Mainstream Weekly

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• After Nehru; Lobbies Squabble

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  As the golden flame licked up the funeral pyre, an unforgettable scene ended near the banks of the Jumna and under the shadow of the Red Fort.
  It was an emotional experience without precedence, to watch this mightiest demonstration of love and respect that this great country has paid to any man. For Jawaharlal Nehru was, for the vast mass that is engulfed in sorrow today, not just a symbol of freedom, he was part of their very personality: it is difficult for this entire generation of ours (…)

• New Stature, New Tasks

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  It is like the end of a long night for men, women, and children of this country as Bangladesh proclaims her independence from Pakistan’s military junta. The rejoicing is not merely in the feat of arms—though the military defeat of the much-vaunted war machine of Pakistan has brought no little credit to this country’s armed forces, officers and men alike.
  What is of abiding value is that this confrontation has demonstrated that democracy in this country has not only come to stay but has (…)

• Tagore for Today

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The following appeared under Editor’s Notebook in the first Mainstream issue to come out after the proclamation of Emergency (June 25, 1975).
  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 the burden of ages, (…)

• Do We Need Nehru Today?

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Twelve years ago Jawaharlal Nehru died is harness on May 27. Inevitably, much has changed in these twelve years among his people and in the humanity at large. He was not the man who would have preferred the status quo to change; and if the landscape and the skyline of his country have changed—at places beyond recognition—Nehru, had he been alive, would have tried to understand them, accelerate the process of change.
  What we who belong to the generations after him have to ponder over is (…)

• Good-bye Feroze

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Parliament has just repealed the Parliamentary Proceedings (Protection of Publication) Act which came into force twenty years ago in 1956. Late Feroze Gandhi, who initiated and piloted the Bill in Parliament, made a powerful case which might have been useful for the present Government to bear in mind. Sri Bhupesh Gupta, in his signed article in New Age of February 1, 1976, has recalled Feroze Gandhi’s speech, from which a significant portion is reproduced here below:
  “For the success of (…)

• The Valley of Incongruities

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Whatever may be the substance of the much-advertised point of difference between Peking and Washington over the question of détente, it may be safely assumed that Gerald Ford’s talks with Mao Tse-tung and his cohorts explored the further potentialities of Sino-American collusion, particularly in the countries of the Third World. Angola shows the enormity of this entente while the happenings in Bangladesh underscores this danger in our immediate neighbourhood.
  The Sino-American (…)

• Good-bye to all that

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  There comes a moment in the life of a paper, as in the life of many an individual, when the sense of purpose is in danger of being lost by the constraints of circumstances. Such a moment has come today for Mainstream, after more than fourteen years of toil and tribulations, of successes as well as setbacks.
  Throughout these fourteen years, there has never been any questioning of the cherished values, the ideals and principles, born out of the struggle of this nation for freedom, democracy (…)

• Danger Signal of Degeneration

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  I write these lines after a fortnight has passed since that shocking incident took place in a suburb of the city of Calcutta. Three women and their driver returning from duty assigned by the government’s Health Department were detained by a gang of ruffians, their belongings looted, their van set on fire and they were beaten and the women criminally assaulted, in which one of them died alongwith the driver and two others are still hospitalised.
  This ghastly crime was committed in a (…)

• Aping the Adversary

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  It is surprising how intelligent people in politics sometimes take up positions which should logically belong to their adversaries.
  The Muslim League in 1940 picked up the so-called ‘two-nation theory’ which a bunch of extremist intellectuals had first coined to back up their demand for Pakistan. Other parties in India rejected it. The Congress made it clear that it did not accept the theory itself though it agreed to the partitioning of the country on the basis of the very same two-nation (…)

• Allround Decadence and Ray of Hope

  1 November 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  While there is no doubt a lot on which to attack those in authority for their dereliction in running an orderly system of governance, one has to ask at the same time why there has been such an appalling deterioration in social conscience in most of our public activity. In other words, the corrosion of values in public life is not confined to Ministers and top bureaucrats, but has become all-pervasive, the pollution of morals seem to choke out public service.
  If we look around, there is (…)