Mainstream Weekly

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• Nehru for Today

  1 June 2010

  (On May 27 this year falls the 46th death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, widely known as the architect of modern India. On this occasion we are carrying some relevant excerpts from his writings and speeches for the benefit of our readers. We are also reproducing articles by distinguished public figure and women’s leader Aruna Asaf Ali, historian Bipan Chandra, and writer and littérateur Mulk Raj Anand that came out in a volume at the time of Nehru’s birth (…)

• Acharya Rammurty

  1 June 2010, by Shankar Sharan

  TRIBUTE
  Bihar lost one of the ikons of the JP movement, Acharya Rammurty, on May 20, 2010, which has been widely mourned. He was a man of immense learning reflected in his honorific title of Acharya, lovingly conferred on him by the people.and acknowledged by JP by nominating him as his second-in-command of the Bihar movement. He was one of the few people JP took counsels from. Post-JP he was the most respected leader of the followers of JP who would rally to his call whenever he made (…)

• Caste in Census 2011—Is it Necessary?

  1 June 2010, by Rajindar Sachar

  The country is in a vortex of challenges, counter-challenges and suspicious suggestions even amongst good friends on the desirability or otherwise of inclusion of caste in Census 2011. I feel that a calmer discussion may clear a number of cobwebs.
  It is common ground that the caste system exists in our country since centuries. It is unnecessary to dilate upon the origin of caste; whether due to the freezing of the guild system, helped and encouraged no doubt by the Brahamanical (…)

• Women’s Resurgence: The Gandhi-Nehru Alchemy

  1 June 2010, by Aruna Asaf Ali

  Jawaharlal Nehru’s contribution in the post-independence years to improving the status of Indian women, specially through the reform of Hindu law, is part of recent history and is fairly well known. In this article I shall attempt, as one who was a witness to and participant in the freedom struggle in an earlier era, to narrate to the present generation the story of how Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, between them, exercised an alchemy that turned the common clay of Indian humanity into (…)

• A Total Commitment

  1 June 2010, by Bipan Chandra

  We, who have lived through one part or the other of the Nehru era, look back on that period with nostalgia as a sort of Golden Age; we tend to regard those times as the “good old days”. In fact, those years were, more than at present, filled with poverty and misery. Yet, the existence of a Jawaharlal Nehru made all the difference.
  Nehru’s place in history would be assured by the leader’s role he played in the anti-imperialist struggle. As a national liberator, he was second only to (…)

• The Ethos of Jawaharlal

  1 June 2010, by Mulk Raj Anand

  Destination Man was the ideal of advance for our people, which Jawaharlal Nehru put forward in one of his earliest speeches in Parliament after our freedom.
  Growing from within the two worlds of Asia and the West, aware of the heritage of ruin of feudal wars, imperial hegemonies and two big bloodbaths of the world, he wanted, specially the freed peoples of the ex-colonies, to emerge into a world without war, in a hundred years of peace—by which he meant peace forever.
  And (…)

• Meaning of Agni

  1 June 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The week that marked the twentyfifth anniversary of the passing away of Jawaharlal Nehru—on May 22, 1989, India projected a political image of its strength and determination before the world which no amount of borrowed arsenal could have achieved. The firing of the intermediate range missile, Agni, hitting a target of a thousand kilometres away was not just an engineering feat, its importance lies in the fact that it was designed and manufactured in India by our scientists—no mean (…)

• Some Questions around Kasab’s Case

  1 June 2010, by Anand Teltumbde

  There was expected jubilation on May 6 when Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, that little devil who felled 72 innocent people including 14 policemen jointly with his deceased partner, Abu Ismail, on 26/11, was awarded death sentence by the Special Judge, M.L. Tahaliyani. Three days earlier when he was held guilty of all the 86 charges, Mumbai had heaved a sigh of relief as though it had apprehended his acquittal. All the news channels were full of Ajmal Kasab and Ujjwal Nikam, the new public hero in our (…)

• Impasse in Myanmar

  1 June 2010, by Sonu Trivedi

  Multi-party elections, as announced by the junta, to be held later this year raises hopes for ending the impasse in Myanmar. The pro-democracy activists and ethnic nationalities leaders are now awaiting the elections due this year. The elections, though, might just be a farce as it would adopt the new Constitution as drafted by the National Convention. With the results of the referendum held in May 2008 and 92.4 per cent votes in favour of the Constitution, the military is set to switch (…)

• Power to the People and its Enemies

  1 June 2010, by George Mathew

  The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper saw way back in the 1940s how the open society was being wrecked from within, something the enemies of the Panchayati Raj are doing at present. All efforts to give power to the people through democratic decentralisation and empowerment of the disempowered are being undermined by the vested interests. We have created a structure but it is like an edifice without base.
  The Standing Committee of Parliament on Rural Development (2009-10) in (…)