Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Dec 12, 2020

  11 December 2020

  Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Dec 12, 2020
  It is astonishing that the Supreme Court of India gave permission to the Government of Narendra Modi to go ahead with the foundation laying ceremony for the new Parliament and Central Vista complex while saying that no construction should begin. A clear contradiction in terms. The Court’s granting of the nod, while litigation is underway on ‘change of land use’ is very unfortunate. Due process is not the way this government functions, the (…)

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  Nitai Basu, last ‘comrade’ of Kakdwip battle, is no more | Subhankar Gupta

  11 December 2020

  by Subhankar Gupta
  Nitai Basu (real name Nityagopal Basu), the last activist of historic peasant struggle of Kakdwip led by the All India Krishak Sabha in West Bengal within a year after India achieved independence passed away on December 6, 2020. AIKS was the peasant front of undivided Communist Party of India. He was 90.
  After the Tebhaga movement was called off by the WB unit of AIKS and state CPI leadership under compelling circumstances, a large number of peasants landless and (…)

• Crises in the Congress Party and the Total Loss of the Self | Murzban Jal

  11 December 2020

  by Murzban Jal
  As for the individual, everyone is a child of its time; so philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as foolish to fancy that any philosophy can transcend its present world, as that an individual could leap out of his time or jump over Rhodes. If a theory transgresses its time, and builds up a world as it ought to be, it has an existence merely in the unstable element of opinion, which gives room to every wandering fancy.
  G.W. F. Hegel.
  Only a (…)

• Accord Highest Priority to Resolving the Farmer Issue: A Simple Three-Point Agreement Can Show the Way Forward | Bharat Dogra

  11 December 2020, by Bharat Dogra

  It is amazing that a resolution of the stand-off with farmers’ movements has been delayed for so long. A government which never misses a chance to announce its patriotism has allowed issues which harm the national interests of India to fester for so long. I am writing this note on the morning of December 10. A satisfactory solution acceptable to all should have been announced at least a week back and an agreement reached on this basis.
  The solution can have the following three basic (…)

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  Repeal Agri-Laws: Text of Memorandum Submitted by Opposition Political Parties | Dec 9, 2020

  11 December 2020

  December 9, 2020
  Press Release
  Due to restrictions of Covid protocol, only a five-member delegation is permitted to meet the Hon’ble President of India.
  More than twenty political parties in the country have extended their support to the ongoing historic farmers’ struggles and asked for the repeal of the retrograde Agri-Laws and the Electricity Amendment Bill.
  We are releasing the text of the memorandum submitted by the five-member delegation to the President of India for (…)

• Gandhi’s Declaration Of Civil Disobedience Movement In 1930, German Social Democracy, and Franz Josef Furtwängler | Nirode K. Barooah

  11 December 2020, by Nirode K. Barooah

  by Nirode K. Barooah
  [ While almost the whole German popular press denounced the Indian Civil Disobedience movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 Franz Josef Furtwängler (1894-1964), the International Secretary of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) tried to persuade his fellow Social Democrats and Trade-unionists to understand Gandhi and the Indian Freedom movement on the ground of anti-imperialism. Furtwängler who had toured India during 1926—27 as a member (…)

• India’s Gulf strategy is chasing Chinese phantoms | M K Bhadrakumar

  11 December 2020, by M K Bhadrakumar

  December 8, 2020
  The Chinese statement of December 2 at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on the ‘Question of Palestine and the Situation in the Middle East’ should trigger introspection in New Delhi. Without doubt, this must be one of the most forceful endorsements of the Palestinian cause in recent times by a great power.
  It comes at a time when the narrative in India, scripted by the pro-US, pro-Israeli lobbyists in the media, has crystallised that Palestine cause is (…)

• Caste struggle of the Cristian community | John Dayal

  11 December 2020, by John Dayal

  Exactly seven decades on, the Dalit Christian does not seem to be winning her, or his, a battle for human dignity, political rights, and a level playing field. And it is not surprising that this is so, for the Christian of Indian Dalit origin fights a battle on three fronts, unaided, with few resources, no allies, and armed with little more than in the justness of the cause.
  The first front is against the Constitution of India by law established, as they say.
  The Presidential Order of (…)

• Backward Caste among Muslims in Bihar | Sohail Akhtar

  11 December 2020

  by Dr. Sohail Akhtar
  Backward castes are a collective term used by the Government of India to classify castes which are socially and educationally disadvantaged. It is one of several official classifications of the population of India, along with Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs). The other backward castes (OBCs) were found to comprise 52% of the country’s population by the Mandal Commission report of 1980. It has also mentioned that the castes system is found in all the (…)

• Why 2021 BTC election is crucial for the BJP in Assam | Nurul Hassan

  11 December 2020

  by Nurul Hassan *
  The North-Western region of Assam had a long experience of volatility as demand for a separate political entity ‘Bodoland’ was partially come to an end with the agreement of Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) in 2003 entrusting four districts of Assam i.e. Kokrajhar, Chirrang, Baksha and Udalguri as Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD), a new political setting within the larger democratic framework of Indian constitution. Despite a plain area, the geopolitical space (…)