Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Nehru in the Era of Collapsing Neoliberalism

  12 November 2011, by Girish Mishra

  Twenty years ago, while presenting his first Budget as the Finance Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh launched “a sweeping set of neoliberal reforms that would dramatically alter the country’s economic landscape. Viewing the crisis as a historic opportunity to ‘build a new India’, Singh argued that it was essential to terminate ‘outmoded’ commitments to Nehru’s economic nationalism. Spouting with gusto French novelist Victor Hugo’s line that ‘no power on earth can stop an idea whose time (…)

• Urgent Need for Left Unity and Coordinated Progressive Action

  12 November 2011, by S G Vombatkere

  AN APPEAL
  The following is an appeal Major General (retd) S.G. Vombatkere sent to the leaders of the Forward Bloc, CPI-ML (Liberation), CPI (Maoist), CPI-ML (New Democracy), RSP, CPI, CPI-M, CPI-ML (K.N. Ramachandaran), PDS, UCPI, SUCI (C ), Socialist Party (India), Samajwadi Jan Parishad, Loktantrik Samajwadi Party (Raghu Thakur).
  Dear Comrades of All Left parties, groups and persuasions,
  I address you in all humility as a Left-leaning person with abiding faith in the Constitution of (…)

• ’A Vast Majority of Muslims were Not with the Muslim League’

  12 November 2011

  INTERVIEW
  November 11, 2011 marks Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s one hundred and twentythird birth anniversary. On this occasion we offer our humble tribute to the abiding memory of that courageous secular nationalist by reproducing the following interview and publishing a relevant article.
  Rizwan Qaiser teaches history at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia. In his new book, Resisting Colonialism and Communal Politics, he explores Maulana Azad’s role in building an idea of India. Qaiser spoke with (…)

• Nation, Nationalism and Islam: Maulana Azad and Beyond

  12 November 2011

  by MUHAMMAD TAJUDDIN
  The only form of state structure legitimate and legal in the world after the Second World War is the nation-state. The same is not true about the nature of governance. Liberal democratic governance has become the universal ideal but still there are autocratic and authoritarian dictators and absolute monarchies in the comity of nations. The idea of the nation and the ideology of nationalism emerged in Europe in the eighteenth century after the renaissance and (…)

• Guru Nanak Combined Bhakti and Social Reforms with Great Communication Skills

  12 November 2011, by Bharat Dogra, Reshma Bharti

  November 10 marks Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary.
  Guru Nanak combined deep spiritual yearnings with ideas of social reforms that were far ahead of his times. He emphasised equality at all levels—social, economic and religious—and openly declared that he is with those whom the society considers to be the lowest of the low. He openly spurned the hospitality of the most powerful persons and told them on their face that he cannot accept the invitation of exploiters. He spoke strongly against (…)

• Marx Sipping Tea at Nehru’s Dhaba

  12 November 2011

  by GAURAV JOGI PATHANIA
  A student of modern Delhi would hardly be aware of the word ‘dhaba’. Thousands of Delhi-ites are oblivious of the existence of a jungle called Jawaharlal Nehru University, right at the heart of South Delhi. Despite being surrounded by big malls, continental hotels and very expensive coffee cafés, JNU has always been famous for its dhabas. These dhabas are the nocturnal hotspot of the university and famous for their tea and samosa, not for coffee. Instead of what the (…)

• On Hindutva Politics and Terror

  12 November 2011

  BOOK REVIEW
  by MAHTAB ALAM
  Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India by Subhash Gatade; Pharos Media & Publishing Private Ltd, New Delhi; 2011; pp. 400; Price: Rs 360.
  The Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neoliberal India by Subhash Gatade; Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon; 2011; pp. X+475; Price: 500.
  In December 2010, when Swami Aseemanand, a ‘former’ RSS pracharak and key functionary of the Sangh backed Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, admitted before a (…)

• One Piece of Encouraging News

  8 November 2011, by SC

  As we go to press the government has today given the oil companies a free run to hike petrol prices by Rs 1.82 per litre that would further fuel inflation which has already recorded a massive rise of late to reach the double digit as food prices are causing unbearable strain on the common man.
  And today itself the special judge of the trial court on the 2G scam has rejected the bail pleas of DMK MP Kanimozhi and four others involved in the scam despite the CBI having made it abundantly (…)

• Black Money: Political Will Missing

  8 November 2011, by Arun Kumar

  [This is the third article in the series on black money by the author. The other two articles, first published in The Tribune and The Hindu respectively, were reproduced in this journal’s July 30, 2011 issue (“Tacking Black Economy: SC Takes Control from Government”) and October 15, 2011 issue (“The Cost of the Black Economy”) with due acknowledgement.]
  The government’s intention of tackling either the problem of black economy or bringing back money stashed abroad is suspect. The money (…)

• DVC Oustees Suspend Agitation

  8 November 2011

  The people, mostly tribals of Jharkhand and West Bengal, displaced due to the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) project since the fifties—who were on dharna and relay fast at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar from October 17, 2011—were able to wrest a concrete assurance from Union Energy Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde who met a delegation of the oustees alongwith social activists at his office in the Capital on October 24. The meeting was held at the initiative of Swami Agnivesh. Earlier the displaced (…)