Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Pakistan is Too Serious a Problem to be left to our TV Anchors

  15 February 2013, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Pakistan is in deep trouble. So it is pushing India into deep trouble. Our own professional patriots are pushing India into deeper trouble. The great television anchors would love nothing more than a full-fledged war, now, at this very moment, so that their ratings would go up. Some of our politicians too want their ratings to rise. A senior leader said that for one soldier’s head that Pakistan cut off, we must cut off ten Pakistani soldiers’ heads. This is how patriotism makes (…)

• When the Politician Fails

  15 February 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  With the onset of summer, the Indian scene has perceptibly changed in the last few weeks, adding to its complexities as also to its instability.
  In the eyes of many, the rumblings against the RSS inside the Janata camp reaching the point of a challenge against it on the part of the BLD-Socialist-CFD combine was considered a significant development and it was expected to facilitate the forging of an entente with all Congressmen committed to fight against the return of (…)

• Shinde Spoils Rahul’s Launch

  15 February 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  January 30 is the day when Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic for the partition of India. Nathuram Godse, who killed him, remained unrepentant and said in his defence in the Punjab High Court, where the case was heard: “Gandhi was a hypocrite. Even after the massacre of the Hindus by the Muslims, he was happy. The more the massacres of Hindus, the taller (he raised) his flag of secularism.”
  India paid a heavy price to uphold the values of pluralism. Yet a similar kind of (…)

• Growing Importance of Independent Journals

  15 February 2013, by Bharat Dogra

  At a time when increasing trends of corporatisation and heavy-handed commerciali-sation have led to the increasing alienation of the media from the real concerns of the people and society, small independent journals have an increasingly important role to play in arti-culating and representing the real concerns and needs of society. It is true that in a world increasingly dominated by big business interests the space available to such journals is shrinking. Indeed even the survival of several (…)

• The Mainstream Story

  15 February 2013, by Sumit Chakravartty

  An abridged version of the following piece constituted the author’s introductory remarks before the panel discussion on ‘Indian Media Scene Today: Potential and Reality’ to mark fifty years of Mainstream (that took place at the India International Centre, New Delhi on January 29, 2013).
  Mainstream first appeared on September 1, 1962. It owes its name to a well-known progressive US journal (currently defunct), Masses and Mainstream, which was at one time the voice of the other America and (…)

• Spectacle As Reality

  15 February 2013, by Mukul Dube

  I find myself in a state of mixed bewilderment and despair. I try to keep abreast of what happens in my part of the world, and what do I see? In Tamil Nadu a motion picture, part of the entertainment industry, becomes the centre of people’s universe. In the west, an intellectual says something to a small gathering and that causes tremors across the land. Neither of these provocations would have been nearly so effective when I was a young man. This seems to me the unreal reality in which we (…)

• The Road Not Taken By Tripura’s Left

  15 February 2013, by Basubrata Roy

  The tiny North-Eastern hilly State of Tripura is gearing up for the Assembly poll, slated to the held on February 14, 2013. The Left citadel of the region has hardly seen any anti-incumbency factor till now when the regime is on a sticky wicket with its employees getting a raw deal because of the denial of a new Pay Commission.
  Within no time the State Government school-teachers and the employees got united, cutting across political affiliations of the unions, to come under the banner of (…)

• Madanjeet Singh Is No More

  15 February 2013

  Former diplomat, artist, writer, photo-grapher and philanthropist, Madanjeet Singh 88, a UNESCO Goodwill Amba-ssador since 2000, passed away in Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the south of France on January 6, 2013 following a stroke.
  He was a passionate advocate of South Asian regional cooperation and solidarity on a secular, democratic and progressive basis. His commitment to the cause of South Asian peace and harmony was backed by his extra-ordinary personal financial contribution to the South Asia (…)

• Wanted: Public Intervention

  5 February 2013, by SC

  As we approach our sixtyfourth Republic Day, the political class in the country has been gripped by an unprecedented crisis—the crisis of credibility. This has been recently witnessed in the unique spontaneity of the youth upsurge on the major streets and thoroughfares of Lutyens’ Delhi taking the ruling circles at the Centre completely by surprise thereby resulting in a panic reaction on the part of the latter—the indiscriminate use of force and coercion with lathis, teargas and water (…)

• Mahatma Gandhi

  5 February 2013, by Jawaharlal Nehru

  On the occasion of the sixtyfifth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s martyrdom on January 30 this year, we offer our sincere homage to his abiding memory by reproducing excerpts from two speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru to explain Gandhiji’s significance before the US audience in October 1949.
  You know that during the last thirty years or so, we carried on rather intensively our campaign for India’s freedom. We did not begin it; it was there. It had been continued for genrations before us but it (…)