Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• P.C. Joshi : Organiser of Historic Movements

  14 April 2008, by Anil Rajimwale

  On April 14 this year the birth centenary celebrations of P.C. Joshi, the legendary Communist leader and General Secretary of the undivided CPI (1935-48) in one of the most momentous periods of the communist movement in India, will come to an end. He was born on April 14, 2007. On this occasion we are carrying the following article written some time ago.
  It would be appropriate to examine the role of P.C. Joshi as the organiser and inspirer of memorable mass movements in the context of his (…)

• Not in the Image of God

  14 April 2008, by Ragini Nayak

  “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.”
  Woman, as per the Holy Bible, was not even perceived by God until He realised “it is not good for man to be alone “and so out of the ribs of ‘the first man’ came the woman, his “helper”. “…She shall be called ‘woman’ For she was taken out of man.”
  From time immemorial woman has been perceived through the male gaze and no doubt she emerges as his second half…’subordinate’, ‘secondary’,’subservient’,’inferior’ so (…)

• Galloping All-round Costs of the Iraq War

  14 April 2008, by Girish Mishra

  The following article was written on the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq (known as Bushfire II) that began on March 20, 2003.
  Karl Marx once remarked: “War in direct economic terms is just the same as if a nation cast part of its capital into water.” After many decades, once again, the validity of this statement has been underlined by the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US-led coalition. A period of more than five years has elapsed, yet there is no sign of freedom, (…)

• Difficult Times

  7 April 2008, by SC

  On the last day of the 2007-08 financial year the Union Government unveiled a slew of measures to control inflation which is at a 13-month high of 6.68 per cent. These included such steps as abolising import duty on all crude edible oils, including palm and soya, banning the export of non-basmati rice and pulses. The government decided to raise the minimum export price of basmati to $ 1200 per ton from $ 1100 per ton with the objective of discouraging exports and increasing its availability (…)

• Statement on Taslima Nasreen’s Departure from India

  7 April 2008

  DOCUMENT
  Taslima Nasreen has been forced to leave India. This might have brought a sense of relief, and even a degree of triumphalism, to the West Bengal and the Central governments. This is also a cause of deep frustration for all those like us who have been trying to defend her human rights and secure for her justice and a treatment in tradition with Indian culture and civilisation. What is most disconcerting is that her departure in the circumstances in which it took place, is a severe (…)

• Hollowness of China’s Claims over Tibet

  7 April 2008, by Nitish Sengupta

  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s retort to the Chinese saying that the Dalai Lama stands for non-violence must be considered as one right reaction among so many reactions emanating from New Delhi regarding the recent happenings in Tibet. There is indeed a need for overall reappraisal of India’s traditional policy. One need not go into the question of whether it was correct on the part of India to acquiesce in China’s brutal occupation of Tibet in 1950, and even more brutal suppression of the (…)

• China in Tibet

  7 April 2008, by G.S. Bhargava

  Why is China in jitters over the unrest in Tibet marking the 49th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s forced escape from Lhasa? The Buddhist spiritual leader had to flee his homeland as much to save his life as to preserve the autonomy of his hoary land of birth. The idea behind the Dalai Lama’s escape to India, following hostilities, in which an estimated two thousand Tibetans perished, was that India would stand by Tibet. But the starry-eyed leadership of Nehru succumbed to China’s designs (…)

• Taslima’s Ouster

  7 April 2008, by Sailendra Nath Ghosh

  For long I have been saying that the Indian state’s founder-premier Nehru was grievously wrong in defining secularism as the fulcrum of the country’s policy. Secularism merely meant that the state would be neutral between religions. In the context of the country’s Partition and carnage occasioned by religious hatred, the need was for a policy with a positive content—namely, harmonisation of the psyche and unification of hearts of the deeply divided communities. It needed inter-religious (…)

• Rival Faiths in Tibet

  7 April 2008, by Kunal Ghosh

  Anti-China protests broke out in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet on March 14, 2008. They have spread to the neighbouring Sichuan and Qinghai provinces that incorporated what used to be the Amdo region of Tibet before China took possession of Tibet in 1959. The Dalai Lama has called for an international probe into whether “cultural genocide—deliberate or not—was taking place in his homeland”. (The Times of India, March 17, 2008, Lucknow) Samdhang Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of the Tibetan (…)

• Left Unity : Long Haul

  7 April 2008, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Can the Left really unite? In the three decades since Independence, the unity of the Left has virtually been a will-o’-the wisp of Indian politics.
  In the crucial years immediately following Independence the Left chose to go into disarray. The Socialists, overwhelmed by the emerging power-structure of the Congress, decided to leave it, while the Communists in a fit of unwisdom went for a sectarian course preferring frontal collision with the newly installed Government. In three years, (…)