Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Good-bye Feroze

  30 June 2008, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Parliament has just repealed the Parliamentary Proceedings (Protection of Publication) Act which came into force twenty years ago in 1956. Late Feroze Gandhi, who initiated and piloted the Bill in Parliament, made a powerful case which might have been useful for the present Government to bear in mind. Sri Bhupesh Gupta, in his signed article in New Age of February 1, 1976, has recalled Feroze Gandhi’s speech, from which a significant portion is reproduced here below:
  “For the success of (…)

• Dealing with United States

  30 June 2008, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  A strange situation of apparently contradictory facets mark the present phase of India’s relationship with the United States of America.
  Of late, there is a surfeit of talks about “shared values” ranging from commitment to democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. To this has been added in recent months, the government’s new economic policy which plays up private enterprise and underplays public sector—at least that’s how it has been taken in the USA. And the government, in the (…)

• Ray of Sunshine

  30 June 2008, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The enthusiasm generated by the two-day India-Pakistan Peoples’ Convention, which was held last week in New Delhi, is certainly not a government-sponsored outfit.
  The organisers on the Indian side are well-known for their severely critical stand on many issues pertaining to the handling of the crisis in Punjab and Kashmir. In the understanding of the average newspaper reader in the Capital, many of those who were responsible for arranging the meeting are highly critical of the role of the (…)

• Nikhilda—A Glorious Human Being

  30 June 2008, by K R Narayanan

  On June 27, 1998 passed away in New Delhi the founder of this journal. On the occasion of his tenth death anniversary we carry the following pieces as a token of our remembrance and homage to his memory.
  It is a poignant moment for me to have unveiled this beautiful, lively portrait of Nikhilda at the premises of the Press Council. On such a pleasant sunny Sunday morning as this, I recollect many a breakfast together with Nikhilda, breakfasts at which he used to enthrall me with his ideas, (…)

• Nikhil Chakravartty : I Salute You

  30 June 2008, by V R Krishna Iyer

  Nikhil Chakravartty was a great journalist, a clear thinker, an authentic socialist, a public figure beyond party purchase, and, above all, a noble human being whom ambition could not buy. I had known Nikhil for several decades at an intimate personal level. The finest virtue of a journalist is integrity, impartiality, freedom of thought and commitment to facts and principles. He possessed all these values in silent plenty. The professional glory of a media marvel is veracious functionalism (…)

• A Letter

  30 June 2008

  Nikhil Chakravartty in a letter after his receiving a journalists’ award wrote a few lines I would like to share with all those who mourn him.
  A feel a sense of fulfilment on having been able to communicate whatever my thoughts maybe, to those who would be reading me.
  I strayed into journalism from teaching at the university. The searing experience of the Bengal famine tore me away from the classroom to the field to report that heartrending struggle between life and death. For me as a (…)

• Nikhilda, the Unimpeachable Journalist

  30 June 2008, by P.B. Sawant

  Many things have happened in the world in general, and in the field of journalism in particular, during the last ten years after Nikhilda bowed out of this turbulent existence. His life was a continuous intellectual struggle as is the work of any independent thinker and a fearless crusader for the triumph of his non-conventional views. He fought his battles with unusual sobriety, ingrained decency and a balanced approach. He was a keen observer of men and matters, eager to learn, full of (…)

• N.C.’s Two Qualities

  30 June 2008, by Arun Bose

  COMMUNICATION This letter was sent more then two years after N.C.’s demise by a close comrade of his since his days in England, one who became a member of the CPI Polit-Bureau and later a distinguished Professor of Economics, Kirorimal College, University of Delhi. He is no more with us but his incisive letter is being published on this occasion to bring out facets of N.C.’s life that need recollection.
  When the arch-iconoclast Nikhil Chakravartty passed away not so long ago and (…)

• A Perennial Void

  30 June 2008, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  It is said that nature abhors vacuum. Perhaps it is so in case of natural phenomena. But in human society a void created by the passing away of a colossal figure remains unfilled for a long, long time. Nikhil Chakravartty, as he was known to all, was a titanic person, a celebrity in analytical journalism, whose replacement has not appeared even after a decade of his passing away.
  It would be a very sketchy description to call him a “journalist” preceded by whatever adjective one would (…)

• Requiem for an Old Comrade

  30 June 2008, by Som Benegal

  An old ditty of World War I went: “Old soldiers never die, they only fade away.” Nikhil Chakravartty who was an old soldier, and comrade who left us ten years ago never died but, more importantly, has never faded away.
  Nikhilda was a soldier but not of the military kind—he was a soldier, a dedicated soldier, in the unrelenting struggle for the emancipation of the poor, the depressed and the deprived of his country and, indeed, the world. He was a comrade who brooked no discriminatory (…)