Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Bhagat Singh for Today

  9 October 2007, by Nazirul Hasan Ansari

  Remembering Bhagat Singh on the sixtysecond anniversary of his glorious and heroic martyrdom (March 23) cannot be a ceremonial or routine affair today. When the entire country, plagued as it is with the Hindutva brand of communalism in its worst-ever ferocity and perfidy, is yet to overcome the trauma of the Ayodhya tragedy and the horrendous communal carnage that rocked large parts of this subcontinent thereafter, Bhagat Singh’s words are of particular relevance for our nation and polity. (…)

• Impact of Lenin on Bhagat Singh’s Life

  9 October 2007, by Chinmohan Sehanavis

  Bhagat Singh was born in Punjab on September 28, 1907, and was hanged by the British on March 23, 1931. So it may be said that in his short life-span of 24 years political activities covered at the most a period of seven to eight years. The young Indian revolutionary was sentenced to death before he could reach his thirties. It should not be expected that his concepts regarding revolution were full-fledged and mature and had taken definite shape at such an early age. Yet, his short political (…)

• Brief Narrations of Day-to-Day Realities

  9 October 2007

  BOOK REVIEW
  That’s OK, Tammanna and Other Reveries by Dr J. Bhagyalakshmi; Alok Parva Prakashan, New Delhi; pages 176.
  It is amazing how Dr J. Bhagyalakshmi, a highly competent professional, could cover a huge field of creative literature with perfect ease and captivate the minds of the readers. So far, I was only aware of the moral and humanitarian aspects of her writings. I had read a very few of her books and seldom any ‘middles’.
  That’s OK, Tammanna and Other Reveries, a (…)

• Bring the Skeletons Out

  9 October 2007, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The disclosure of the Indo-US agreement for the installation of the nuclear-powered spy device on the Himalayas—forced into the open, ironically, by the American press hunt for subversive CIA activities—is a matter which, shorn of its sensational aspect, brings out the tenuous character of our nonaligned foreign policy. Even the bitterest detractor of Jawaharlal Nehru cannot question his patriotism. And yet he, the father of the concept of nonalignment, was responsible for initiating the (…)

• A Secular Pope, a Scapegoat or a Secretary-General

  9 October 2007, by Manan Dwivedi

  “I am the soothsayer, I am the debt collector, I am the father confessor, and I am the cheerleader, the salesman and the promoter, too. There are yet many aspects of my character and my role which I am yet to discover.” These are the apt and illustrative words of the anointed Secretary-General, Kofi Annan,1 of the United Nations Organisation as he delivered his second inaugural speech while initiating discussion at the United Nations General Assembly session in the year 2002. This too (…)

• South Block’s Indifference to Burma’s Struggle for Democracy

  5 October 2007, by SC

  There have been several major events in the last few days capped by the young Team India’s momentous victory in the T20 cricket final at Johannesburg that literally enthralled and electrified the whole country. We have also seen the row over the Ram Setu and Sethusamudram project taking an ugly turn with a prominent Sangh Parivar member, former BJP MP Ram Vilas Vedanti, allegedly issuing a death sentence fatwa against DMK chief and Tamil Nadu CM M. Karunanidhi for his pronouncements against (…)

• Iraq and the End of the American Century

  5 October 2007, by Eddie J Girdner

  As the fifth year of the US occupation of Iraq ebbs away, the farce on the ground deepens. A crisis, indeed, but more than a crisis: the number of US military troops dead approaching nearly 4000 and some 30,000 wounded; tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, some four million displaced, with two million in exile abroad; mass ethnic cleansing of neighbourhoods; lack of water and electricity; the country on the verge of splitting apart along sectarian lines; the US military bribing Sunni (…)

• Allow Public Debate and Review Sethusamudram Project

  5 October 2007, by Ramaswamy R Iyer

  The debate over the Sethusamudram project has gone completely off the rails. The debate thus needs to be brought back to good sense and relevance.
  Let us start with the Ram Setu aspect as it has been the main subject of discussion. The question is not whether Ram was a historical figure; or whether he built the bridge; or whether he or the monkey army could have built it; or whether indeed the feature in question is natural or man-made. The crucial point is whether the site is sacred in (…)

• Ram Setu: Myth or Reality?

  5 October 2007, by Shyam Chand

  Blessed are these who have no history. Condemned are those who forget their history. Damned are those who treat mythology as their history.
  The instinct for survival precedes any notion of morality. The priestly class, which denigrated Rama, Krishna, Hanuman and the Hindu Triumvirate, had suddenly tried to apotheosise them for its survival.
  In today’s context the episode of Anasuya and the birth of the trice-headed Dattatraya, written by Brahmins themselves, would put the Hindu (…)

• The UPA Government should Fulfil its Promise on Land Reforms

  5 October 2007, by Bharat Dogra

  The Common Minimum Programme of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) clearly stated: “Landless families will be endowed with land through implementation of land ceiling and land redistribution legislation. No reversal of ceiling legislation will be permitted.”
  Such a statement makes it very clear that even though land reform is a State subject, the UPA Government is fully aware of its responsibility to ensure that land reforms remains firmly on the nation’s agenda. Any reversal of land (…)