Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Dr Lohia’s Life and Thought: Some Notes

  21 March 2009, by Surendra Mohan

  The socialist movement in India was born in the womb of the struggle for independence. Some of its first rank leaders, who promoted the idea of forming a socialist group within the Congress party, were together in the Nasik prison in 1932-33. They included Jaya Prakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan, Yusuf Meherally, M.L. Dantwala, S.M. Joshi, Asoka Mehta and N.G. Goray. Some other prominent leaders of the Congress party like Acharya Narendra Dev, Dr Sampoornanand, Kamaldevi Chattopadhyaya, Dr (…)

• Lohia Line on Destruction of the Caste System

  21 March 2009, by Anand Kumar

  Dr Rammanohar Lohia was the theorist of seven revolutions in the context of creating a new world order on the basis of socialism. The programme of seven revolutions included confrontation with discrimination and deprivations based upon caste, class, race, gender and nationality. He wanted to give a new direction to the movement for socialism by giving equal emphasis to the struggles against sexism, class and caste-based exploitations.
  It was a departure from the Marxist line of a (…)

• Rammanohar Lohia

  21 March 2009, by Qurban Ali

  Gandhian socialist, rebel by birth, visionary, man of letters, great parliamentarian and crusader for the upliftment of the poor and downtrodden of the country Dr Rammanohar Lohia was born on March 23, 1910 in Akbarpur in Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh in a Marwari Vaishya community. Lohia’s father, Heera Lal, was a nationalist by spirit and a teacher by profession. His mother, Chanda, died when Rammanohar was very young. Lohia was introduced to the Indian independence movement at an (…)

• Why The Complete Truth About Bangladesh Eludes Us

  21 March 2009, by Bharat Dogra

  From all available indications the so-called mutiny in Bangladesh was actually a conspiracy to badly destabilise and, if possible, topple the Sheikh Hasina Government, so that the truth about the war-crimes and 1975 killings which this government had promised to investigate remains buried. The conspirators caused a lot of bloodshed but did not succeed in achieving their final aim of disrupting a government elected by the people with overwhelming support. However, it is less likely that the (…)

• The New Pitfalls

  21 March 2009, by Subrata Sinha

  Communication
  It is indeed heartening that a geologist of Subrata Sinha’s experience and eminence has highlighted the pitfalls in establishing a chemical hub in Nayachar (Mainstream, February 14, 2009). He has very rightly pointed out the difference in geological setting of the off-shore islands of Singapur which are remnants of the Himalayan arc separated from the mainland by simple sea erosion. Very recent sediments of Nayachar are the end products of erosion of the Himalaya mountain (…)

• He Marched to Death

  21 March 2009, by Bejoy Kumar Sinha

  The seventyeighth anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh and his comrades-in-arms, Rajguru and Sukhdev, falls on March 23. They were executed on that day in 1931. We pay homage to the abiding memory of those revolutionaries by reproducing the following article by a close associate of Bhagat Singh; Bejoy Kumar Sinha was himself sentenced to transportation for life as the martyrs’ case-mate. The article first appeared in Mainstream (March 21, 1964).
  __3__ On the twenty-third of (…)

• India and China in the Neo-Liberal World

  21 March 2009, by Amna Mirza

  Book Review
  The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China And What it Means for All of Us by Robyn Meredith; W.W. Norton and Company, New York, London; page: 252; price: US $ 15.95.
  India and China, the two neighbours, share the same civilisational antiquity. They are also credited with being the most populous nations on earth and additionally both are looked upon as states to reckon with in terms of global might in the near future.
  Indo-centricity, asymmetry, colossal (…)

• A Letter from Nagpur Central Jail

  21 March 2009, by Arun Ferreira

  This letter from one of the prisoners in Nagpur Central Jail, an alleged Naxalite undertrial, was sent on December 3, 2008 explaining the reasons behind the ‘Naxalite’ undertrial prisoners going on a token hunger strike on Human Rights Day last year. It was belatedly received by us and could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. In view of the abiding validity of its contents, the letter is being is published here for the benefit of our readers. The letter was sent to the People’s (…)

• Growing Complexities in Prevailing Scenario

  15 March 2009, by SC

  As we go to press the situation in Pakistan remains uncertain with civilian unrest having spread across the country spearheading the demand for withdrawal of Governor’s rule in Pakistan Punjab, abrogation of the Supreme Court verdict disqualifying the Sharif brothers from contesting elections, and reinstatement of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar M. Chaudhry, who was dismissed during the rule of former President Pervez Musharraf. While the lawyers have already started their (…)

• Significance of March 10, 1959 for Tibet

  15 March 2009, by Inder Malhotra

  It is now fifty years since the famous Tibetan revolt that forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India where he was readily given political asylum as a result of which Tibet became a far greater strain than before on the already uneasy India-China relations. Three years later followed the traumatic war in the high Himalayas. Even today, Beijing’s paranoid complaints persist despite India’s acceptance of Tibet being an “autonomous” region of China and a complete ban on any political activity on (…)