Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Communalism Legitimised

  18 February 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  No doubt, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is less rhetorical than before in its references to Muslims. There can be two reasons for this. One, the party has its eyes fixed on the scenario after the parliamentary elections in early 2014. It would need the support of secular parties to have a majority in the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of Parliament. Any adverse remark against the Muslims may cost the party and endanger its chances of constituting a viable coalition.
  Two, the BJP feels that (…)

• Five-point Formula for a Riot-free India

  18 February 2013

  by Asghar Ali Engineer
  India’s legacy of communalism and communal violence is here to stay, if one goes by the activities of the Rightwing Hindutva forces and the government’s total inaction, nay, paralysis. Communalism in India is taking long strides and the lull in communal violence after the Gujarat riots has been broken and now communal riots are more frequent. The Assam riots had shaken the country like Gujarat did and a series of riots have been taking place one after the other or, (…)

• Tamils in Sri Lanka: Losing Relevance

  18 February 2013, by Apratim Mukarji

  Sri Lankan Tamils were the least surprised and shocked when President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his Independence Day address on February 4 quite bluntly ruled out granting any kind of political autonomy for the Northern Province.
  This also marked his quietly reneging on his oft-repeated assurance to the Tamils and the international community that he remained fully committed to facilitating the “13th Amendment plus” approach to solving the ethnic issue. The 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan (…)

• Freedom of Religion

  18 February 2013, by Eduardo Faleiro

  Religion has emerged as a major source of conflict in the post-Cold War era all across the globe. A perceptive writer points out that ideological strife has now given place to the “clash of civilisations” and predicts that in the foreseeable future, religion will be a major source of conflict within and among nations.
  Samuel Huntington asserts that possibilities of conflict are greater in what he calls the “fault-lines of civilisation”, those areas such as India, where different cultures (…)

• When the State abets Communalism, Independence itself is in Danger

  18 February 2013, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The soul of modern India is its liberal demo-cracy. Are we in danger of losing it? Communal posturings are getting ever more blatant. Caste leaders are defying the law openly. Intolerance is flaunted as a badge of honour. The government is a bystander, its inaction amounting to abetment.
  We won’t be alone if we turn democracy into a mockery. Sukarno, the hero of Indonesia’s freedom struggle, became a demagogue when he got power and proclaimed what he called “guided (…)

• Russia: What is there in the name ‘Stalingrad’?

  18 February 2013, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The famous scene from the Hollywood film Enemy at the Gates captured the zeitgeist well, when addressing a room full of the Soviet military officers right on the Stalingrad front in World War II, the newly-appointed Commissar of the Red Army, Nikita Khrushchev, who was sent by Joseph Stalin specially to stem the retreat in the face of the German assault, shouts:
  “My name is Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. I’ve come to take things in hand here. This city… is not Kursk, nor is it Kiev, nor (…)

• China: From ‘Revolution’ to Reform and Market

  18 February 2013, by Anil Rajimwale

  That is how the Chinese put it: ‘from revolution to reform and market’. Market, reform and ‘getting rich’ are the buzz-words in China today as it is undergoing massive changes and is emerging as an economic power. When asked about them, the academics and leaders in China explain that their country is going through a transition from ‘revolution and class struggle’ to reform, market and harmonious development. There is less of ideological Marx and Mao and more of pragmatic Deng and Hu combined (…)

• India - China Relations — A Closer Look

  18 February 2013

  by O.P. Sabherwal
  From the scenario of the sixties, let me recall an episode in October 1960 that is of contem-porary relevance. The then Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai, on his last visit to India, addressed a press conference comprising some 300 Indian and foreign journalists on the roof-top of Rashtrapati Bhavan. The theme: India-China boundary dispute and its solution.
  It was a lucid and comprehensive solution that the Chinese leader proposed. This, in substance, is what Zhou Enlai put (…)

• The Valley of Incongruities

  18 February 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  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 (…)

• CPI on the Hanging of Afzal Guru

  18 February 2013

  The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India has issued the following statement to the press.
  The secretive hanging of Afzal Guru, a secondary accused in the Parliament attack case, and certain irregularities in completing the judicial process have expectedly created controversy and strengthened the feeling of injustice resulting in further alienation in the Kashmir Valley.
  As reported in the media, the authorities did not wait for completion of the judicial process after (…)