Mainstream Weekly

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• Jesuit Communist | Basu Acharya

  9 July 2021

  by Basu Acharya*
  July 7, 2021
  The only time I met Father Stan Swamy was nearly four and half years back. On a lazy summer afternoon, I arrived in Ranchi, the state capital of Jharkhand, to attend a two-day seminar commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution. The organisers had asked Comrade Subodh Mitra and me to speak on the subject of communist unity. Delegates from almost all mainstream and communist revolutionary groups were present and, despite patiently (…)

• Death of Fr Swamy has thrown open many Constitutional questions in public domain that look for answers from the authorities | Arun Srivastava

  9 July 2021

  by Arun Srivastava
  Who is guilty — Father Stan Swamy or those who kept him behind bars? These are not the only two questions that need a reply from the authorities. Swamy died in the NIA custody, but he has left behind a number of questions that haunt the common people. The primary question is why he was arrested, what was the nature of the crime for which he was made to languish in the prison. People rightly describe his death as the institutional death.
  The most relevant and (…)

• Rethinking Ideology | Murzban Jal

  9 July 2021

  by Murzban Jal*
  I refuse to engage in any philosophical discussion. V.I. Lenin, ‘To Maxim Gorky’, 1908.
  The Mouse Trap and the Iron Cage of Capitalism
  One of the most important questions in Marxism is the question on the theoretical nature of Marx’s discipline and what place “ideology” would have in it. By and large, the political left (which is largely the Stalinist and Maoist left and their illegitimate children) which had grown more from the politics of the Second International and (…)

• Higher Education In India: Need For Internal Governance | Gull Mohammad Wani

  9 July 2021

  ’ When I give food to poor they call me a saint, when I ask them why they are poor, they call me a communist’ —Helder Camara
  The university system in India as we experienced it suffers from multiple ailments. It was so before the pandemic and even the economic recession. The crisis is partly systemic and largely the result of crisis of leadership. The public universities have turned into intellectual deserts and university teachers are no special crop who can stand up and be (…)

• Dilip Kumar passes on / Prisons / Handling a Divorce Annoucement

  9 July 2021, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS - 7 July 2021
  Humra Quraishi
  As I was about to file my this week’s column, came in the news of the passing away of the legendary film star, Dilip Kumar...nostalgia tightening its hold, taking me back to the summer of 1999, when I had met him and his wife Saira Banu.
  I was well aware that the couple, Saira Banu and Dilip Kumar, were in New Delhi. And I was keen to interview them .Tried all possible sources but the closest I could get was to the (…)

• Environmental Sensitivity and Total Revolution: Report of a National Webinar | Joseph & Karekatti

  9 July 2021

  by Siby K. Joseph, Tripti Karekatti
  On the occasion of the World Environment Day and Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan’s Call for Total Revolution, Sevagram Ashram Pratishthan, Wardha, in collaboration with the Department of English, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, organised a national webinar on June 5, 2021. In the 1970s environmental issues attracted the attention of governments and international organizations like the United Nations. In 1972 the United Nations called the first major (…)

• Calling Azaan and the question of sound pollution | K M Ajir Kutty

  9 July 2021

  by K M Ajir Kutty *
  The Hindu of March 18, 2021 had carried a brief news story about the Vice Chancellor of the Allahabad University, Sangita Srivastava, complaining to the District administration of Prayagraj about the Muslim prayer call (Azaan/Adhan/Bank) being given loudly denying her the comfort of a sound sleep in the early hours of the morning. As the copy of the Vice Chancellor’s letter of complaint dated March 3, went viral on social media platforms, her plaint inevitably became (…)

• Manual scavenging laws in India: Some Observations | Jannat

  9 July 2021

  by Jannat
  Introduction
  Manual scavenging refers to cleaning, removing, disposing of, or otherwise dealing with human excreta in an unsanitary latrine, an open drain or sewer, a septic tank, or a pit manually. Buckets, brooms, and shovels are common hand instruments used by manual scavengers. Using brooms and tin plates, the workers must transfer the excreta into baskets, which they then transport to disposal sites, which can be several kilometres distant. Personal protection equipment (…)

• A hybrid war to replace Afghan ‘forever war’? | MK Bhadrakumar

  9 July 2021, by M K Bhadrakumar

  by MK Bhadrakumar
  July 6, 2021
  The British newspaper Daily Telegraph did some kite-flying in the weekend that London is considering open-ended deployment of a contingent of elite special forces to Afghanistan “ to provide training to Afghan units and deploy with them on the ground as advisers.”
  At the same time, the New York Times reported that White House approves Gen. Austin S. Miller, the top American commander in Afghanistan, staying on at his post for “at least a couple more (…)

• Israel deprives Central Europeans of moral cover | James M. Dorsey

  9 July 2021

  James M. Dorsey
  July 4, 2021
  When Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid recently sparked a war of words with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki he was doing more than resisting Central European attempts at rewriting the history and legacy of the Holocaust and right-wing nationalistic flirting with anti-Semitic tropes.
  The war centred on a bill debated in the Polish parliament that makes it essentially impossible for Jews to claim property they owned before the Holocaust. Mr. Lapid (…)