Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Sedition Update by a layperson | Maj Gen S. G. Vombatkere

  14 May 2022, by S G Vombatkere

  May 12, 2022
  Following the 1857 so-called Great Indian Rebellion during the rule of the East India Company, British monarch Queen Victoria, issued proclamation in 1858 that India would be governed by and in the name of “the Crown”. Thus, the British territory of India (the State) and the British Government of India, were embodied in the British Monarch.
  An Indian subject who expressed disaffection by conduct or speech, was threatening the Crown by inciting people to rebellion. That was (…)

• A Langauge To Disrupt India? | T J S George

  14 May 2022, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Hindi zealots do not realise a basic fact of life — that zealotry is negative in its impact. Its dictionary meaning makes this abundantly clear. "Fanatical and uncompromising pursuit of religious, political or other ideals." Of course zealots do not see this. Their minds are so tightly closed that they cannot see the disserrvice they do to their cause — in this case, Hindi. Some of them allow zealotry to turn them into idiots.
  No one with basic commonsense would say (…)

• Sri Lankans have risen | Apratim Mukarji

  14 May 2022, by Apratim Mukarji

  Sri Lanka will continue to boil until the Rajapaksa clan in toto goes. This message has come out loud and clear. The first month of protests, street demonstrations, encirclements of government offices and slow breakdowns of law and order all over the island-nation over the past one month have now graduated to direct action by the enraged people. And there is no end to all these because the Rajapaksas are not yet truly scared of people’s power. They still seem to be confident in their ability (…)

• Rajapaksa Resigns: 13 years after victory, mass fury topples Mahinda | M.R. Narayan Swamy

  14 May 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  It is a tragedy that dictators never seem to grasp the reality until it is too late. Sri Lanka’s once seemingly unshakable strongman, Mahinda Rajapaksa, proved it yet again as he resigned as Prime Minister on Monday but not before creating more trouble that further stoked the fire on the streets.
  The reality is that the shelf life of the Rajapaksas has ended. The tens of thousands who have taken over the streets of the island nation appear to know it. But not President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. (…)

• Workers Made Homeless on May Day by Large Scale Slum Demolitions in Chandigarh | Bharat Dogra

  14 May 2022, by Bharat Dogra

  On May 1, in the presence of heavy police force, demolition squads of Chandigarh swooped on huts and houses of colony number 4, Industrial Area Phase 1. The homes and hearths of nearly 5000 people, all of them from the poorest sections of one of the most affluent cities of India, were destroyed within a few hours. Many of those removed have been living in this 40 year old colony for decades and have never known any other home.
  While this action would have been condemned under any (…)

• A suggestion for adapting Gandhian “bread labour” to current circumstances | Mark Lindley

  14 May 2022

  by Mark Lindley *
  7 May 2022
  Gandhiji upheld and adapted to contemporary Indian circumstances a moral precept of “bread labour” which he had found in Tolstoy’s writings [I should mention the well-established fact that Tolstoy had found the idea in an essay by a peasant in Siberia named Timofei Bondarev.], and the precept is still familiar in Indian culture. The basic idea was that every able-bodied person ought to do some physical work in order to deserve (with or without monetary (…)

• Is Tajmahal not a part of Indian Culture? | Ram Puniyani

  14 May 2022

  by Ram Puniyani
  Culture is a fascinating aspect of our life. To understand the culture one examines the social life and observes multiple facets of life, food habits, clothes, music, language, literature, architecture and aspects of religion, among other. In a plural diverse country like ours’ there is a mosaic which gives us the understanding of the complexity of our culture. In India there is a heavy intermingling, of facets of cultures contributed by people of different religions. So (…)

• Communalism in Contemporary India: A brief review of Bhagat Singh’s Perspective | Gurjeet Kaur and Prabhjot Kaur

  14 May 2022

  by Gurjeet Kaur and Prabhjot Kaur *
  Intensified conflicts between religious communities have shaken the country. We have been listening to news of communal violence from many places of the country like Jahangirpuri in Delhi, Karauli and Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Gujarat, Karnataka. Now the communal flames have also spread to Punjab, where two groups, Shiv Sena and Khalistani supporters, clashed. Communal violence is not a recent phenomenon in Indian (…)

• Production of Saffron Pedagogy and Its Implications | Vidyasagar Sharma

  14 May 2022

  The ongoing structural attacks through pedagogical changes will be catastrophic to the secular model of the Indian educational system. Recently, selected verses argues that “if the attempt had succeeded, we would have seen the fragility of the state-centered policy of decision-making in the curriculum. Indeed, this fragility can surface anytime, and the day may not be so far off if Hindu revivalism comes to dominate the state apparatus of education.”
  Kumar’s prediction about Hindu (…)

• Food for consumption or food for power assertion? Lessons from Hindu philosophical tradition | Garima Mani Tripathi

  14 May 2022

  by Garima Mani Tripathi
  Food is the basic necessity for human survival. However, at times, it does migrate from an individual-cultural choice to socio-political platform, plagued by controversies and divisive opinions. The recent clashes over serving of non-vegetarian food on popular Hindu festival day in a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) hostel is a terse reminder as to how even a basic necessity like food can metamorphose into an ideological agenda. However, many scholars who are (…)