Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  Tribute to Kushwant Singh | Jayaraj Vellur

  26 March 2021, by Jayaraj Vellur

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  [RELEVANT MATERIAL ADDED BY THE EDITORS
  "Every fascist regime needs communities and groups it can demonize in order to thrive. It starts with one group or two. But it never end s there. A movement built on hate can only sustain itself by continually creating fear and strife. Those of us today who feel secure because we are not Muslims or Christians are living in a fool’s paradise. The Sangh is already targeting the Leftist historians and “Westernized” youth. Tomorrow it will turn (…)

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  1967 Telegram from Peter Sellers regarding Satyajit Ray’s proposed film The Alien - A Science Fiction film That Never Got Made

  26 March 2021

  In the 1960s Satyajit Ray wrote a science fiction film script based on his story ’Bonkubabar Bandhu’. At the suggestion of Arthur C Clarke, this was sent to Columbia pictures but the film never got made

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  Lotz on John Bellamy Foster’s The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology

  26 March 2021

  John Bellamy Foster The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology
  Monthly Review Press, New York, 2020. 687 pp., £30 hb ISBN 9781583678367
  Reviewed by Corinna Lotz
  [Corinna Lotz’ book Finding Evald Ilyenkov – How a Soviet Philosopher who stood up for dialectics continues to inspire, was published by Real Democracy Movement in April 2019. She co-ordinates International Friends of Ilyenkov. Info@realdemocracymovement.org]
  More
  For too long it has been a cliché that a class-based (…)

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  The Story Behind Exiled Vladimir Lenin’s Journey to Russia in 1917 | The Film Lenin . . . The Train Part 1 & 2 | Damiano Damiani (1988)

  26 March 2021

  When the February revolution broke out in Russia, Lenin found himself stranded in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland. The only way home was through Germany, and so the exiled and Bolshevik leader, acting through a slimy intermediary (Swiss socialist Robert Grimm approached the German Ambassador to Switzerland to open negotiations, but it was Grimm’s compatriot Fritz Platten, who brokered the final agreement to allow Lenin and others exiles to travel by train through Germany to neutral Sweden.), (…)

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  Bola Sete - Tour de Force (1963)

  26 March 2021

  Bola Sete was a celebrated Brazilian guitarist

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  Table of Contents, Mainstream, Mar 20, 2021

  19 March 2021

  * The Afghanistan Imbroglio | Jamal Kidwai
  * What is behind the Jan 2021 Deaths of Migrants in Surat, Gujarat?
  * Red, Green, and Saffron - Changing Colours in the Political Landscape of West Bengal
  * 2021 West Bengal Assembly Elections: BJP losing ground | Arun Srivastava
  * 2021 West Bengal Elections: Fiftynine questions to Modi-raj by Anindya Ray

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Mar 20, 2021

  19 March 2021

  Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, March 20, 2021
  In September 2018, a judgement by Constitution bench of the Supreme Court ruled that all Hindu pilgrims regardless of gender can enter the Sabarimala hill shrine; and that any exception placed on women because of biological differences violates the Constitution - that the ban violates the right to equality under Article 14, and freedom of religion under Article 25. The ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala which has been vocal for (…)

• The US Led Afghanistan Peace Talks - a minefield | Jamal Kidwai

  19 March 2021

  by Jamal kidwai*
  In the backdrop of the May 1 deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, two documents being referred to as ‘moonshot’(unrealistic) have been ‘leaked’ by Afghanistan’s Tolo news channel.
  What has added to the complexity created by these developments is US President Biden’s interview, aired by ABC news on 17 March . In the interview Biden says it will be ‘tough’ to meet the 1 May deadline, but the complete drawdown will not take much longer.
  Getting back (…)

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  A Roadside Mishap or A Systemic Liquidation ? A Fact-Finding Report on the January 2021 Deaths of Migrants in Surat District of Gujarat

  19 March 2021

  by Fact Finding Committee [1]
  The article is based on a Fact-Finding Report [2] of an accident killing 15 migrant workers near Surat. The Surat city is projected as an illuminating illustration of the ‘Development Paradigm’ being followed by Gujarat state. The article delineates how this model has been grossly treating and inhumanly exploiting the workers. They are not only deprived of work-related legally enshrined rights and benefits but they have to live and work in inhuman and (…)

• Conquering West Bengal: BJP’s Dream Turns Into a Nightmare | Barun Das Gupta

  19 March 2021, by Barun Das Gupta

  BJP’s fond dream of “conquering” West Bengal by winning 200 seats (out of a total of 294) as confidently claimed by Amit Shah, is turning into a nightmare. In the Mahabharata we have read the Mushal Parva and the destruction of the Yadu Vansha. The BJP in West Bengal is facing a similar situation. Lacking the human material to run a government and without a chief ministerial face to present to the public, the BJP thought that the best way out is to organize large-scale defections from the (…)