Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Sachar Committee Report on Indian Muslims: Right Wing Lies Exposed

  24 April 2007, by Badri Raina

  India’s majoritarian fascists, represented in Parliament by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are in a blue funk. The findings of the “Prime Ministers’ High Level Committee” (set up on March 9, 2005) headed by the former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice Rajindar Sachar, have in its Report submitted to Parliament on November 30, 2006 nailed the long-touted Right-wing disinformation about Indian Muslims as a skein of lies.
  Drawing on every conceivable data source, (…)

• Bhishma Loses Out to Our Modern VIPs

  24 April 2007

  So there are death sentences and death sentences. When terrorist Mohammed Afzal was ordered to be hanged, communal emotions led to a clash of fundamentalisms. When college girl Priyadarshini’s killer was given the same order, human emotions led to a collective sigh of approval. And why not? A qualified lawyer with a wife and daughter brutally assaulting his college-mate, raping her, then strangling her to death is a horror unimaginable to normal humans.
  But there is another issue (…)

• Challenges Ahead for Abe’s Japan

  24 April 2007

  Shinzo Abe, the newly elected Prime Minister of Japan, is generally considered to be a hawk and a nationalist. He has declared that he wants to make Japan ‘a country that is trusted and loved’ by the entire world. In his first address to the Japanese parliament he announced that he wants to pursue pro-active diplomacy including an aggressive pursuit of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, an honour many feel that Japan has clearly earned. He also expressed his willing-ness to engage (…)

• Towards Tri-Continental Perspective

  24 April 2007

  The adverse impact of the neo-liberal reforms being aggressively pursued in the name of globalisation since the 1970s in Latin America and the 1980s in Asia and Africa has resulted in certain common trends and patterns of underdevelopment. The Southern continents need to not only realise this but also learn from each other’s experience and forge stronger political alliances and economic integration that they seem to be already moving towards independently in each of these continents. In the (…)

• Sachar Committee Report : A Review

  24 April 2007, by Anees Chishti

  The report of the High-Level Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the chairmanship of Justice Rajindar Sachar, retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, to study the ‘Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India’, has been a subject of wide discussion in the press, among parliamentarians and other politicians as well as in other informed sections of the society.
  The seven-member Committee had as its members eminent personalities like Sayid (…)

• Technology Cannot Be Monopolised

  24 April 2007

  Iran has restarted its nuclear enrichment programme. This follows the nuclear explosions made by India, Pakistan and North Korea. These steps have been taken within the confines of international law. India and Pakistan had not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). North Korea had legally pulled out of the same in 2003. Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy sources within the NPT. Yet the prominent world powers have imposed sanctions against India, Pakistan and North Korea (…)

• Human Rights : Basic Issues

  24 April 2007

  The government’s decision to set up a National Human Rights Commission is a significant indication of its being able to read the signs of the times. The Prime Minister has made the eloquent claim about his government’s commitment to upholding human rights: “We must send a clear message that we do not tolerate violation of human rights.” He at the same time conceded that “there is need to identify the weaknesses, the gaps between pronouncements and action, and between legislation and its (…)

• Lebanon War II : Exploring its Outcome

  24 April 2007

  After 34 days of devastating war between Israel and Lebanon, a prominent question that crops up is: what has actually been accomplished? To put it concisely, while the Israeli aggression has achieved something, it has solved nothing. Undeniably the Israeli leaders can record this achievement: the Israelis got what they wanted-a timely provocation to annihilate the Hezbollah once and for all as well as send a warning to Iran to refrain from producing nuclear fuel or face a military invasion (…)

• Socialists-Communists: Need for a Continuing Dialogue

  24 April 2007, by Surendra Mohan

  The parliamentary General Election in 1967 was contested by the non-Congress parties with limited electoral adjustments. Dr Lohia’s strategy of non-Congressism was more or less accepted in practice, if not in theory. After the election, Samyukta Vidhayak Dals (SVDs) formed their coalition governments in UP, Bihar, Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK, having secured majority on its own, formed its single-party government, while in Kerala and West Bengal, the (…)

• A Comic Tragedy

  24 April 2007

  It is a tragedy, when it is not a comedy, that relations between Pakistan and India have remained at an absurd level even after 60 years when the country was divided along incredibly ununderstandable lines. Those who have known what happened when India was partitioned and are still alive will understand those traumatic times which later generations will never relise.
  At the lowest level of comedy, the Muslim League which spearheaded the campaign for a Pakistan would never give their (…)