Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Requiem for the October Revolution

  7 November 2009, by Subrata Sen

  On the occasion of the October Revolution’s ninetysecond anniversary we reproduce, with the author’s consent, the following piece that appeared in Nagpur Times eighteen years ago.
  Facts must be faced. Masses in the Soviet Union are today bent upon doing away with all vestiges of the October Revolution. Attempts to “analyse” the developments carefully avoiding the cardinal issue of the Stalinist legacy are obviously ridiculous. The current mass upsurge in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (…)

• Reminiscing the Political Legacy of Balagopal

  7 November 2009, by Gilbert Sebastian

  TRIBUTE
  This condolence note for K. Balagopal, the eminent human rights activist who expired at the age of 57 from a cardiac arrest on October 8, 2009, is motivated by the feeling that the political man in Balagopal is often given a short shrift.
  As with Marx, Balagopal had also undergone an epistemological break in 1993. So we had two Balagopals: the early Balagopal, the Marxist-Leninist who was an advocate of ‘new democratic revolution’, and the late Balagopal, who turned a (…)

• Save Aami River and Lakhs of Villagers from Pollution

  7 November 2009, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  The Aami river flows in Sidharthnagar, Gorakhpur and Sant Kabir Nagar for nearly 100 kms before merging into the Rapti, a sub-tributary of the Ganga. This river had close ties with the lives of Gautam Buddha and Sant Kabir. Gautam Buddha gave up his royal dress to take up sanyas on the banks of this river. Sant Kabir breathed his last on the banks of the river in Maghar. His memorial has been built here including a temple as well as a mosque.
  However, in recent years (…)

• Outstanding Champion of Human Rights

  7 November 2009, by Vidya Bhushan Rawat

  Professor Iqbal Ansari, the one-man army of documentation of facts relating to issues of Muslims in India, passed away on October 13 in his home town of Aligarh, where he grew up and developed a vast treasure of friends working on human rights all over the country. Even those who might have disagreed with some of his overemphasised and simplistic observations, would not disagree with the fact that he was overwhelmingy concerned about the growing animosity on Hindu-Muslim unity, a subject (…)

• South-East Asia: A Beacon of Maritime Collaboration?

  7 November 2009, by Harnit Kang

  According to a May 2009 interview with Rear Admiral Chew Men Leong, the Chief of the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN), in the journal Military Technology,
  Maritime Security threats are constantly evolving and cannot be dealt with by one agency or a single country. We need to continue to tighten inter-agency cooperation and expand transnational cooperation.
  Until very recently, International Maritime Law was tailored mostly to prevent naval clashes between countries. Keeping the (…)

• Mapping the Al-Qaeda Linkages in South-East Asia: How Real is the Threat?

  7 November 2009, by Tuli Sinha

  Introduction
  Terrorism is an elusive concept. It is a kind of political violence but neither academics nor policy-makers have reached a consensus on its definition. Like every social phenomenon, terrorism is malleable, constantly changing in appearance and evolving structurally, which demands any definition to be all-encompassing. It involves political objectives and goals and relies on violence or the threat of violence. It is designed to generate fear in a target audience that extends (…)

• Two Messages

  1 November 2009, by SC

  The one-day trilateral summit of the Foreign Ministers of Russia, India and China (RIC) successfully concluded in Bengaluru on October 27 with the joint communiqué issued at the end of the meet (their ninth) highlighting the need to coordinate their approaches to several major problems before the world today. These included terrorism, climate change and reform of financial institutions, issues on which their common positions came out in bold relief alongside the question of resolving (…)

• Indira Gandhi’s Place In History

  1 November 2009, by K. Natwar Singh

  October 31 marks the twentyfifth anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s martyrdom. On this occasion we are carrying the following piece by the former External Affairs Minister who had worked under her for several years and seen her from close quarters. We are also reproducing (on p. 27) N.C.’s article on her after her demise.
  From May 1966 to April 1971 I was working in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (it was renamed Prime Minister’s Office by Morarji Desai). I was the first foreign service (…)

• To be a Kashmiri and/or a Muslim!

  1 November 2009, by Humra Quraishi

  The detention-cum-interrogation of the two young Kashmiri cricketers by the Bangalore Police is yet another of those ongoing instances of bias and insensitivity. How easy it is for the police to arrest Kashmiri Muslims! The ground-work is well prepared along that typical mindset-cum-format of Muslims being potential terrorists and the situation gets compounded if the word ‘Kashmiri’ is prefixed. And let’s not fool ourselves that this latest incident, involving the two Kashmiri cricketers, (…)

• Nikhilda: Some Nostalgic Reflections

  1 November 2009, by P.V. Narasimha Rao

  On November 3, 2009 N.C. would have completed 96 years had he been alive. On the occasion of his ninetyseventh birthday we reproduce what a former PM and a veteran journalist (both of whom are no longer in our midst) wrote about him after he passed away on June 27, 1998.
  Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was to have released the book India-Pakistan: Themes Beyond Borders—Selections from Nikhil Chakravartty’s Writings (published by Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd.) at the meeting held (…)