Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• We Must All Resist BJP’s Two-Nation Theory

  29 June 2015

  Ayodhya has become the epicentre of a cyclone that threatens to spell disaster for the political fabric of this country. For the fourth year now, it has virtually taken over the centre-stage of national politics.
  What has been achieved so far is that actual confrontation is averted almost at the very last moment by a desperate move to buy time, so that a little more space may be available to tackle the dipute over the question of the proposed Ram Mandir, requiring the pulling down of the (…)

• The Roots of the Emergency

  29 June 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  As years pass by, one after the other, the past recedes more and more into distant memory. There are certain events in the life of a nation as of individuals, to which distance does not lend enchantment to the view. Rather the ugly visage falls into the pattern of historical evolution and lives on as such. One such event in our lifetime, and in our very land was the Emergency which was promulgated on June 25-26, twenty years ago.
  Twenty years is but a short space in the vast canvas that is (…)

• Emergency (1975-77): Mainstream’s Rewarding Struggle

  29 June 2015

  To mark the passage of forty years since the imposition of the Emergency by Indira Gandhi on June 25-26, 1975, we reproduce some extracts from the story of “Mainstream’s Journey Through Emergency” which was published in the June 25, 1977 issue of this journal. —Editor
  The story of Mainstream during the nineteen months of Emergency is both exciting and rewarding. It has many lessons to impart. The confrontation with a despotic authority could not possibly be direct and formal: by its very (…)

• Mrs Gandhi’s Misrule

  29 June 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Forty years may seem to be a long period. But it is not long enough to efface the memory of a jungle raj which followed the imposition of the emergency in 1975. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, mother-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, should have stepped down after the Allahabad High Court disqualified her for using the official machinery during election. The Supreme Court’s vacation judge gave her reprieve by pronouncing a stay order.
  Still she was not certain about the final (…)

• Emergency (1975) is a Permanent Scar on the Soul of India

  29 June 2015, by Rajindar Sachar

  Nations which do not remember their immediate past are in danger of repeating the same tragedy. This thought comes to me when on random questioning of the significance of June 26, 1975 (the Emergency Day) from the age- group of 35 and below (who constitute two-thirds of the population of India) one draws an overwhelming blank look, and not so encoura-ging even from those in the 35-55 age-group. Even newspapers never frontpage it—some do not even carry the information, and a few may just (…)

• Emergency: What it meant

  29 June 2015, by Amiya Rao, B G Rao

  Not a leaf stirs in my kingdom without my leave. See how quiet my people sit. —Atahuallpa the Inca
  To those whose only preoccupation in life is to survive, June 26, 1975 was like any other day in oppressive June—the sun cruel, the wind searching, the dust blinding. But to some at least of those who heard the Prime Minister on the radio that morning, had no paper to read before they went to work, and learnt about the midnight arrests only by way of rumour, June 26 looked ominous, (…)

• Tagore for Today / An Eye-witness Account / Does it Matter?

  29 June 2015

  The Editor’s Notebook in Mainstream (June 28, 1975) after the promulgation of Emergency and the imposition of press censorship appeared as follows:
  Tagore for Today
  Somewhere in the excitement of National Emergency, the editor has lost his notebook. However, Rabindranath Tagore has, in the abundance of his generosity, lent him his own notebook:
  Freedom from fear is the freedom I claim for you, my Motherland!—fear, the phantom demon, shaped by your own distorted dreams;
  Freedom from (…)

• Intolerance through the Years: 1934 to 1975 to 2015

  29 June 2015, by Anil Nauriya

  Day against Intolerance : June 25, 2015
  The 25th and 26th of June mark not only the declaration of the internal Emergency at the behest of the Indira Gandhi regime in 1975. June 25 is also the day in 1934 when a lethal bomb was aimed at Mahatma Gandhi and his cavalcade by the Hindu conservative and orth-odox elements in Pune when he was on his anti-untouchability tour. For some years, especially from 1977 onwards, the anniversary has been observed as a day of protest against the Emergency (…)

• Memories of Nikhilda during the Emergency

  29 June 2015, by Barun Das Gupta

  It was in the wee hours of Jun 26, 1975 — around 4.30. I was sleeping soundly when the telephone by my bedside started ringing. [I was then in Gauhati (spelt Guwahati now) working as Patriot’s Special Correspondent in Assam.] I woke up. I thought that the caller must have dialled a wrong number and decided not to take the call. After a couple of minutes the ringing stopped. I had just switched off my bed lamp and closed my eyes when the telephone started ringing again. This time it went on (…)

• Nikhilda! You Never Die!

  29 June 2015, by Anees Chishti

  June 25, 1975: 6 am: The telephone rings and there is the voice of a dear senior journalist friend—something that is not unusual as he often used to surprise me with some important information before the day started. But this was something that was extraordinary and would have been unbelievable if it had not come from him. I was told that late last night Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai had been woken up in their sleep and taken to some unknown place by the police. A little later came (…)