Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• On India, Israel and Palestine

  11 July 2015, by Eduardo Faleiro

  Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj announced recently that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would visit Israel. Shri Modi will be the first Indian Prime Minister to do so. Indo-Israeli relations have witnessed a sharp upswing since the present government came to power and there has been an unprecedented level of bilateral visits by senior Ministers from India to Israel and vice-versa.
  The Israel-Palestine conflict is an unresolved issue of international politics dating from the end of the First (…)

• So Many said So Much about Emergency Excesses. But why is there No Inquiry into the Tortures?

  11 July 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  What a surfeit of Emergency narratives we’ve had this past week! Not surprising, given the way those two years, 1975-77, changed the very character of Indian democracy. A generation has grown up with no personal acquaintance of that traumatic period. For them the Emergency is likely to be no more than a word. Like Independence. Yet these are words that made—and remade—our country. Tens of thousands sacrificed their lives for independence which, today, we take for granted. Tens (…)

• Celebration in the Era of Modi

  11 July 2015

  by Imtiaz Ahmad Ansari
  Last year it was “achche din aane wale hain” (good days are about to come). It was in reference to two predictions. First, that a Modi-led government will be formed at the Centre and, second, the Modi-led government will be a panacea for all the ills India was suffering from. The first part of the prediction came true with a clear BJP-led majority government at the Centre. However, the second part of the prediction is still in limbo. Sloganeering is one thing and its (…)

• Return of Pandits to Homeland: Need for a Humanistic and not Political Approach

  11 July 2015

  by Aijaz Ashraf Wani and Mehrag Ud Din Bhat
  Over the last few months a lot of political noise has been made over the issue of return of Kashmiri Pandits to their native land. However, instead of dealing with the issue from a humanistic perspective, it has been used, as has been the case most of the time, for political rabble-rousing and drawing cheap political mileage out of it. It needs to be mentioned that the return of the Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley is a very sensitive issue, both (…)

• RSS Brand of Yoga on Display on June 21

  11 July 2015, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Yoga is a great form of exercise. So is walking, swimming, jogging and even classical dancing. Can the government make all these compulsory in our daily lives ...in schools, colleges or offices?
  Don’t compel, don’t utter compulsory, for the minute you do so you are destroying and denting the very concept of acceptance.
  Let yoga stand out in its natural form, with all its hues intact. Don’t thrust and force it on the hapless masses. Don’t use it as a means to divide and (…)

• Indo-Pak CBMs: A Crying Need of the Hour

  11 July 2015

  by Duryodhan Nahak
  In modern times, the term confidence building measures (CBMs), assumes significance in the study of international politics. In a conflict-ridden world with growing discontent against the use of lethal, chemical and nuclear weapons, the CBMs seem to be only alternative in the hands of sovereign nation-states in general and India and Pakistan in particular through which peace and stability can be achieved in the world. Despite the history of protracted conflict and bitter (…)

• Ecological Conservation and The Historian’s Craft

  11 July 2015

  by Namrata Singh
  Due to changes in the climate in the past decades, interest in ecological changes and conservation has arisen in all academic disciplines.This is true for the discipline of History as well. E.H. Carr has defined history as a dialogue of the present with its past. This means that contemporary issues are sought to be understood in the context of the past. By doing so, certain historians, as pointed out by Beverley Southgate, write history, to provide examples from the past. (…)

• Jagjit Singh Anand—Symbol of Progressive Journalism in Punjab

  11 July 2015, by Chaman Lal

  TRIBUTE
  On June 2, 2013, Jagjit Singh Anand completed 50 years as the editor of the Punjabi daily Nawan Zamana, published from Jalandhar. Perhaps few have achieved this feat. Two years later, on June 19, 2015, Anand passed away as the editor of the publication at the age of 93 years plus.
  Anand was born on December 28, 1921 in a well-known family of that time in district Amritsar. His father, Headmaster Mehtab Singh, was a well-known Sikh scholar. His elder brother, Pritam Singh Safeer, (…)

• India-Pakistan: No Communication Is No Policy

  11 July 2015

  by Vinay Kaura
  “God has placed us in a position in which we are prevented by our neighbours from slipping into dullness and inertia.” Had these words not been spoken by the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in the Reichstag in 1888, they could well have been spoken by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015. Having spent one year in office, Modi may have realised that his government’s Pakistan policy has not been a success story: it has failed to achieve anything substantial in (…)

• India’s Soft Power in Central Asia: Why it Must Act on the Look North Policy

  11 July 2015

  by Ramakrushna Pradhan
  This July visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Central Asia is of paramount importance for both regions because of several reasons: the first is to give India a substantial footprint on the hydrocarbon map of the region; to check and counter Pakistan’s strident Islamist agenda against India; to keep a tab on drug trafficking and potential weapon proliferation in this region; to promote India’s interests in the commercial arena and to garner support for the country’s (…)