Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Plea for an Alternative Development Plan for West Bengal

  16 March 2011, by Barun Das Gupta

  The CPI-M took its massive victory in the 2006 Assembly elections to be a mandate for its policy of industrialisation of West Bengal by evicting thousands of peasant families from their hearths and homes and their farmland and forcibly acquiring fertile multi-crop agricultural land and handing these over to industrialists for setting up industries. For this they invited Indian and foreign monopolists and unrolled the red carpet for them. Inevitably, such a policy was bound to be opposed by (…)

• The Akali Accord

  16 March 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  (On March 4, 2011 former Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh, 81, passed away in New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Besides being an ardent loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family, he was a sturdy secularist and cast in the classic socialist-secular mould of Jawaharlal Nehru. Arjun Singh played a major role behind-the-scenes before the signing of the Rajiv-Longowal accord which, however, was short-lived due to the brutal assassination of the Akali leader. The (…)

• The Tragic History of Muslim Complacency (1949-2010)

  16 March 2011, by Syed Shahabuddin

  UNLAWFUL OCCUPATION OF BABRI MASJID, ITS CONVERSION INTO A MANDIR AND SUBSEQUENT DEMOLITION
  Communal politics, partition and the migration of the Muslim elite from UP to Pakistan had all cast their shadows on Ayodhya around independence and the tiny Muslim community (about five per cent) in that small town, stood demoralised and helpless. It was systemically harassed after independence came.
  Ayodhya had been known for communal harmony and composite culture and as a meeting place of (…)

• Understanding Binayak Sen’s Victimhood

  16 March 2011, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Dr Binayak Sen was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Raipur Sessions Court in Chhattisgarh for sedition on December 24, 2010. He was convicted under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005. It should be mentioned here that respected members of the Indian judicial system condemned the judgment. Justice (retired) Rajinder Sachar termed the judgment as “ridiculous and unacceptable”. Reacting to the judgment, senior (…)

• On Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Birth Centenary

  16 March 2011

  The birth centenary of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of the most powerful Urdu poets of our subcontinent, was observed last month but even now several functions are being held in both Pakistan and India to commemorate the occasion and offer homage to his abiding memory. He was born in Sialkot on February 13, 1911. His father, Khan Bahadur Sultan Mohammad Khan, an eminent barrister, was a well-read person and enjoyed the company of distinguished literary figures; he also wrote the biography of Amir (…)

• Faiz: A Tribute

  16 March 2011

  by S.M. Mehdi
  Urdu can boast of many great poets—from Meer Taqi Meer of the 18th century to Josh, Firaq, Iqbal, Faiz and others of our own century. But few were recognised as great in their own life-time. Iqbal and Faiz were perhaps the only two exceptions. It may be said that Iqbal’s philosophy and his unique style were not taken up by any other poet after him. Faiz was, however, in many ways his successor. Faiz put Iqbal’s philosophy and world outlook on its feet and took from it the (…)

• Struggle for Peace and Struggle for Independence are Indivisible

  16 March 2011, by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

  The following is the acceptance speech of Faiz Ahmed Faiz on receiving the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962.
  Creating words and shaping them in an orderly form is the vocation of poets and men of letters. But there are occasions in life when one is left speechless. This is one such occasion for me: I don‘t have the words with which to adequately thank the Lenin Peace Prize Committee, as well as other Soviet institutions and friends, for the honour they have conferred upon me. The Peace Prize is (…)

• Remembering Zahida Zaidi

  15 March 2011

  Eminent scholars, colleagues, friends and relatives of Prof Zahida Zaidi gathered at the Arts Faculty of the Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh on March 1, 2011 to offer homage to Prof Zahida Zaidi, 82, the outstanding scholar, poet, dramatist, playwright and literary critic who breathed her last in Aligarh on January 11, 2011. The memorial meeting, held under the aegis of the Sabira Zaidi Memorial Trust, was presided over by Prof Irfan Habib, the renowned historian.
  Born on January 4, (…)

• Tragedy of Culture in Indian Anthropology

  15 March 2011, by J.J. Roy Burman

  Anthropologists the world over have devoted quite a bit of attention to cultures of ‘Primitive Men’ as exotic elements and romanticised them. In India not only the cultures of the tribes but even that of general society has been romantically put within the Western framework. No wonder most Indian anthropologists eulogise the works of N.K. Bose for his contribution to the concept of culture and the role it has played in the sustenance of Village India in general and Indian civilisation in (…)

• Unimpressive and Mired in Controversy

  21 February 2011, by SC

  Within a day of the PM’s televised interaction with editors of TV channels the Union Government has annulled the contract which Antrix, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), had entered into with Devas Multimedia in January 2010 wherein 70 MHz of S-band spectrum had been given to Devas at throwaway prices and without competitive bidding resulting in a loss of crores of rupees to the exchequer.
  While this is doubtless welcome (especially when various (…)