Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• US ‘rebalancing’ in the Hindu Kush

  1 July 2013, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The entente cordial over Afghanistan, which was the finest flower of the United States’ “reset” with Russia during Barack Obama’s first term as the President, is wilting.
  Moscow has reacted sharply to the triumphalist surprise announcement by senior officials travelling with Obama to the recent Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland regarding the commencement of Afghan peace talks in Doha—though protests from Kabul appear to have put these on hold for the time being.
  The talks (…)

• Drones, their Impact and the
Pakistani Dilemma

  1 July 2013, by Mahendra Ved

  The May 29, 2013 drone attack by the United States killing seven people including Waliur Rahman, a top leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has renewed with greater intensity than before a debate that underscores not just anger in Pakistan, but also its helplessness at being able to do little beyond lodging protests. The newly-elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took over a week to summon US Charge d’Affaires Richard Hoagland to the Foreign Office to lodge a formal (…)

• Journalists’ Journalist

  1 July 2013, by S Nihal Singh

  Nikhil Chakravartty’s fifteenth death anniversary on June 27 is an occasion not only to recall his contribution to journalism but also to juxtapose that contribution against the present-day media scene. Several leading journalists and others who knew him present their opinions in the following pieces.
  Evoking the memory of Nikhilda, as he was universally known, is to return to a different world of Indian journalism. It was in large part before the era of 24-hour television, internet news (…)

• Nikhilda and his Concerns

  1 July 2013

  by H.K. Dua
  Nikhil Chakravartty’s journalism came out of his concern for the country. He would have been worried about both if he was around. Both the nation as well as the media are losing a sense of direction, values and character, required to retain the people’s confidence.
  He was certainly one of the most respected journalists of his time, admired by peers of different persuasions, intellectuals, political leaders of different political parties, and NGOs, not only of India, but the (…)

• Journalism’s Finest Hour

  1 July 2013, by T J S George

  Remembering departed polestars like Nikhil Chakravartty is not pat of the rather tiresome old-is-gold syndrome. Much of the new is also gold—the net that puts knowledge at one’s fingertip, the mobile that turns one’s pocket into an office, the incredible universe of apps. Yet we need to cherish the old because it provides what technology still cannot: a sense of values without which humans lose their humanity. The age of Nikhil Chakravartty—and of Frank Moraes and Chalapathi Rao, of Shamlal (…)

• On Nikhil Chakravartty’s 15th Death Anniversary

  1 July 2013, by Neerja Chowdhury

  Undoubtedly, the media challenges today are very different from the ones that were faced by the previous generation of journalists. It is a new scene altogether with the competitiveness of 24-hour channels, the compulsion to “break” news—and many channels openly take credit for it, so as to woo more viewers—the “hunger” of the corporate houses to use the media for purposes different than the dissemination of news.
  There is the new technology, which facilitates quick access to information, (…)

• N.C.—the Idealist and Model Journalist

  1 July 2013, by Sailendra Nath Ghosh

  In 1940, just after doing my matriculation, I received several back issues of Calcutta’s Presidency College magazine, through the courtesy of two co-villagers who were then studying at Presidency College. Those back issues were edited by one Nikhilnath Chakravartty. The college had a tradition of appointing as the editor if its college magazine, a student who had put up a brilliant academic performance in the year just past. This was perhaps the said college’s way of grooming students as (…)

• A Gentle Colossus!

  1 July 2013, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  There is no contradiction in terms in describing a gentleman as a gentle colossus. Colossus only indicates the stature. It does not refer to any quality of refinement or rudeness. Nikhil Chakravartty, who was born a year before World War I started, lived through the tumultous events of the twentieth century imbibing both its froth and the essence of its refinement. He was quintessentially a twentieth century intellectual.
  Son of a well-off family of the then Calcutta, the second largest (…)

• On Nikhilda

  1 July 2013, by Barun Das Gupta

  Nikhilda was brought into journalism by Puran Chandra Joshi, better known as P.C. Joshi, during the Bengal famine of 1943. Joshi was the General Secretary of the CPI at that time. Before that, for a brief period, Nikhilda had taught History in the Calcutta University. Under Joshi’s guidance, several other young Communist activists contributed their best during that period and earned a name for themselves in their respective fields, like Sunil Janah as a photographer who chronicled the famine (…)

• The Roots of the Emergency

  1 July 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  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 (…)