Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Sri Lanka: Gotabaya plunges into true Gotabayaism

  9 February 2020, by Apratim Mukarji

  “Gota’s Goons” is now a popular phrase in Sri Lanka. This is not surprising, because Sri Lanka’s newly elected President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, does not believe in wasting time to get into action.
  Let us talk about a recent manifestation of this Gotabaya dictum. In early December, as journalist Maduka, who was recently transferred to the Lake House Media Department (the Lake House group of media is Sri Lanka’s largest media group owned by the government), was attacked by trade union members (…)

• Nothing Really to Celebrate in the New Year

  9 February 2020, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Nothing really to celebrate this new year start, as eerie build-ups overtake, as divisive tactics together with marked-targeted-killings take place. Signs of another round of partitioning out there. It’s about time to get out all possible works on the Partition, to try focus on the havoc it had heaped. Maybe then we can realise what could be in store for us, the people of this country, if don’t wake up, sit up and cry hoarse against the implementation of the CAA, NRC, NPR.
  Also, (…)

• My Vision of India 2047 AD

  9 February 2020

  by Shyam Menon
  The following is the text of the 21st D.S. Borker Memorial Lecture held at IIC, New Delhi on August 24, 2019.
  Professor Ashis Nandy, Professor Aseem Prakash, Mr Suhas Borker, the Trustees of the D.S. Borker Memorial Foundation, the Borker Family, members of the IIC, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:
  Let me first of all express my gratitude to Mr Suhas Borker for inviting me to deliver the 21st D.S. Borker Memorial Lecture. I am also grateful to Professor Ashis (…)

• Dogs of War

  9 February 2020, by Badri Raina

  The women plant themselves, waving The Flag, flaunting The Preamble. In their settled do-or-die, They seem one with the earth they occupy. The chill, the calumny, nor inducement Dent the steel of their immovable intent. Their sentient innocence is more Than the lumbering slouch of the farmer: It is an armour we have not Encountered before. So how do we deal with this Searing stab of conscience at our door?
  Let loose the dogs of war, we say. Throw mud till some tell-tale sticks. Let devoted (…)

• Victory of Opposition Alliance in Jharkhand Assembly Elections

  9 February 2020

  by Prannv Dhawan and Ishaan Bansal
  The results of the Jharkhand State Assembly elections represent a comprehensive electoral setback for the ruling political establishment. This setback is a major one not just because it is the first absolute electoral defeat faced by the rather triumphalist political dispensation after the landslide victory in the May 2019 Lok Sabha elections but also because it revives the traditional electoral logic of the Opposition-led, anti-BJP rainbow alliances (…)

• Hinduism Respects Diversity

  9 February 2020

  by Sharad Rajimwale
  When we notice that an attempt is being made these days by certain dour, orthodox forces, imagining themselves in the role of the exclusive voice of Hindu culture and religion, to enforce a uniform, homogenizing interpretation of it and using it as a clout to browbeat ‘others’, it is natural to feel that a macabre distortion is being introduced somewhere in manufac-turing this line of thinking and peddling it as the soul of Hindu way of life. Not only, one feels, is (…)

• A Critical Review of the Modi 1.0 Regime in India

  9 February 2020

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Astha Ahuja
  India: the Wrong Transition by Anand K. Sahay; Aakar Books, New Delhi; 2019; pp. 288; Hard Cover: Rs 595.
  The book, India: the Wrong Transition, by senior journalist Anand K. Sahay is a collection of his monthly columns in various news-papers. There are 69 articles which have been divided into three sections. The articles range from the political situation in India after the general elections of 2014 and the one following the general elections of 2019 to the (…)

• Homage to Kalpana Dutt who passed away 25 years ago

  9 February 2020, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Today is February 8, 2020. Twentyfive years ago on this day passed away the distinguished revolutionary, Kalpana Dutt, in Kolkata. The following lines were written by N.C. twentyfive years ago and published in this journal’s February 18, 1995 issue. It is being reproduced on the occasion of Kalpana’s twentyfifth death anniversary. February 8, 1995 came and went with hardly anyone remembering her on that day. Kalpana’s birth centenary on July 27, 2013 also went (…)

• Mass Resistance to Majoritarian Onslaught

  27 January 2020, by SC

  As we approach the seventieth anniversary of the declaration of the Indian Republic on January 26, our thoughts go back to the words of our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in his message to the nation on our first Republic Day on January 26, 1950.
  On that day, Nehru had observed:
  “There is a peculiar appropriateness about this January 26, for this day links up the past with the present and this present is seen to grow out of that past. Twenty years ago we took the first pledge of (…)

• Women-led Revolutions: The Shaheen Bagh Protests

  27 January 2020

  by Rushda Siddiqui
  Heading the anti-CAA/NPR/NRC protest are the women of Shaheen Bagh of Delhi, who came out on the night of December 15—when a protest by students of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia ended with the police entering the hostels, library and residences of students to break their protest movement. The standoff between the students and the police at Jamia and Aligarh Muslim University raised many red flags at various levels. There was global condemnation by academics and civil (…)