Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• April 8, 1929: A Day to Remember

  12 April 2009, by Chaman Lal

  A historic event in the political history of India took place on April 8, 1929, referring to which L.K.Advani committed a blunder, when he spoke of Bhagat Singh’s execution being related to this event. A lot is being written about Advani’s sense of history in the context of his book My Life: My Country, but it is necessary to recollect the significance of the relevant event by way of narrating the facts from historical records as well as the reminiscences of the fellow revolutionaries of (…)

• Mahesh Bhatt on Indo-Pak People-to-People Contacts

  12 April 2009, by Humra Quraishi

  Even in these surcharged times, a small group of enthusiasts travelled from here to across the border, to try and bridge gaps, get the people-to-people contacts going. And film-maker Mahesh Bhatt was one amongst them and spoke out on his return from Pakistan… I heard him talk at the IIC but there seemed little time for an elaborate interview as he had to catch the next flight to Mumbai; so I did the next best thing: a telephonic interview with him and here it goes…
  Q 1—Do you feel (…)

• Towards the Second Year of Mockery

  12 April 2009, by Jhuma Sen

  A month to go and India will again show that the cost of dissent a peaceful man pays in this country is a detention for two years on fictitious grounds. Almost a year ago, twentytwo Nobel winners had come forward demanding Binayak Sen’s release so that he could go and receive the 2008 Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights in Washington. Sen is the first Indian, nay the first South Asian, to be selected for the award. Hundreds of people around the globe staged demonstrations, held (…)

• Salute to Poet Darwish

  12 April 2009, by S.K. Pande

  Tribute
  (This article, sent to us quite sometime back, could not be used earlier for unavoidable reasons. It is now being belatedly published as a token of our tribute to the immortal Palestinian poet. —Editor)
  Mahmoud Darwish, the poet who sang with Arafat and who gave voice to Palestinian visions of statehood, and helped craft their 1988 declaration of independence, is no more. He died on August 9, 2008 and was given his final send off on August 12, 2008. He was 67 years. Many may (…)

• Partition and Present-day Ills in West Bengal

  12 April 2009, by Arjun Das

  Book Review
  West Bengal in Doldrums by Dr Sailen Debnath; N.L. Publishers, Siliguri, West Bengal; 2009.
  A powerful and reflective analysis of the socio-economic, political, administrative and cultural profiles of West Bengal is found in the book as the author aptly surveys the history of the State from the pre-independence period to the present times. The book brings out the partition trauma that is still haunting the human development of the State by focusing on the refugee aspect in (…)

• Behind Terror Attack on Lahore Outskirts

  9 April 2009, by SC

  Less than a month after the terrorist attack near Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium on March 3 targeting Sri Lankan cricketers—the first terror attack suffered by cricketers anywhere (as brought out in these columns a month ago in this journal’s March 7, 2009 issue)—Lahore had to once more bear the brunt of yet another terror strike: this time it took place at a police academy complex at Manawan on the outskirts of Lahore (just 12 km from the India-Pak border at Attari-Wagah). And what analysts and (…)

• People are Positively Responding to Our Call for an Alternative

  9 April 2009

  A.B. Bardhan, as the octagenarian General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, is the seniormost Left leader in active politics today since the CPM patriarch, Jyoti Basu, is ailing and at 95 cannot undertake any strenuous assignment. In the following freewheeling interview with the Mainstream editor on March 31, 2009, Bardhan presents his view of the pre-election scenario and the Left perspective before the country at this point in time.
  How do you view the pre-election scene? (…)

• Machiavelli’s Ceasefire and the Indo-Naga Peace Process

  9 April 2009, by Nandita Haksar

  For eleven years the people in the Naga inhabited districts of Manipur have been living in peace ever since a ceasefire was declared between the Indian security forces and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isac-Muivah) or the NSCN (IM) in 1997. As a result a generation of children has grown up without knowledge or experience of the cordon-and-search operations which invariably resulted in human rights violations of villagers. These children had no idea what it was like to stand for (…)

• The Way We Conduct Elections In Our Country

  9 April 2009, by Shree Shankar Sharan

  There are several features of the coming Lok Sabha elections that jar and need to change.
  Elections with Police Force
  The first is the heavy deployment of force for conducting elections. One of the grave consequences of heavy deployment of force is to spread out the election process to two, three or four stages. This is how it has happened this time. This not only paralyses governance, because staff from all departments along with the local collectorate, subdivisional and block staff are (…)

• A People‘s Manifesto

  9 April 2009, by Kripa Shankar

  Two hundred years of colonial rule in India had turned the richest country on earth into one of the poorest. The task was to make up the leeway by optimal use of the existing physical, human and financial resources and its continued renewal and upgradation. The colonial structure needed dismantling as it was the greatest stumbling block in unleashing the vast productive potential that the country possessed. The political class to whom power was bestowed could not countenance such dismantling (…)