Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• On Sahir Ludhianvi’s 100th Birth Anniversary: Reading the Political in the Poetic Imagination of Sahir Ludhianvi | Naren Singh Rao

  19 March 2021

  by Naren Singh Rao
  No one would disagree that Sahir Ludhianvi is one of the most cherished progressive poetic geniuses in the galaxy of Indian literary and culture firmament. He was a huge phenomenon in progressive aesthetics, though, in the initial years, when he was relatively young and primarily writing for cinema, many old-fashioned, classicist literary figures and critics refused to take him seriously. In fact, a large section of the contemporary Urdu literary world of that time (…)

• Scientific Temperament - Need of the Hour | Narendra Nayak

  19 March 2021

  by Prof. Narendra Nayak
  It is only through development of scientific temperament that this nation can truly realise the worth of the intellectual abilities of its people, writes
  I am writing this on the 28th February which is ‘celebrated’ as the National Science Day and the birthday of Sir C V Raman the only Indian who was working in India to have been awarded a Nobel prize in science to be more specific in physics, to date. That too an event which happened a century back! This brings us (…)

• The Idea and Practice of Democracy | Suranjita Ray

  19 March 2021, by Suranjita Ray

  Many incidents in the recent days in particular that curtail freedom of speech and expression, compel us to engage once again with the idea and practice of democracy. Freedom of speech and expression guaranteed in the Constitution of India in Article 19 as a Fundamental Right is the essence of liberty. It includes the right to voice one’s opinion, the right to seek information and ideas, and the right to receive and impart information, which are essential to strengthen democracy. However, it (…)

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  V.P. Menon: A Long Forgotten Hero | M R Narayan Swamy

  19 March 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

  by M R Narayan Swamy
  V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India by Narayani Basu Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Pages: 440; Price: Rs 799
  There could not have a more unacknowledged and forgotten hero of a modern nation like V.P. Menon, and there could not have been a more gripping and readable biography. Imagine a rags-to-riches story, a man who rose from being a coolie and a street hawker to a top post in the Raj, an architect of modern India, a right hand of Sardar Vallabhbhai (…)

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  Review: The French Revolutionary Script in Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1789-1802

  19 March 2021

  William S. Cormack. Patriots, Royalists, and Terrorists in the West Indies: The French Revolution in Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1789-1802. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2019. 392 pp. $70.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4875-0395-6.
  Reviewed by Grant Kleiser (Columbia University) Published on H-Atlantic (March, 2021)
  Those in the United States who are anxious about media misinformation, racial and class tensions, and insurrection might take some comfort in reading William S. Cormack’s (…)

• Can Myanmar’s civil disobedience movement restore democracy? | Nicola Williams

  19 March 2021

  by Nicola Williams*
  17 March 2021
  Since Myanmar’s coup and limitations placed on withdrawals indicate a looming liquidity crisis. Foreign trade is frozen have joined protests, refusing to do the dirty work of the military.
  A groundswell of protests have swept across the country, with Myanmar’s tech-savvy youth proving to be a creative mobilising force the old guard has not faced before. As Min Aung Hlaing sports bulletproof vests in rare outings and uses state media to blast the civil (…)

• Germany: Surprise on The Left | Victor Grossman

  19 March 2021

  by Victor Grossman
  (Note: Wissler quotations at the bottom)
  Surprise, surprise! Things worked out quite differently than expected at the congress of the LINKE, the left-wing party. The surprise was not that it took place at all, after the pandemic forced postponements from June to October and from October to last weekend, with most of the 580 delegates at home in front of a screen, microphone and camera; only the socially-distanced, masked leaders sat in a sparsely occupied hall in (…)

• Smugglers’ protests: Iran succumbs to trauma and demons | James M. Dorsey

  19 March 2021

  by James M. Dorsey*
  March 14, 2021 Recent clashes in the Iranian province of Sistan and Balochistan highlight Iran’s vulnerabilities as well as its inability to overcome trauma and control its demons.
  The clashes sparked by a crackdown on cross border fuel smuggling to neighbouring Pakistan achieved what past US and Saudi machinations failed to accomplish: ethnic unrest in a strategic, impoverished and long restive majority Sunni province in predominantly Shiite Iran.
  The clashes in (…)

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  Video: Afghan women orchestra Zohra at Berwaldhallen in Stockholm, March 2019

  19 March 2021
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  Video: Profit or Life? - The power of the pharmaceutical companies | A DW Documentary

  19 March 2021