Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Azad’s Murder Condemned

  22 July 2010

  We, as concerned citizens, feel extremely disturbed by the recent events of violence in the region of Chhattisgarh and other parts of eastern India. We condemn the spiral of violence and counter-violence between the State security forces and the Maoists. Though the violence has been continuing unabated, yet following the Peace and Justice March by a group of concerned citizens from Raipur to Dantewada, a peace process had been initiated. Letters were being exchanged between the Home (…)

• Honour and Disgrace: Meditation for the Politics of Protest

  22 July 2010, by Dev N Pathak

  We protest, for we feel there is an amiss affecting us. But to sustain a protest, so that it does not end up as a Rang De Basanti-style cosmetic candle-light protest at the India Gate or SMS protest by the slaves of convenience in the metro-cities, we need to engage with the notion of social honour and disgrace. The politics of protest presupposes an alternative notion of social honour, to combat those who believe that protest in itself is anti-honour and hence disgracing. Also, an (…)

• Khap Panchayats: Reinforcing Caste Hierarchies

  22 July 2010, by Suranjita Ray

  The recent killings/threats to kill in the name of honour and social ostracism have once again brought caste-based discriminations, hierarchies, conflicts and cleavages in society to the fore. To challenge the undermining of caste authority and principle of ascribed status, the caste councils/Khap Panchayats in particular regions of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in north India have become active and assertive during the recent past.
  The assertion of Khap (…)

• Khap Panchayats: Need to Review their Role in Society

  22 July 2010, by R.S. Dahiya

  The issue of same-gotra marriages is regularly in the news these days. Hardly a day passes without a news item about the developments surrounding this issue. Statements from the Gotra Khap Panchayats and Sarv Khap Panchayat spearheading the movement for a change in the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, as also the reactions of the political parties and individual politicians of the State of Haryana have been almost a daily occurrence in the recent past. Sometime back the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, (…)

• America’s Role in Kashmir

  22 July 2010, by Salfie Muzaffar

  REVIEW ARTICLE
  The Limits of Influence: America’s Role in Kashmir by Howard B. Schaffer; Viking Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 2009; price: 499; pages: 272.
  Howard B. Schaffer, Deputy Director and Director of Studies of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, has tried to make a superb history of the many efforts made by the parties and international community to settle the long-running and dangerous Kashmir (…)

• Kashmir and Conscience

  22 July 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  In the brochures and posters of Indian tourism, Kashmir still figures with its enchanting attractions. In reality, however, the picturesque Valley of Kashmir is becoming out of bounds for the peace-loving citizens of this country.
  In a sense, Kashmir today represents the gravest challenge to Indian democracy—perhaps much more than what happened at Ayodhya on December 6 and all that followed. If the bomb blast in Bombay on March 12 and the blow-up of the bomb storage in Calcutta that came (…)

• A New Dimension of Employment

  22 July 2010, by Vinod K Anand

  Employment has many connotations. This write-up focuses on one new connotation. Before we do that let us briefly see what employment means and how it is measured.
  Employment cannot simply be defined as the number of people with jobs. Such a wide definition would also include children are who are too young to work and all those who choose to take up paid employment. In fact, employment refers to all those people who are willing and able to work, and are in a position to find work. (…)

• When and How in Kandahar

  22 July 2010, by Uddipan Mukherjee

  The interviews for an article in the Rolling Stone magazine has cost General McChrystal his job. Nevertheless, the Obama Administration is keen to move ahead with the Counter-insurgency (COIN) Doctrine in Afghanistan since the offensive at Marjah. Against this backdrop, this article looks into various aspects of the COIN for the impending battle in Kandahar: the Taliban’s fortress.
  Since McChrystal has now expectedly capitulated to his Rolling Stone misdemeanor, the American COIN (…)

• Heading Towards Another Emergency?

  16 July 2010, by SC

  Last week the CPI (Maoist) spokesperson and one of the topmost leaders of the organisation, Cherukuri Rajkumar (popularly known as Azad) was killed in a dense forest in Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad district. The official version was that Azad was having a meeting with some people in the jungle when the Andhra Pradesh Police, on a tip-off, swooped down on them. There ensued a gunbattle at the end of which two were killed—Azad and another person who was first thought to be Sahdev, a tribal young (…)

• Kashmir: The Turmoil Within

  16 July 2010, by Humra Quraishi

  Why can’t the Commission-cum-Panel on Child Rights order a probe into the killings of school-going boys on the streets of Srinagar city? Rather blatant killings out there, in broad daylight. And when this Commission can order a probe into any unnatural death of any child across the country, so shouldn’t the children of the Valley come in its very focus? In fact, last evening whilst hearing that follow-up on that young student of Kolkata’s La Martiniere School who’d hung himself within days (…)