Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Asian power helped to end British Empire in India | M.R. Narayan Swamy

  21 October, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India’s Road to Freedom
  by Mithi Mukherjee
  HarperCollins India Pages: 283; Price: Rs 799 The unprecedented non-violent mass movement led by Mahatma Gandhi led to India’s freedom from British colonial rule, right? Yes and no. Yes, because the statement is true; no, because the assertion is not the whole truth.
  Offering a new global perspective on modern Indian history, historian Mithi Mukherjee covers new ground by identifying Asianism as the (…)

• Patriarchy, Public Memory, and the Burden of Grace | Pallavi Devi and Rinkie Bora

  21 October, by Pallavi Devi, Rinkie Bora

  Death has a peculiar power over public memory. It can transform a controversial individual into a symbol of sacrifice, heroism, or national pride, often making criticism seem not merely unwelcome but morally offensive. The death of a public figure can change the terms of a conversation almost overnight. Questions that once demanded answers become uncomfortable reminders of the past. Those who raise them risk being accused of insensitivity, bitterness, or an inability to let the dead rest. (…)

• Hamara paisa, hamara hisaab | Varna Sri Raman

  21 October, by Varna Sri Raman

  BOOK EXCERPT
  An excerpt from Chapter 5 of The Measurement Trap: India’s Quest for Social Progress Through Eight Decades (Routledge, forthcoming). Endnotes have been omitted; full references appear in the book. ON 6 APRIL 1996, in the market town of Beawar in Ajmer district, a few hundred labourers, farmers and their organisers sat down at Chang Gate and stayed for forty days. The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, the organisation of workers and peasants that had by then held a series of (…)

• The ‘Total Strike’ Has Come for France | Frédéric Lordon

  21 October

  The people are in revolt, and the entire social order is collapsing
  19 October 2026
  It’s like a traffic accident: a fatal junction, a death. Macronism is dying at the crossroads for which it has always been destined: the intersection of capital and people. Here, capital appears in its purest form — the form of money that makes money, without mediation: finance capital. And opposite it: the fire. The Financial Times ran an early headline: ‘France Caught Between the Bond Market and the (…)

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  Video: The Friendship Files - How Modi and Adani Stole India | Shadow Citizens

  9 October

  Play
  How Modi and Adani Stole India | The Friendship Files by Bcubed https://youtu.be/XEK8QRXSKLM?si=XkVPLk0IvIOSJ34R

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  Joint Statement by Left Parties on restrictions to prevent the October 10 mobilisation over fixing of electoral rolls & accountability of Election Commission

  9 October

  JOINT STATEMENT BY LEFT PARTIES
  October 9, 2026
  Right to Assemble & Protest A Fundamental Right
  We strongly condemn the extraordinary restrictions imposed by the Delhi Police under the directions of the Union Home Minister to prevent and curb the October 10 mobilisation against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the functioning of the Election Commission of India (ECI). The denial of permission for the proposed demonstration, extensive barricading, (…)

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  CPI Statement on Repression Unleashed by the Modi Government to Prevent Peaceful Agitation - Oct 9, 2026

  9 October

  Communist Party of India
  October 9, 2026
  Press Release
  The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued the following statement today (October 9, 2026):
  The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India has strongly condemned the repressive tactics of the BJP government to crush the democratic rights of people to protest.
  CJP and all Left student youth organisations have declared that they will have peaceful demonstrations at Jantar Mantar in Delhi to demand (…)

• Uttar Pradesh Police fast losing its Credibility | Sandeep Pandey and Shashank Singh

  9 October, by Sandeep Pandey

  On 7 October, 2026, a bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Achal Sachdev of Allahabad High Court remarked that police’s condition in Uttar Pradesh is a mess and that the officers think they can do anything and get away with it. Hearing the habeas corpus petition of one Deepak, the Court told the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Gautam Buddha Nagar and Station House Officer that they should be ashamed of having issued a notice to the accused under section 130 of Bhartiya Nagrik (…)

• Societal collapse of sense making | Sunil Ray

  9 October, by Sunil Ray

  Is it that the CJP movement that erupted across India in mid-2026 is testament of the societal collapse of sense making that mirrors death of aspiration? Vervaeke, a noted cognitive scientist and a psychologist, calls it a crisis of meaning at the macro level or existential exhaustion (Vervaeke, 2019, Flipo, F and Schneider, F, ( 2015), This, as one learns from history, emerges when the development and institutional order loses its capacity to connect peoples’ lived experiences with the (…)

• Subversion of Credibility of the Election Commission of India | Arup Kumar Sen

  8 October, by Arup Kumar Sen

  A report carried in The Indian Express on September 23, 2026, has completely shattered public confidence in the mode of operations of the Election Commission of India. To put it in the words of the report: “The Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which began in Bihar in June 2025, an otherwise routine clean-up of the rolls, has struck more than 13 crore names off the draft voter rolls in 30 States and Union Territories. This has put the Commission at the (…)