Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Left in Kerala: Have the Comrades abandoned Serious Introspection?

  20 September 2015

  by Suresh Jnaneswaran
  Listening is a virtue that comrades should assiduously cultivate. The distinction between listening and hearing has been pithily characte-rised by Roland Barthes as, “Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act”. Is listening to the petite bourgeois or non-card holder anathematic to the comrades self-esteem? Should an oracular posture of infallibility run them down over the Indian subcontinental landscape?
  Change is the essence of history (…)

• Blow to Afghan Peace

  20 September 2015, by Harish Chandola

  The recent car-and-truck bomb attacks in Kabul, killing several, and the Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani’s demand that Pakistan crack down on the Taliban, appear to have ended the prospects of peace in that country generated by the July meeting between an Afghan Govern-ment delegation and senior leaders of Taliban insurgency in Murree in Pakistan. By holding that meeting, the Afghan President had taken steps to improve relations with Pakistan, whose influence he hoped would sway the Taliban. (…)

• SCO’s Growing Role in the International Scene

  20 September 2015

  by Hasan Hamidullah
  The last SCO summit, which took place in Ufa (Russia) on July 9 and 10, was held in a highly deteriorating international situation, the worst of its kind since the formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2001. The results of the agreements, concluded and signed at Ufa, testified to the major role the Organisation has been playing as a multilateral platform intended to discuss the most burning questions concerning the global political and economic (…)

• Valuable Contribution to a Multilateral World Order

  20 September 2015

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Vijay Kumar
  Force or Dialogue : Conflicting Paradigms of World Order by Hans Kochler with a Foreword by Fred Dallmayr—Collected Papers edited by David Armstrong; 2015; Manak Publications, Delhi; pages 401, Price: Rs 2500.
  The book under review represents an assiduous effort on the part of Professor Hans Kochler, one of the most distinguished scholars/ practitioners of international law and philo-sophy, to interrogate the growing contradictions between normative and (…)

• VS, Corbyn and Democratic Centralism

  20 September 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  An extraordinary thing happened in the Left politics in Britain and in the southern State of Kerala last week. There are similarities and dissimilarities between what happened in the two situations so far apart. But it gives much food for thought for all Leftist workers and their leaders as well as the fellow-travellers of the Left in India.
  The stunning victory of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party in UK on September 12 made headlines in the world media. Corbyn won despite (…)

• Mulayam Singh Yadav and BJP

  20 September 2015

  Communication
  Despite the Samajwadi Party supremo, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s tall talk of being a great champion of socialism, standard-bearer of secula-rism and great crusader against communalism, his decision of quitting the grand secular alliance in Bihar is nothing but a clear move of his closeness to and having a secret deal with the BJP which is implementing the RSS agenda of making India a Hindu country and establishing here a state based on Hindutva. The following instances justify the (…)

• Implications of RSS-BJP Samanvay Baithak

  20 September 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  Soon after the mid-term poll in 1998, when the results were yet to come but one was certain that the BJP and its allies would form the next government at the Centre, a political leader who later joined the A.B. Vajpayee-led Union Ministry, had asked this correspondent as to what should be done after the outcome of the elections. One had then clearly pointed out to him that regardless of what course the BJP-led government would follow (that is, a Right-of-Centre line or a (…)

• What We Defend in Kashmir

  20 September 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The following appeared fifty years ago as the editorial in the Annual Number of Mainstream 1965.
  The valiant defence of the Motherland by our armed forces as well as by the brave people of Jammu and Kashmir has inspired the nation. The grim determination of the people of this country not to rest till Pakistani aggression is completely vacated and it is ensured that there will be no recurrence of violation of our frontiers was fully reflected in the President’s (…)

• Triumph of Secularism

  20 September 2015, by G.M. Sadiq

  (Mainstream, Annual Number 1965)
  As the nation observes the fiftieth anniversary of the 1965 India-Pakistan war, we reproduce here two pieces that appeared in the Annual Number of Mainstream (which came out in September 1965).
  Twice during the last eighteen years, Kashmir has had to go through an ordeal of fire, an ordeal which no other part of our great country has had the misfortune to face. Pakistani rulers have not yet been able to get over their covetous greed and so the people of (…)

• A martyr is born . . .

  20 September 2015

  His name was Abhijit, the conqueror of the foe. And he has conquered death, for by giving his very life, he shall be remembered so long as the beauty of Kashmir shall endure, so long as patriotism shall be cherished as an abiding virtue.
  When Abhijit joined the Army in October 1963, it was not just the end of the quest for a career: for him it was exclusively a call of the motherland. The old father, the veteran of many a battle against the British rule, had himself offered to fight for (…)