Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Gandhi-Nehru Tradition and Indian Secularism

  25 November 2007, by P.C. Joshi

  (On November 14 falls the one hundred and eighteenth birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru. To mark the occasion, Mainstream reproduces in the following pages articles from distinguished contributors touching on different areas of immediate concern for the nation in the domestic and international spheres. —Editor)
  “Nahi Manushat Shrestha Taran Hi Kinchit (There is none loftier than man!)” —Mahabharat “Sabar Upare Manush Satya Tahar Upare Nai (Man is above everyone. There is (…)

• Jawaharlal Nehru and World Order

  25 November 2007, by A.K. Damodaran

  It is now more than two decades since Jawaharlal Nehru passed away. For more than forty years he had been a major figure in the Indian national movement. For the first two decades he had been a loyal lieutenant of Mahatma Gandhi, disciplining himself to conform to the priorities of the national struggle, as defined by Gandhi, in spite of his skepticism about some of the methods adopted by his leader and some of the aims which appeared to him to be not so important.
  In doing so, Nehru had (…)

• Temper of Tolerance

  25 November 2007, by C.N. Chitta Ranjan

  There can be, and will be endless debate on the achievements and failures of Jawaharlal Nehru, as politician and statesman, as Prime Minister and Congress leader, as democrat and socialist.
  But whatever the controversies and whatever the arguments, it is irrefutable that the democratic consciousness of our people, their capacity to express their social and economic aspirations despite the massive illiteracy among them, the emergence of viable popular institutions that continue to (…)

• Blackmail Again

  25 November 2007, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  It is characteristic of the Johnson Administration that it should impudently interfere again and again in the ordering of India’s internal economy. The primary blame for this situation rests with those in the Union Government who have repeatedly given in to American pressure, the most glaring example of such abject surrender of our sovereignty being the shameful decision last year to devalue the rupee to please Washington. For some time now the Americans have used food as a lever to prevent (…)

• Nehru : Some Reflections

  25 November 2007, by Arvind Bhandari

  November 14 marks yet another birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. This commemorative occasion is celebrated through the length and breadth of the country as Children’s Day. But all the Bal Melas, flowers, balloons and festoons scarcely serve as a fig-leaf for the plight of Indian children which is perhaps the worst in the world.
  India has the highest infant mortality rate in the world. Despite all the slogans about protecting the girl child, female (…)

• Portraying Nehru’s Essence through Use of Metaphors

  25 November 2007, by V.P. Dutt

  BOOK REVIEW
  Use of Metaphors by Jawaharlal Nehru by Prof Rakesh Gupta; Shubhi Publications, Gurgaon; 2007; Price: Rs 495.
  Prof Rakesh Gupta’s breadth of reading, his cosmopolitan outlook, his prolific writings, the sensitivity of his comprehensions and the broad range of his interest testify to his remarkable personality—academician, writer, artist, painter, critical analyst of music and movies, knowledge of literature, theorist, combined with his humility and absence of egotistical (…)

• Remembering India Gandhi

  25 November 2007

  Indira Gandhi would have completed 90 years on November 19 had she been alive. While remembering her we are reproducing the following pieces.
  She rode into Death unharmed
  Chand Joshi
  He did not die Riddled with bullets At the door of the hacienda That day in April When the soldiers At the bugle’s last note Twice emptied their rifles Those who saw him say He withstood the bullets, Men and time, And on a white horse At full gallop Rode into death unharmed. (From the Exaltation of Light (…)

• Musharraf’s Gamble

  14 November 2007, by SC

  It was not an unexpected development. For several weeks now there were reports in the press that President Pervez Musharraf was planning to proclaim Emergency or Martial Law in Pakistan. In fact the news of Benazir Bhutto travelling to Dubai from Karachi to meet her family members there was accompanied by the apprehension of Musharraf staging the military coup while she was away (which is what happened).
  Finally on Saturday, November 3 Musharraf shed all his masks and came out in his true (…)

• "Conflagration Nandigram"

  14 November 2007, by V R Krishna Iyer

  Venerable Gopal Gandhi,
  I write this letter reluctantly but feel it my duty to request you, as the head of the State of West Bengal, to consider what measures, if any, may taken to see that the people of the State, particularly of Nandigram, enjoy security and liberty. Possession of property, without threat of deprivation in the guise of land acquisition for industrial development, and assuring peaceful co-existence of progressive agriculture and industry with promise of more employment (…)

• A Betrayal!

  14 November 2007, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  Persons in political authority tend to think that they have an official prerogative to prevaricate. In an open democracy certain manipulation of truth, like the famous example of a glass half full or half empty, is permitted and tolerated. But any deliberate inexactitude of fact is not acceptable. If any party in power goes on displaying this phenomenon one could be justified in reading some sinister motive in their behavioral pattern. In West Bengal the Chief Minister went on repeating that (…)