Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Intellectuals Demand Indian Citizenship To Taslima Nasreen

  24 February 2008

  At a time when India is projecting itself on the world’s stage as a modern democracy, while it hosts international literary festivals and book fairs, the Government of India, most mainstream political parties and their armed squads are mounting a concerted assault on people’s Right to Free Speech.
  It is a matter of abiding shame that even as some of the world’s best-known writers were attending the Jaipur literary festival and presti-gious publishers were doing business at the World Book (…)

• CCU to CCU (Coronary Care Unit to Calcutta)

  24 February 2008, by Taslima Nasreen

  Away from home, Away from my dear cat, my books and papers, my friends, Away from my life, With my face and head covered in a quilt stinking of uncertainty, Lying for days on end Lying one knows not where, With the heart gnawed and clawed viciously.
  Then when the heart stops, the inevitable CCU, To draw life somehow back from the edge, Back to throbbing, the heart would like to return, the sick body seeks home, To return to the cat, to friends, to the cherished touch. The mind journeys (…)

• Danger Signal from Bombay

  24 February 2008, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The time has come when we have to seriously ask ourselves if we are really serious about preserving in one piece this Republic of India. Many in our country think that to talk about disintegration of the Indian Union is just a fantasy with an over-dose of panic. They can’t take it that we may have taken the road to Bosnia.
  Three months ago, this impression was widespread. It can’t happen here—was the average Indian reaction when the mighty USSR fell apart without a whimper, and when (…)

• Woman and Development : A Gender-sensitive Global Perspective

  24 February 2008, by Zarina Bhatty

  BOOK REVIEW
  Development has a Woman’s Face: Insights from within the UN System by Krishna Ahoojapatel; APJ Publishing Corporation, New Delhi; 2007.
  The topic of the volume under review could not have been more apt, it is almost self-explanatory. It presents a gender-sensitive analysis of the interface between woman and development. The author very succinctly elaborates on the interrelationship between the two and states that an understanding of this relationship is vital for a balanced (…)

• All in the Name of Power Politics

  16 February 2008, by SC

  As we go to press the news has come that exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen’s resident permit to stay on in this country is being extended beyond February 17, the day it is supposed to expire. However, she continues to remain interned at the ‘safe’ place she is being kept in the Capital—neither can she meet any of her friends and acquaintances nor can the latter meet her: the condition in which she is being forced to stay is worse than house arrest. As is well known by now, the Union (…)

• Desire for Sameness

  16 February 2008, by Surendra Mohan

  Raj Thackeray’s campaign against people whose forefathers arrived in Mumbai from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh has its roots in his bid to win the battle of the Shiv Sena’s leadership from his cousin Uddhav Thackeray. Since Bal Thackeray made Uddhav his successor, he has refused to ally himself with the hate propaganda of his nephew, Raj. Those leaders of these States who have been touched on the raw, should have shown forbearance and patience. Whatever that be, this episode exposes the desire to (…)

• Ejection from India would mean Cold-blooded Murder of my Most Cherished Ideals

  16 February 2008, by Taslima Nasreen

  Although I was not born an Indian, there is very little about my appearance, my tastes, my habits and my traditions to distinguish me from a daughter of the soil. My father was born before Partition; the strange history of this subcontinent made him a citizen of three states, his daughter a national of two. In a village in what was then East Bengal, there once lived a poor farmer by the name of Haradhan Sarkar, one of whose sons, Komol, driven to fury by zamindari oppression, converted to (…)

• Our Battle

  9 February 2008, by SC

  Editorial
  While the latest events in Mumbai have shocked the conscience of the country with a section targeting non-Maharashtrians in the cosmopolitan metropolis, it is equally shocking that 45-year-old Taslima Nasreen, the exiled Bangladeshi author and poetess, is in virtual detention in an undisclosed ‘safe’ house in New Delhi; this has been ostensibly to “protect” her from Muslim fundamentalists baying for her blood while the authorities are leaving no stone unturned to force her to (…)

• Promising Prospect

  9 February 2008, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The Prime Minister’s visit to China has falsified the wishful forecasts of his critics and adversaries at home who had pronounced in advance that it was going to be a non-event. If anything, it has turned out to be an event of positive significance.
  The agreement on the maintenance of peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas has been justly characterised as a “landmark” along the long and tortuous road of India-China relations. It is (…)

• Do We Have Democracy?

  9 February 2008, by P.B. Sawant

  ‘Do we have democracy?’ This question has become most relevant after the recent nuclear deal between the Government of India and the US since the Indian Government and its spokesmen are taking the stand that the executive has the power to enter into deals, treaties and agreements with foreign governments and organisations, without the approval of and without even reference to the legislature and the people. The government’s contention, in other words, is that it has inherent powers to (…)