Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Remembering Somnath Lahiri on His Birth Centenary

  5 October 2009, by SC

  Last month on September 1, the birth centenary of legendary Communist leader Somnath Lahiri passed almost unnoticed. The CPI, to which he belonged, did not deem it necessary to even hold a public meeting to pay homage to his abiding memory; yet he was one of the stalwarts of the party and the communist movement and ranked among those who had laid the foundations of both.
  Along with Dr Ronen Sen and Abdul Halim he built the party’s Calcutta Committee which had once won the recognotion (…)

• Chinese Intellectuals: State versus New Left

  5 October 2009, by Ravindra Sharma

  The following is based on interviews with Chinese intellectuals These interviews are part of a project entitled “Chinese Politics and Ideology since Tiananmen”, sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research. The author visited China in April 2007, and interviewed 25 leading intellectuals of Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and the Hong Kong University of China. As per the agreement, the names of Chinese intellectuals have not been mentioned. However, those of the proponents of the New (…)

• Maturity of Democracy in Japan or Acid Test for Hatoyama?

  5 October 2009, by Rajaram Panda

  In what was a political earthquake, Japan’s Opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), registered a stunning victory in the general elections held on August 30, 2009. The DPJ victory raised a significant shift in policy after more than half-a-century of almost unbroken conservative rule. In fact, much before the final counting of votes was over, it was being projected that the DPJ, a broadly progressive party whose ranks include Socialists as well as former Liberal Democratic (…)

• Latest Moves by Islamabad and Beijing

  26 September 2009, by SC

  Recent developments in Pakistan relating to Hafiz Saeed, the founder-leader of Jamat-ud-Dawa-cum-Lashkar-e-Taiba, have been cautiously welcomed by India.
  On September 16, the police in Pakistan’s Punjab province registered two cases against him in Faisalabad for glorifying jihad and soliciting funds for it. The cases were unconnected to the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008. But what is significant is that for the first time cases were filed against him by the Punjab Government (…)

• At Random

  26 September 2009, by K. Natwar Singh

  The last two weeks have provided both mirth and melancholy. First melancholy. The aged and respected Minister of External Affairs, S.M. Krishna, and his junior colleague are unceremoniously asked to vacate their five-star abodes. That they were inflicting no burden on the taxpayer is besides the point. In our hypocritical political set-up ostentatious austerity has to be seen, not practised.
  How were this Ministers dealt with? The Finance Minister, a man of wisdom, vast experience (…)

• BJP etc.: The Death of Ideology

  26 September 2009, by T J S George

  Power is the sole purpose of politics in India. Without power, parties crumble. The implosion ripping the BJP apart shows how comprehensive the crumbling can be. It is easy to say that the BJP’s self-destruct is its internal affair. But there are two reasons why it should be every Indian’s affair.
  First, the BJP was the only national formation that rose to challenge the Congress which inherited its all-India mantle from the independence movement. For our nascent democracy, the (…)

• Pokhran-II Thermo-Nuclear Test: A Failure

  26 September 2009, by Ashok Parthasarathi, K. Santhanam

  The following is an enlarged version of an article that appeared in The Hindu (September 17, 2009). It is being reproduced here, with due acknowledgement to The Hindu, in view of the exceptional significance of the contents of the article and for the benefit of our readers. —Editor This article’s aims are:
  a) to correct inaccuracies in articles on Pokhran-II in August 28 and 30, 2009 of The Hindu.
  b) to elucidate my conclusion that the yield of the second fusion (H-bomb) stage of the (…)

• Military Balance and Partition

  26 September 2009, by P.K. Nigam

  A small number of Englishmen (about two lacs) ruled India, a vast country with a population of 400 million. How could they do it? Their strategy was military control and creation of vested interests bound up with British rule. The princes and zamindars were given privileges and they wanted the British to rule India. After a few decades of the Great Revolt of 1857, the British became pro-Muslim to convert them to support British rule. Wavell considered Muslims loyalist like princes. (…)

• Obama Drops a Missile Bombshell

  26 September 2009, by M K Bhadrakumar

  With his eight-month presidency seemingly weakening, United States President Barack Obama struck. A familiar pattern in his political career is repeating. His decision on September 10 to scrap the plans of his predecessor, George W. Bush, to build a land-based anti-missile shield in the heart of Europe overlooking Russia’s western borders may appear justifiable, but is nonetheless a stunning national security reversal.
  It was to be a missile defence system of unproven technology, (…)

• Hotting up with China?

  26 September 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Once again China has appeared on the radar screen of Indian security. Although officially the Indian authorities have so far denied any knowledge of Chinese troop concentration all along the far-flung frontier, the fact that for over two weeks now a Chinese patrol has dug in at about seven kilometres within the Indian territory at a strategic point in the Arunachal Pradesh, can hardly be dismissed as just an accidental intrusion, innocently undertaken. Those who have been following the (…)