Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Reply to Grover Furr: Senseless Defence of Stalinist Repressions

  21 November 2012, by Anil Rajimwale

  COMMUNICATION
  I must first thank Mainstream for starting some kind of debate on the Stalin question.
  I read through Grover Furr’s reply (Mainstream, October 27, 2012) to my review of his book (that appeared in this journal’s August 4, 2012 issue). I must thank him too for responding. But he has not met any of the points raised in the review. The ‘documents’ that he refers to in his book and mentions in his reply just show nothing: they do not provide any grounds to justify the measures (…)

• What does it Mean when the UK High Commissioner visits Modi?

  21 November 2012, by Badri Raina

  Rightwing Hindutva social forces may well have collaborated with the colonising Britishers during the high noon of India’s Congress-led freedom movement, their standard polemic after Independence has been that what ought to have remained an indigenised Bharat has been systematically degraded into an internationalised India by generations of secular-liberal Indians whom they habitually characterise as “Macaulay ki Aulad” (Macaulay’s children, because the induction of English into Indian (…)

• Ahmedabad-based Jesuit’s Letter to British Envoy

  21 November 2012, by Humra Quraishi

  You must be watching on your small screens the great political circus taking place in New Delhi. One thief letting off the other. Or simply grabbing him by the collar and throwing him, here and there and all over. But not really in those hell holes! The prime players, or call them by any other apt term of your choice, seem many and it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that they are from almost all the political parties of this country—from the BJP, Congress, Samajwadi, BSP, RJD and several other (…)

• As Egos Clashed in India, China Won: The Untold Story is Told Again

  21 November 2012, by T J S George

  Who were the guilty men of India’s China war? This year, for the first time, the Defence Ministry paid homage to the soldiers who perished in that horror 50 years ago. But official reluctance to face facts continues. The Hender-son-Brooks inquiry report is still deemed secret although it leaked to Neville Maxwell, the Englishman who wrote the most anti-India account of the war. Even China has declassified its documents till 1965.
  Generals who took part in the action like D.K. Palit (War in (…)

• Mao made the Blueprint for Chinese Aggression of 1962

  21 November 2012, by Sankar Ray

  Howsoever absurd and tendentious it may seem to top official Communists from the 
CPI-M to Maoists and their fellow-travellers, the strategy for invading India on October 20 was finalised at the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, held in the last week of Septem-ber 1962, and the blueprint was presented by Chairman Ma Zedong in a secret speech, revealed in the early 1980s by Dr Hemen Ray, an outstan-ding scholar on Sino-Soviet matters in a (…)

• Tribute to Paul Kurtz - Secular Humanist Philosopher

  21 November 2012

  TRIBUTE
  by Ravela Somayya
  The sudden death of Dr Paul Kurtz on October 20 in the USA at the age of 86 is a great loss to the world humanist movement. He was a renowned philosopher and founder editor of the Free Inquiry magazine. He was the founder of a publishing house, Prometheus Books, which was intended to propagate the values of humanism, secularism and free inquiry. He was also the founder of the Institute for Science and Humanism. He was the author of 40 books. In addition he (…)

• Judiciary as Reliance Gift Horse

  21 November 2012

  by Sandhya Jain
  While appreciating India Against Corruption’s putting the spotlight on Reliance Industries, its face-off with the CAG and reputed role in the exit of Jaipal Reddy from the Petroleum Ministry, the author would like to point out that she had written about the judiciary’s role in facilitating Reliance’s unreasonable demands nearly two years ago in a column in The Pioneer, (December 21, 2010), which appeared on Vijayvaani the same day [http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplay (…)

• Inviting Multinationals: Need for Introspection by Senior Congress Leaders

  21 November 2012, by Bharat Dogra

  At the November 4 rally the Congress re-affirmed its strong commitment to outlining an agenda of so-called ‘economic reforms’ led by the growing inroads of multinational companies and foreign investment in retail trade and other critical areas of the economy. The possibility that this agenda can have serious long-term adverse impacts for the economy is not even being considered by the top leadership of the Congress.
  All over the world there is growing evidence of the huge problems created (…)

• Destroying the Edifice

  7 November 2012, by SC

  The PM’s major reshuffle of the Union Cabinet and Council of Ministers has raised more dust and generated a bigger storm than what he had bargained for. The two most significant developments in this reshuffle were the promotion of Salman Khurshid to the office of the Minister for External Affairs from that of Law and Justice, and the shunting out of S. Jaipal Reddy to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Earth Sciences from that of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Leaders of India Against (…)

• Remembering Indira Gandhi Today

  7 November 2012, by Sumit Chakravartty

  October 31 this year marked the twentyeighth anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. On this occasion we are carrying the following excerpts from an article published in this journal’s October 31, 2009 issue.
  “The ‘Indira hatred’ slogan of her opponents has died with her, but for a long time the rallying cry in India was her call of ‘Garibi Hatao’ (end poverty). Witnesses bear testimony to the fact that where millions wept at her demise, beyond the family the sincerest tears were (…)