Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Lights of Moscow

  10 November 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The following piece was written by N.C. fifty two years ago, published as it was in Mainstream (November 9, 1963).
  As the IIyushin 14 touched down on the hard crust of the Siberian snow, the pretty Chinese comrade next to me said: “It seems we have reached Omsk. But don’t be upset by the bitter cold of the Russian blizzard. The Soviet people are as warm in their heart as the tea served out of their samovar.” She spoke fluent English, a medico, graduating from Peking, (…)

• Report from Moscow

  10 November 2015, by Sumit Chakravartty

  The author, then Mainstream’s Special Correspondent and now Editor, was in Moscow from November 6 to 23, 1991 to get an idea of the objective situation in the Soviet Union just before its dismemberment. The following is the first instalment of his report that gives a vivid account of how the 74th anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7 was observed that year in Moscow, which was still the capital of the USSR.
  The Soviet reality today is complex and daunting. History is (…)

• 

  Dangerous Rise of the Rightwing Forces

  4 November 2015

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  The political landscape of the country is changing at a fast and furious pace. ‘Intolerance’, ‘illiberal’, ‘communal bigotry’, ‘fringe elements’—all these have become hackneyed words and phrases. What we are witnessing today right before our eyes is the taking over of the Indian state by the Rightwing fascist forces with the connivance and complicity of those very people who have sworn themselves to defend it. From the targeting and physical elimination of free-thinkers (…)

• Three Murders and a Lynching

  4 November 2015

  by Ram Puniyani
  Laws of nature cannot be applied to human society so directly. Still sometimes these have been used to explain/justify social catastrophes, ‘When a big tree falls, the earth shakes’ (in the aftermath of the anti-Sikh massacre of 1984), ‘every action has equal and opposite reaction’ (during the Gujarat carnage of 2002) are too well known. I have been very puzzled from last month or so since the scholars-writers, who have returned their honours and are being questioned as to (…)

• Rising Intolerance

  4 November 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  When distinguished writers and artists return to the Akademis the awards which had been conferred on them, the question to ask is not why they did not do it earlier, say, at the worst times like the Emergency. Writers and artists are a sensitive lot. They react when they feel and how they feel.
  It is, in fact, the duty of the government to find out why they have felt that the situation has come to such a pass that they have no alternative except to return their awards. Nayantara Sehgal, (…)

• India-EU FTA: Time for a F undamental Rethink?

  4 November 2015

  by Kavaljit Singh
  India and the EU would soon resume negotiations on the stalled India-EU free trade agreement. In a joint statement issued by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in New Delhi on October 5, both leaders expressed their “strong commitment to the EU-India Broad Based Trade and Investment Agreement and committed to bring about a resumption of the negotiations as soon as possible”. With the political leadership now backing the proposed agreement, (…)

• RSS forces a Tactical Shift in the BJP’s Style of Election Campaigning in Bihar

  4 November 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  In a sudden tactical shift the BJP, instead of attacking Nitish and his claim of developing Bihar, has been seeking a clarification from him whether he would be able to keep his promises of reaching development to the door-step of the poor people, rural and urban alike, with RJD chief Laloo Yadav there on board to prioritise the mode of development and decide the agenda.
  The change of tactics owes its origin primarily to the ambivalence haunting the people on the issue (…)

• Bihar Poll: Mother of all Elections

  4 November 2015

  by Sanjay Mishra
  Dubbed as “the mother of all elections”, the five-phase election for the 243 seats of the Bihar Assembly has justifiably evoked a lot of media attention and buzz among political parties, psephologists and commentators. Bihar has not only been the epicentre of the earliest empire in India presided over by an emperor who later converted to Buddhism and non-violence and gave to the world some of the earliest principles of governance and secularism, but it has also been the (…)

• Nikhil Chakravartty and Some of his Times

  4 November 2015, by Anil Nauriya

  The Communist Party of India (CPI) was born in the aftermath of the ferment generated by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 on the one hand and the non-co-operation movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress in the 1920s on the other. Nikhil Chakravartty inherited this twin legacy. He recalled in “A Personal Testament”, written on Karl Marx’s death centenary, that he had started out as “god-fearing nationalist putting on khadi-kurta”.1 It was this combined legacy that was (…)

• From the High Noon of Indian Journalism

  4 November 2015, by John Dayal

  In the current wave of litterateurs and poets returning their well-deserved national honours to protest the hate-murders of three fellow writers, one was struck by the fact that there was just one professional journalist in that distinguished list, a poet-editor once with a Hindi newspaper.
  There are dozens of journalists who have been awarded the Padma awards, some for their long years at work, some perhaps for their proximity to the governments of the day, and several for the hard work (…)