Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Revisiting the Iranian Revolution

  2 July 2009, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The following article was written four years ago in 2005 soon after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory in the first presidential election in Iran. It is being reproduced here because of its current relevance.
  Persians invented the game of chess. It seems to remain very much their game. It is “check-and-checkmate” in the epic game between Iran and the United States—for the second time in 27 years. There is dramatic irony in the leadership of the Islamic Government in Iran passing into (…)

• Why are Farmers Moving to the Cities?

  2 July 2009, by S G Vombatkere

  Technology-driven industrialisation has necessarily caused a shift in human values, certainly among those sections of society that have benefited from industrialisation in India. Such people speak and think about liberty and freedom without stopping to think whether there are others who cannot even dream of those desirable conditions of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The freedom they seek is to “consume” without the responsibility of leaving something for others, or (…)

• Emergency: What it meant

  2 July 2009, by Amiya Rao, B G Rao

  Lest We Forget
  Thirtyfour years ago on June 26, 1975, Emergency was proclaimed throughout the country as the ruling leadership bared its fangs nakedly displaying its dictatorial proclivities. We present here write-ups and poems that bring back the nightmare of those dark days when our freedom was sought to be snatched away and our voice throttled. —Editor
  __3__
  Not a leaf stirs in my kingdom without my leave. See how quiet my people sit.
  —Atahuallpa the Inca
  To those whose only (…)

• Tagore for Today

  2 July 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The Editor’s Notebook in Mainstream (June 28, 1975) after the promulgation of Emergency and the imposition of press censorship appeared as follows:
  Somewhere in the excitement of National Emergency, the editor has lost his notebook. However, Rabindranath Tagore has, in the abundance of his generosity, lent him his own notebook:
  Freedom from fear is the freedom I claim for you, my Motherland!—fear, the phantom demon, shaped by your own distorted dreams;
  Freedom from the burden of ages, (…)

• An Eye-witness Account

  2 July 2009

  Published in The Morning News—Sunday Times Service (London) on July 3, 1975. An introduction to the article read:
  “An uncensored account from Jonathan Dimbleby who was in Delhi last week for the Thames Televivsion programme: ‘This Week’. He filed his report from Addis Ababa to avoid censorship.”
  This was included in The Press She Could Not Whip: Emergency in India as Reported by the Foreign Press. —Editor
  The famous Indian journalist sat in his silent office surrounded by (…)

• Does it Matter?

  2 July 2009, by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

  My tablet and my pen,
  My two cherished treasures
  Are snatched from me,
  But does it matter?
  For I have dipped my fingers
  In the blood of my heart;
  My tongue they sealed
  Bu does it mater? For,
  I have placed a tongue
  In every link of chain
  That fetters me.
  Faiz Ahmed Faiz

• Roots of Current Violence are in Oppression under Colonialism and Dictatorships

  2 July 2009, by Bharat Dogra, Reshma Bharti

  Pakistan’s Wild West
  In order to understand the roots of the present-day violence in Pakistani’s Pashtun (or Pathan) belt, we need to go back to colonial times. While the British colonial rule was oppressive all over (the then united, pre-partition) India, it was even more ruthless in this region (present-day North-West Frontier Province and FATA area) as this was regarded as the strategic gateway of India which had to be secured for British interests at all costs.
  Although the (…)

• Memories of a Many-splendoured Man

  2 July 2009, by Inder Malhotra

  Remembering N.C. [gris]On June 27 this year falls Nikhil Chakravartty’s eleventh death anniversary. On this occasion we reproduce the following tributes to his abiding memory—the first two were published in Mainstream (July 11, 1998) and the remaining two in Mainstream (August 1, 1998) following N.C.’s demise on June 27, 1998.gris]
  It was with some trepidation that I first met Nikhil. I was then just past 21 and working for the tottering United Press of India (UPI) on whose ashes is (…)

• Symbol of a Heroic Age

  2 July 2009, by P.C. Joshi

  In the passing away of Nikhilda at the ripe age of eightyfour the country has lost the doyen of Indian journalism and a vigilant watchdog of national interest and democratic rights. And the common people have also lost a friend who was sensitive to their hardships and their striving for a better life.
  The loss caused by his passing away is hard to fill. For in his own way he was the symbol, one of the few left, of a heroic age—the age of India’s epochal fight against British (…)

• He Always Thought of People’s Welfare

  2 July 2009, by Sailen Chatterjee

  Nikhilda was a rare type of journalist. He always tried to use his pen for the welfare of the people.
  Whenever I met him, he expressed his concern for the people—how people were suffering. He always told me that I was fortunate to tour with Mahatma Gandhi for three years and also to have witnessed how the Mahatma worked as a journalist, and guided me in my work as a young journalist.
  When I informed him that Gandhiji told me that the sole aim of journalism is service, (…)