Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Bhagwat Puran of A Different Kind: Conflating Hinduism and Hindutva

  30 October 2010, by Subhash Gatade

  I
  Mohan Bhagwat, the ‘young’ supremo of an eighty plus-year-old exclusively male cultural organisation called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is in high spirits these days.
  It is not very difficult to understand the glee on his face which has to do with the latest developments in the cause célèbre of the Sangh Parivar. One can even notice that every member of this different kind of ‘family’ also seems to be upbeat, its representatives can be found in the neighbourhood playground in (…)

• Life, Dignity of Kashmiris have Lost Meaning

  30 October 2010

  by Zafar Meraj
  There seems to be no end to the vicious plan of what can easily be termed as selected killings of Kashmiri youth in the most brutal manner. Notwithstanding the tall daims made by the rulers both in Srinagar and New Delhi, a systematic killing spree by the butchers in khaki continues across the Valley.
  This leaves little doubt that all this is part of a well-thought-out plan to crush the Kashmiri, to be more specific the Kashmiri Muslim, to an extent that he dare not open (…)

• On ‘The Kashmir Calculus’

  30 October 2010

  COMMUNICATION
  This refers to Uddipan Mukherjee’s article “The Kashmir Calculus” (Mainstream, October 9, 2010). It’s a very well written article but towards the end when he delineates the path ahead, he has dwelt on a number diversions. I agree with him that at this stage our acceptance of the LoC as the international border will not put an end to the insurgency in the Valley or silence the movement for azadi. Neither do I accept Musharraf’s proposal as applicable to the entire state. It (…)

• Ethnicity, Religion, Politics and Nation

  30 October 2010

  by N.V.K. MURTHY
  As a teenager, growing up in India during the freedom struggle, I remember my heart swelling up with pride when I sang poet Iqbal’s celebrated song “Saare Jahan Se Acha Hindustan Hamara”. Now, looking back at my life over the last seven decades, I begin to wonder as to how any sane person could believe in such narrow nationalism.
  India has been variously described as a continent, as a group of disparate ethnic groups put together artificially by a colonial empire, and (…)

• Response to D. Bandyopadhyay

  30 October 2010, by Sumanta Banerjee

  COMMUNICATION
  Since from among those whom I addressed my open letter (in Mainstream of September 11), only D. Bandyopadhyay has come up with a rejoinder (in the October 9 issue), I feel obliged to respond to his observations with a few words.
  One, he need not have wasted four long paragraphs on trying to convince me of the diabolical character of the CPI-M in West Bengal —since I had already in my letter denounced that party for its “fascist atrocities and crass corruption”, describing (…)

• Maoism: A Variety of Anarchism

  30 October 2010, by Anil Rajimwale

  Maoism and Naxalism are nothing but a modern variety of anarchism, which was demolished long ago by Marx, Engels and Lenin. Anybody familiar with their criticism of theories and practice of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Lassalle, Proudhon, Narodniks and other anarchists will in no way be impressed with Maoism in India today.
  Marx’s Fights against Anarchist Ultra-revolutionism
  IT was in the 19th century that anarchism merged as a petty-bourgeois ultra-‘revolutionary’ trend in the working class (…)

• Ensuring Right to Education in the Red Corridor

  30 October 2010, by Gladson Dungdung

  The Indian Government and media are repeatedly telling us that 92,000 square kilometres of geographical area covering 170 districts in nine States of India are out of control of the Indian state. The vicinity is full of natural resources including varieties of minerals, forests and water sources. The territory is ruled by the Maoists; therefore the government has branded it as the ‘Red Corridor’. Actually, the area is highly adivasi dominated, therefore it is supposed to be called the (…)

• Is Naxalism a Problem or a Voice for Social Justice?

  30 October 2010

  by Pravesh Kumar
  Naxalism has been branded as a serious problem for national security by various intellectuals and the media. The Planning Commission of India has also highlighted this as a serious problem with regard to India’s national security, growth and development. On the other hand, there is another section of society who thinks Naxalism is a social movement against the rampant social exclusions of the have nots. It is the fight of the poor, discriminated and the marginalised Indian (…)

• Day One in Calcutta

  30 October 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS The following report by Nikhil Chakravartty, the Calcutta correspondent of People’s Age (published from Bombay), appeared in the weekly’s August 24, 1947 issue (it was wired from Calcutta on August 17, 1947) under the following headlines : ‘End of a Nightmare and Birth of New Dawn!’; ‘Calcutta Transformed by Spirit Of Independence’; ‘Hindus, Muslims Hug Each Other In Wild Joy—Tears Roll Down Where Blood Once Soaked The Streets’. We are reproducing it on the occasion of (…)

• A National Loss

  30 October 2010, by S Viswam

  Tempus fugit. Time flies. And how! I was completely taken aback on being reminded by Sumit that the tenth death anniversary of Nikhilda will fall on June 27. “No, it cannot be,” I protested. “Not ten years already.” “Yes, yes,”said Sumit, “it is, it is.”
  It is unbelievable that ten years have passed since we lost Nikhilda. Yet, in its rapid sweep, Time has devoured those years and completely overshadowed an event which when it occurred deeply saddened a number of people whose lives had (…)