the overall policy appears to be along the lines of ‘business (…)

• Claims over Kohinoor

  27 November 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  The British establishment must have prevailed upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to mention Kohinoor during his official visit to the United Kingdom. Otherwise, it is not under-standable why he did not refer to the subject even once directly or indirectly.
  Why I suspect the British Government’s hand is because of my personal experience. When I raised the subject in the Rajya Sabha after my campaign at London, the then Foreign Minister, Jaswant Singh, told me that I was ‘spoiling (…)

• Apne Apne Ram: The God of Politics

  27 November 2015

  by Navneet Sharma and Pradeep Nair
  Ram naam sat hai
  The above sentence literally states a divine matter of fact that the Ram (the God) is the only universal truth but obtains a very different meaning in practice, usually chanted by people while following someone on his/her last journey to the cremation ground. This article attempts to appreciate how Ram as a name and a concept attains totally different meanings. The same Ram, when used in a political discourse, also can mean very (…)

• We Need No Taliban Here

  27 November 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Maqbool Fida Husain is at the very centre of a storm whose after-effects are extremely relevant for our democracy—both for the democratic structure of our state and for the preservation of democratic values in our society.
  It is not that Husain is at the centre of a controversy for the first time; in fact, it is seldom he is out of one. He has got thousands of fans, not all because of the beauty of his art but quite a large number applauding him for what would have (…)