Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Untouchable Ambedkar—the Saga of his Discrimination in America

  19 April 2010, by A K Biswas

  The 119th birth anniversary of Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar has been observed on April 14 this year. On this occasion we offer our sincere homage to that towering personality by publishing the following article and a piece that N.C. wrote on him in 1990 when the Bharat Ratna was posthumously conferred on Dr Ambedkar.
  Paradoxically the curse of untouchability continues to chase Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar even half-a-century after his death and the bane is not history yet. (…)

• Honouring Ambedkar

  19 April 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The award of the Bharat Ratna posthumously on B.R. Ambedkar raises mixed feelings. No doubt Ambedkar was one of the stalwarts of modern India; the high-water mark of his career was that he contributed most to the drafting of the Indian Constitution and piloting it through the Constituent Assembly. There is, therefore, a touch of irony in Ambedkar being awarded the Bharat Ratna 30 years after he eminently deserved it when the Constitution came into force in 1950.
  Not only that. All (…)

• Suppression Won’t Work, Caring May

  19 April 2010, by T J S George

  Let us say P. Chidambaram has his way. Crack Army battalions are ordered into the forests of the Naxal-tribal belt. A formidable arsenal of weapons short of the nuclear are pressed into service. The Air Force, despite its better judgment, is ordered to reduce suspected hideouts into ash heaps. In no time Chidambaram will be able to proclaim triumphantly that the Maoists have been wiped out.
  But that’s what Chief Minister Siddharth Shankar Ray did in West Bengal in the 1970s. By then (…)

• Fighting Naxalism the Democratic Way

  19 April 2010, by Mahi Pal Singh

  Since the biggest incident of massacre of 76 CRPF personnel by the Maoists at Dantewada, Chhattisgarh on April 6, 2010 heated debates have been taking place in the media about how to tackle the menace of Naxalite/Maoist violence in the country. In these debates, which take place on almost all channels of the electronic media, spokespersons of the major political parties, retired military and police officers appearing on these channels as defence experts and TV anchors always end up holding (…)

• The Challenge of the Maoists

  19 April 2010, by Surendra Mohan

  The Maoists have got entrenched in the forested areas inhabited mainly by the Scheduled Tribes in the mineral rich areas of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Although the Naxalite movement had started in 1967 when the CPI-M adopted the parliamentary democratic path in the tribal packet of Naxalbari, it was quite active in Kolkata and other urban areas in the early 1970s. It struck roots in the plain areas of Bhojpur and Jahanabad in Bihar in the 1980s. However, gradually it has shifted to (…)

• Stop Operation Green Hunt, Start Dialogue with the Local People

  19 April 2010

  Interim Observations of the Jury of Independent People’s Tribunal on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab and Operation Green Hunt
  The Independent People’s Tribunal on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab and Operation Green Hunt (organised by a collective of civil society groups, social movements, activists, academics and concerned citizens) was held in New Delhi from April 9 to 11, 2010. Its jury comprised retired Supreme Court judge Justice P.B. Sawant, retired Bombay High Court judge Justice (…)

• Statement following April 6 incident at Dantewada

  19 April 2010

  We condemn in no uncertain terms the killing of more than 70 CRPF personnel by the Maoists in the Makrana Forests of Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada on April 6. We also condemn the killing of more than a hundred tribal villagers by the security forces since June 2009 in the same area in the course of the ongoing Operation Green Hunt. Loss of any life diminishes human values
  The April 6 incident highlights the urgent necessity of reviewing Operation Green Hunt and, if necessary, reversing (…)

• Other Side of Transactions in a Violent System

  19 April 2010, by Sumanta Banerjee

  It is understandable that human rights/civil liberties organisations should come out with statements deploring the killing of security forces (for example, the PUDR press statement on the wiping out of 75-odd CRPF personnel in Chhattisgarh on April 6) on the purely humanitarian ground that any loss of life is deplorable. But civil society groups or individuals who view the issue from a larger perspective need to take a more rigorous and clear-cut stand. If they agree that the fundamental (…)

• Unpublished Letters of P.C. Joshi

  19 April 2010

  The year 2009 marked the fiftieth year of the publication of Lokayata, a seminal work on Indian materialist philosophy from the Marxist point of view. Its author, distinguished philosopher-scholar Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918-1993), was a life member of the CPI and closely associated with P.C. Joshi (1907-1980), the builder of the Communist Party in this country and its first General Secretary from 1943 to 1947. Joshi was keenly interested in Chattopadhyaya’s works and encouraged him to (…)

• Climate Change and Justice

  19 April 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  While the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions adequately and with the greatest urgency is widely recognised, this extremely important issue has not yet become an issue of mass mobilisation particularly among weaker sections. The reason is obvious—people are too involved in their day-to-day problems. On the other hand, if any world level planning for reducing GHG emissions is linked to meeting the basic needs of all people, then this will be a plan in which all weaker sections (…)