Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• No to Bhagat Singh’s Second Hanging

  21 October 2013

  COMMUNICATION
  According to some newspapers reports, Yadvendra Singh Sandhu, a distant relative of the great martyr of the Indian freedom struggle, Bhagat Singh (hanged on March 23, 1931 along with Sukhdev and Rajguru in Lahore) has invited Hindutva icon Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister, who calls himself ‘Hindu nationalist’ and a member of the RSS, to release Shahid Bhagat Singh’s Jail Diary in Delhi. The same relative had announced a high-priced coffee-table book edition of this (…)

• For Closer Interaction between Litterateurs of Assam and Bengal

  21 October 2013

  COMMUNICATION
  Nabanipa Bhattacharjee’s well-written article titled “Negotiating Marginality: The Bangla-Speakers of Assam” (Mainstream, August 9-15) does not discuss one aspect of the question, namely, the need for closer interaction between the Assamese and Bengali litterateurs of Assam. As I was born at Silchar in the Bengali-speaking Barak Valley, in my younger days I was closely associated with the movement for recognition of Bengali as a State language in Assam. My father, Nagendra (…)

• Privacy Law and Genetic Engineering under Article 21 and Maternal Foetal Conflicts

  21 October 2013

  WOMEN’S WORLD
  by Archana Ranka
  I. Privacy Rights
  The procreational right of privacy must extend its constitutional protection to non-traditional family units and alternative methods of reproduction.1 For example, legislation prohibiting artificial insemination or other reproductive techniques to unmarried women would violate fundamental freedoms. “The Constitution prevents government from standardising its children and its adults—by forcing all to live in certain narrowly defined (…)

• Colonial Master

  21 October 2013

  by Shahnawaz Ahmad Mantoo
  Justice continues to elude the present-day world as there are still exploitations, conflicts and miseries inflicted on the Third World states by the colonisers or neo-colonisers. Colonialism or imperialism is still there but in a new shape and form. The terminology hardly matters because what is important to mention here is that exploitation in the form of imperialism or colonialism was in the colonial era and its contemporary form happens to be neo-colonialism. (…)

• RSS and Politics: Conspiracy is the Mantra

  21 October 2013, by Shamsul Islam

  The RSS specialises in double-speak and triple- speak. In fact, the situation is so critical that it may be an understatement regarding the RSS behaviour. No other organisation which claims to be committed to moral regeneration of India can compete with the RSS in manufacturing lies. The current public manifestations of the RSS for active participation in Indian politics, especially forcing the BJP to project Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 elections, is a (…)

• Is a National Unity Government Possible?

  21 October 2013, by Bharat Dogra

  The conventional understanding of parliamentary democracy is that there will be a ruling party (or coalition) and there will be an opposition side.
  However, given the experience of recent years, a time has come to explore whether a national unity government, which provides at least some presence to even Opposition parties, is possible. Such a national unity government will have representatives of almost all the political parties whose members are elected to Parliament.
  Here two aspects (…)

• How Modi Views Untouchability?: Dissecting the ‘Toilets First, Temples Later’ Debate

  21 October 2013, by Subhash Gatade

  Narendra Modi could not have imagined that his exhortation—‘toilets first, temples later’ —at a Delhi conclave would not only generate a debate within the saffron fraternity but would also bring back the focus on the pathetic situation of sanitation in his home State itself. And the ensuing discussion would also transcend to his controversial ideas about untouchability—the social-religious practice based on the logic of purity and pollution which has marginalised, terrorised and relegated a (…)

• The General who Won Classic Victories with Barefoot Soldiers and Bicycles

  21 October 2013, by T J S George

  TRIBUTE
  Great military commanders have an aura unattainable by others. The last World War threw up a clutch of names that still reverberate in the halls of history—Patton, Montgomery, Rommel (The Desert Fox), Eisenhower, MacArthur, even Tojo, Yamamoto, Yamashita. The Cariappa name glittered in the Indian sky because he was the first Commander-in-Chief.
  In glamour value, Thimmayya and Maneckshaw were the heroes. While acknowledging the grandeur of these legendary Generals, we need to (…)

• Mounting Concern

  14 October 2013, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  The situation in Andhra has considerably worsened in the last few days. The indefinite strike by the Seemandhra electricity workers protesting against the bifurcation of the State and emergence of the separate State of Telangana engendered an unprecedented power crisis that affected other southern States as well. As a consequence the collapse of the southern grid became a distinct possibility which is why the States of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry exhorted the (…)

• Vo Nguyen Giap: ‘General of Peace’

  14 October 2013, by Sumit Chakravartty

  TRIBUTE
  General Vo Nguyen Giap is no more. He died in an Army hospital in Hanoi on October 5, 2013 at the age of 102, according to Tuoi Tre Online. The New York Times described him as the “relentless and charismatic North Vietnamese General whose battlefield victory at Dien Bien Phu drove France out of Vietnam and whose tenacious resisance to the United States in a long and costly war there eventually snapped America’s political will to fight”. While offering our heartfelt tributes to one (…)