Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Netaji on India after Independence

  5 February 2013

  On the occasion of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s 116th birth annivarsary on January 23 this year, we offer our homage to the memory of that indomitable freedom fighter by reproducing excerpts from one of his writings.
  A question which many people ask is as to what will happen when the British are forced to leave India. British propaganda has made many people think that without the British there will be anarchy and chaos in India. These people conveniently forget that British occupation (…)

• Rape and Punishment: Conservatives Exposed

  5 February 2013

  by ASGHAR ALI ENGINEER
  The rape of Nirbhaya (as the 23-year-old victim has been named by The Times of India) on the night of December 16 rightly raised grave concern about the safety of women in modern democratic India today. Thousands of women and men, especially women, came out on the streets of Delhi, Mumbai and several other cities to condemn the heinous crime against women and demanded change in law to make the punishment harsher than what it is.
  I fully sympathise with the concern (…)

• Couldn’t the PM Show Some Feelings in a Time of Strong Feelings?

  5 February 2013, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Of the many things that went wrong during the Big Bad Year 2012, which was the most upsetting? That’s not an easy question to answer because there were too many Big Bad Things that were disconcerting. Hopes were shattered and fears came true. Heroes developed clay feet, villains became kings. Politicians grew fat, mafia cronies fatter. Mango in-laws made jokes about aam admis.
  Consider Mamata Banerjee. A hugely popular leader, she was different from other politicians, living (…)

• Chilling Scenes in Delhi: Disturbing Response of the Authorities

  5 February 2013, by Rajindar Sachar

  It appears to me that in India we are rushing on that route envisaged by Rousseau. This foreboding I am getting because of the latest situation in Delhi where the well-intentioned non-political young generation (who still retain faith and idealism) people were brutally dealt with by the police while protesting against the manner in which the horrible inhuman gang-rape of a young woman has been casually dealt with by the Delhi and Central governments.
  One sees the horrible chilling scenes (…)

• Protests and Prospects

  2 February 2013, by Ajay K. Mehra

  Even before Delhi and India got into the festive mood for the dawning of another New Year, 2013, the young girl who fell victim to the lust of six lascivious barbarous men, one of whom only in his teens, breathed her last in a Singapore Hospital, where she was sent for specialised treatment by the government. Not satisfied with fulfilling their lust, the six brutalised her body in such beastly manner that neither her willpower, that gave her the name ‘Nirbhaya’ (fearless), nor all the (…)

• Blood at the Border

  2 February 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  It is an unfortunate coincidence that the border clashes and ceasefire violations between India and Pakistan have been at a time when Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had signed the Tashkent Declaration some 37 years ago to bind the two countries into a peace pact. He consecrated it with his death. Yet the Declaration could not avert the 1971 war, nor the subsequent skirmishes.
  Strange, there was not even a mention of the Declaration either by the media or by the political leadership. (…)

• What We Defend in Kashmir

  2 February 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  The valiant defence of the Motherland by our armed forces as well as by the brave people of Jammu and Kashmir has inspired the nation. The grim determination of the people of this country not to rest till Pakistani aggression is completely vacated and it is ensured that there will be no recurrence of violation of our frontiers was fully reflected in the President’s message and in the Prime Minister’s broadcast to the nation.
  The entire people of this country realise (…)

• India and Pakistan: Between Hawks and Peaceniks
is there a Middle Path?

  2 February 2013, by S G Vombatkere

  The beheading and mutilation of the bodies of L/Nk Hemraj and L/Nk Sudarshan Singh by Pakistani soldiers on January 8, 2013, is yet another barbaric act by Pakistan’s Army, following several earlier ones. [Ref. 1, Note 1] It is not unlike the acts of medieval armies or armed raiders, whose aim was to strike terror into the hearts of people. However, if such is the intention of the Pakistani Army, their latest barbaric act, far from striking terror or fear, is enraging the Indian public. This (…)

• Socio - Political Views of Vivekananda

  2 February 2013

  January 12, 2013 marked Swami Vivekananda’s one hundred and fiftieth birth anniversary. We remember that outstanding personality on this occasion by reproducing some excerpts from Binoy K. Roy’s Socio-Political Views of Vivekananda (published by People’s Publishing House, New Delhi in November 1970).
  by BINOY K. ROY
  At the crossroads of two epoch-making centuries, when restless Europe was convulsing, on the one hand, under the far-flung tentacles of the greedy, shameless imperialists who (…)

• Questions of Freedom and People’s Emancipation — VI

  2 February 2013, by Kobad Ghandy

  Kobad Ghandy from Tihar Jail has been writing on the concept of freedom vis-s-vis present-day society as also in relation to a future just order, bringing out some causes for the failure of the erstwhile socialist states. This comprises a series of six articles. The first article (covering Part I—The Context) appeared in Mainstream’s Independence Day Special (August 18, 2012), the second one (covering Part II—Search for Freedom through History) in this journal’s September 15, 2012 issue, the (…)