Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The troubled memory of marital domesticity in Indian women’s verses | Adrita Mukhopadhyay

  25 June

  “In India, where thousands of young women are murdered every year for bringing in insufficient dowries, a dowry death rarely makes news. But the death of Twisha Sharma in the central city of Bhopal on 12 May has sparked a huge media frenzy, with the case making headlines every day.” read the opening lines of a news article posted by BBC on 22nd of May, 2026.
  From unmarried daughters getting warned by their mothers of "domestic complexities" to progressive, independent women remaining (…)

• The Discomfort of Being Seen Structurally | Disha

  25 June, by Disha

  Drawing from her experiences as a PhD scholar, the author reflects on the discomfort that often accompanies conversations around privilege within Indian universities. She argues that privilege rarely appears as obvious power and more often presents itself as normality, inherited ease, and institutional familiarity. As marginalized voices increasingly challenge older structures of silence, academic spaces are being transformed through new claims to legitimacy and belonging. The article (…)

• From shame to reflection: A journey from trauma to empowerment | Anindita Pramanik

  25 June

  Abstract:
  This personal narrative research explores the real realities of period orthodoxy, cultural taboo, which adhere to a rigid orthodox belief and practices. From personal lens of my adolescence trauma boarder through sociological reflection. This study reinforced how traditional orthodoxy beliefs distress over a natural biological flow which deep rooted stereotypical restrictions. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Erving Goffman and Michel Foucault to examine the societal (…)

• Loyalty without leverage: India’s US tilt yields little | Anuradha Chenoy

  25 June, by Anuradha M. Chenoy

  June 23, 2026
  India’s attempt to balance ties with the US has turned into a tilt, still deemed insufficient by Washington. For India, it is all stick and no carrots
  In a move that signals a blunt recalibration of South Asian geopolitics, the United States has quietly shifted its strategic focus. It has reverted its “Indo-Pacific Command” back to its traditional designation of US Pacific Command (USPACOM).
  The structural reversal effectively undoes a 2018 policy that symbolically merged (…)

• End the “Green” Delusions: Industrial-scale Renewable Energy is Fossil Fuel+ | Alexander Dunlap

  25 June

  Industrial-scale renewable energy does nothing to remake exploitative relationships with the earth, and instead represents the renewal and expansion of the present capitalist order.
  Renewable energy is not the solution we think it is. We have inherited the bad/good energy dichotomy of fossil fuels versus renewable energy, a holdover from the environmental movement of the 1970’s that is misleading, if not false. Fossil fuels are correctly understood to be at the heart of capitalism, (…)

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  Sustained from Below: Dalit Women and the Ambedkarite Movement’s Limits of Liberation 
| Theertha Praveen Panachoor

  25 June

  BOOK REVIEW 1. The Prisons We Broke, Baby Kamble, trans. Maya Pandit. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2008. 2. We Also Made History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement, Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon, trans. Wandana Sonalkar. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2008. 
The history of the Ambedkarite movement in India has largely been written as a history of its leadership. Its constitutional achievements, its formal organisations and its founding figure are well documented. What has received far less attention is (…)

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  Video Recording: Zia Bhai 100th year —Remembering the Communist Party Office in Allahabad (2006) | Sohail Akbar

  25 June

  Play
  Zia 100th year: Remembering the Allahabad Party Office. by Sohail Akbar https://youtu.be/iJu8V8EVSyU?si=vJ5zWEaIA1FP7uq2

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  Music: Habibi Funk - Charif Megarbane - Dreams of an Insomniac (Lebanon 2025)

  25 June

  Play
  Habibi Funk // حبيبي فنك : Charif Megarbane - Dreams of an Insomniac (Lebanon 2025) by Habibi Funk https://youtu.be/w7GVbCnftnQ?si=yaq3fbuENVNlu_N1

• For US, Trade, QUAD matters more than human rights in India | John Dayal

  12 June, by John Dayal

  June 1, 2026
  Christians in India, some of who were expecting that visiting United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio will carry their appeal for revocation of FCRA cancellations to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government are really disappointed that he only murmured worshipful platitudes at the Grave of Mother Teresa in Kolkata, and said even less at his meetings in Delhi during the day.
  We do not know what he told Mr Modi in private at the PMO, but it is unlikely the matter of (…)

• Precarity of Border-Crossing People in West Bengal | Arup Kumar Sen

  12 June, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The recent change in the ruling political regime in West Bengal has intensified surveillance and control of the Bangladesh border in different districts. The Telegraph reported (June 4, 2026) in this context: “The Suvendu Adhikari government continued to move forward with its agenda of fortifying the India-Bangladesh border across Bengal during its third cabinet meeting…Bengal shares over 2,200 kilometres of the border with Bangladesh. The new state government has made it a priority to hand (…)