Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Pilgrimage to Ahmedabad

  3 December 2012, by Sagari Chhabra

  Just recently I took yet another trip to Ahmedabad, but this time I had a special purpose. It was to introduce my six-year-old daughter, Sachi, to two living treasures. These living symbols of our heritage had featured in my documentary film, ‘Asli Azaadi’ and I wanted my child to meet them, before they signed the vivid air with their honour and were gone.
  We met Nirmalaben Desai, lovingly known as Nimuben, who, at the age of 98, has an astonishingly lively mind. Her house is full of (…)

• December 10 (Human Rights Day) will be Observed as SC/ST Struggle Day

  3 December 2012

  by C.R. BAKSHI
  Recently, two mass organisations, namely, the ‘National Joint Campaign Committee for Dalit Rights’ and ‘All India Adivasi Mahasabha’ held a joint conference at Nagpur and decided to launch a nationwide movement by SCs and STs, who constitute 25 per cent of the Indian popula-tion, over the demand for full implementation of the SC/ST Sub-Plans without diversion or mis-utilisation of the fund, on December 10, 2012, the day which was declared by the United Nations in 1948 as the (…)

• Malala - Jethmalani

  3 December 2012, by Badri Raina

  I must confess I have never understood why Ram Jethmalani off and on aligns himself with the Bharatiya Janata Party. I can only think that he does so from a visceral animus against the Congress, more particularly the Gandhi family.
  More often than not, his cheeky independence of mind and forthrightly subversive allusions to shibboleths dear to the culturally reactionary Hindu Rightwing underscore the deep dissonance of his hedonist temperament from the cloistered givens of the Parivar. (…)

• End of an Era in Journalism

  3 December 2012

  TRIBUTE
  by HIRANMAY KARLEKAR
  With the recent passing of Prithvis Chakra-varti—Prithvisda to this writer and Prithvis or Chakravarti to his friends and colleagues—the country has lost one of the last tall eminences of the great decades of print journalism. A fine newsman with a keen nose for things that mattered, he was also an uncompromising crusader for journalistic ethics. A strong champion of the principle that a campaign for greater professio-nalism among scribes should accompany the (…)

• How to Solve the Gujarat and Kashmir Imbroglios: India as a Deliberative Democracy

  3 December 2012

  by TAMANNA KHOSLA
  In India, the States of Gujarat and Kashmir have seen a lot of conflict in the past. Kashmir though even now is not free from conflicts of many kinds. Women, men and children in these areas have been affected in the same manner. The pain suffered by them was insurmountable. India is far away from a deliberative democratic state, a form of direct democracy which now is needed to make democracy more participatory. Multicultural states like India do need this kind of (…)

• China’s Congress and India’s Congress: Not All Princelings are the Same

  3 December 2012, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  First, India’s Congress party met, then China’s party Congress met. Don’t see it as just a nice coincidence allowing a nice play on words. The twin events demonstrated yet again how we go in circles while others go forward. The party Congress was a reiteration of China’s capacity to impact the world. The Congress party reiterated its—and the country’s—incapacity to break free of one family’s stranglehold.
  Scions of political families, “princelings”, are active in China too. (…)

• Metastasis of Maoist Networks in Urban India

  3 December 2012, by Sudhanshu Bhandari

  “Work in the rural base areas does not mean abandoning our work in the cities and in the other vast rural areas which are still under the enemy’s rule; on the contrary, without the work in the cities and in these other rural areas, our own rural base areas would be isolated and the revolution would suffer defeat. Moreover, the final objective of the revolution is the capture of the cities, the enemy’s main bases, and this objective cannot be achieved without adequate work in the cities.” (…)

• Avoid Unilinear Comprehension of Events

  1 December 2012, by SC

  The winter session of Parliament has opened on November 22 with the apprehension that it could meet the fate of its monsoon session when practically no business was transacted in both the Houses on account of the Opposition’s (read the BJP’s) adamant stand on ‘Coalgate’ demanding the PM’s resignation taking moral responsibility as the Coal Minister for the scam—a demand no government enjoying reasonable majority in the Lok Sabha could ever accede to. The first day of the winter session found (…)

• Open Letter to Justice Katju

  1 December 2012

  by JAVED ANAND
  Dear Justice (Markandey) Katju,
  As a former judge of the highest court in the country and as a defender of free expression in your current capacity as Chairperson, Press Council of India, you are understandably outraged by the criminal conduct of the Maharashtra Police in arresting two women from Palghar in Thane district last week for having “dared” to express their disapproval on Facebook of the bandh enforced by Sainiks following Bal Thackeray’s “unacceptable” demise. (…)

• Why Hanging Kasab Did Not Make Anyone Feel Any Safer

  1 December 2012, by Nandita Haksar

  There was a time when I felt so proud to be an Indian. I was proud of India’s achievements, especially of our stand in the international field. We were the champions of the Non-Aligned Movement, we took a firm stand on the Palestinian problem in support of Palestinians and my passport had a stamp which forbade me from travelling to Zionist Israel and racist South Africa.
  Now I feel deeply disturbed, sad and ashamed of nearly everything India says, does and stands for. Like today (November (…)