Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Troubadour of Our Times

  2 July 2009, by M. Venugopala Rao

  He was all grace when we (my wife and I) met him our last time. That was a few weeks before Nikhil’s final departure. My wife placed a bunch of flowers on the small table before him and was moving back, when Nikhil rose unsteadily to his feet, beckoned her closer and held her hands fondly for a moment, asked us to sit, sat himself, got us some tea and spoke haltingly. If his memory was slipping, he did not let it. With a shy smile, he quietly confirmed for himself and for us that he (…)

• The Legacy for Tomorrow

  2 July 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Lenin once asked a group of Soviet students as to whom they regarded as the greatest literacy figure of Russia. “Mayakovsky,” they replied. “Yes, but what about Pushkin?” asked Lenin, and added, “Could there have been a Mayakovsky without a Pushkin?” A hundred years from today the people would speak of Tagore in the same way and with more truth. At the moment we are too near to his personality to fully appraise its greatness. You cannot size up a Titan when you stand next to him. Tagore (…)

• De Facto Colonisation Continues Unabated

  2 July 2009, by Vinod Anand

  Colonisation is the act or the process of establishing a colony or colonies like what had happened in the past. It has two distinct connotations: de facto and de jure. The first one means ‘concerning the fact’ or in practice but not necessarily obtained by law. The second means ‘following the decree’ and is created or developed without or contrary to regulation. In other words, de facto colonisation means what happens in real life beyond the domains of any legal sanctity, and de jure (…)

• Mumbai Festival: Looking for that Golden Age

  2 July 2009, by Ashoke Chatterjee

  [gris]This article reached us quite sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. —Editorgris]
  Satyug is an extraordinary theme for a Mumbai Festival held after 26/11—extraordinarily visionary or extraordinarily foolhardy. Or both. Either way, the theme is typical of all Bombay Dreams, with their promises so much larger than their risks. Dreams brought my forebears in the early 1900s to Bombay, the name by which they loved this great city. No fear then of the (…)

• Lalgarh and Beyond: Disaster in the Making

  22 June 2009, by SC

  The government’s strategy to deal with the internal security problem has caused legitimate concern in civil society.

  For sometime now violence has erupted in the Lalgarh-Jangalmahal area of West Bengal’s West Midnapore district bordering on (...)

• After Congress‘ Rejuvenation in Election 2009: Need for an Indigenous New Deal

  22 June 2009, by Praful Bidwai

  The great story of Election-2009 is the Congress’ rejuvenation on an inclusive pluralist-secular platform and the electorate’s emphatic rejection of the BJP’s divisive, communal politics. The Congress has got its second wind and overtaken the BJP by 90 seats and a hefty 10 percentage points in votes. There is overwhelming evidence that the key to its performance lay in its projecting itself as an advocate of the caring state on a broadly Left-of-Centre or social democratic platform through (…)

• Habib Saheb and the Gonds‘ Story of Creation

  22 June 2009, by Sohail Hashmi

  TRIBUTE
  Habib Tanvir, 86, one of the country‘s greatest dramatists, passed away in Bhopal on June 8, 2009. He was instrumental in creating a new language in theatre blending contemporary drama with folk performance and raising folk forms to a level that could attract international attention.
  Born Habib Ahmed Khan in Raipur on September 1, 1923, he wrote poems at an early age under the name ‘Tanvir’, a word that never left him. Among his seminal works were Agra Bazar, Charandas Chor, (…)

• West Bengal: Khejury — The Truth

  22 June 2009, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  Genocide is not an appropriate word. In international lexicon it has a definition which would not perhaps apply to large scale slaughter, mayhem, arson, organised rape and other atrocities committed by the ruling party against their political opponents. If you look at the history of the Left Front Government from 1977 onwards, there have been cases of large scale manslaughter beginning with firing on the refugees who settled in the island of Marichjhapi in the Sunderbans in 1978-79. It is (…)

• Whither BJP?

  22 June 2009, by Amitava Mukherjee

  If the various reviews of the results of the just concluded Lok Sabha election are taken into account, then one cannot but conclude that the BJP has more sympathisers among the ‘pundits’ than what the Congress can count on. Lots of reasons for the BJP’s defeat and likely outcomes of it are being proffered—personal attacks against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Varun Gandhi’s vitriolic diatribe against the minority community, internal squabbles and so on. Pro-BJP scribes and commentators are (…)

• Women‘s Groups Condemn State Cover-up in Shopian Case

  22 June 2009

  The news of the rape and murder of two young women in Shopian in Kashmir is deeply shocking. We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms.
  We are also deeply disturbed by the reaction of the State. Instead of speaking out against this flagrant violation of human rights, and particularly the right of women to live safely and with dignity, instead of taking speedy and firm steps to bring the perpetrators to book, the State and the new administration first denied the rape of (…)