Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Dayamoyee: A Blazing Star in Vidyasagar’s Neighbourhood

  27 January 2020

  by A.K. Biswas
  The year 2020 marks the bicentennial celebration of educationist and social reformer, Iswar Chandra Bandyopadhyay, more popularly known and eulogised as Vidyasagar, who was born on September 26, 1820 in village Birsingha under Ghatal police station of district Midnapur. Intensive intellectual activities in West Bengal are underway to commemorate his contri-butions in various fields.
  Dayamoyee, an untouchable illiterate woman, belonged to a faceless village in the (…)

• Subhash Mukhopadhyay (1919-2003)

  27 January 2020

  by Sourin Bhattacharya
  The following article was published in Indian Literature from where it is being reproduced with due acknowledgement.
  Subhash Mukhopadhyay, a major figure of Bangla poetry of the 1940s, passed away on July 8, 2003. His first collection of poems Padatik (Pedestrian) was published in 1940 with the scholarship money of his lifelong friend, Debiprasad Chattopadhyay (1918-1993), himself an eminent philosopher and noted author of Lokayata. But the book came out under the (…)

• Religious Faith, Secularism and Gandhi

  27 January 2020, by Gargi Chakravartty

  The following paper was presented at an International Winter School on “Globalistion and Religious Diversity: Issues, Perspectives and the Relevance of Gandhian Philosophy”, organised by the Ambedkar University, Delhi and Aarhus University, on January 8-14, 2020.
  Commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, I find it most relevant to talk about a subject like religious faith and secularism. Gandhi, a truly religious man, struggled throughout his life to make the people of (…)

• Pardon Me For Writing

  27 January 2020, by Sagari Chhabra

  Pardon me for writing
  For you have wrenched
  The tongue of the students
  And used their pens
  To impair their legs,
  Forcing your way
  Into their library.
  About entering the mosque
  I will not say,
  For now it is the norm
  To break mosques
  And to say your God
  Was born right here.
  I say your God
  Because mine is everywhere,
  Omnipresent,
  But you have reduced Him
  To a historical figure
  With birth pangs and waste,
  While you forbid menstruating women
  To enter the (…)

• Citizenship Amendment Act 2019: India and Its Neighbours

  27 January 2020

  by Soumya Awasthi
  We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign, socialist, SECULAR, democratic republic and to secure to all its citizens: Justice, social, economic and political; Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; Equality of status and of opportunity; And to promote among them all Fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation...
  —Preamble of the Constitution of India, 1949 (…)

• In other words, who is lying?

  27 January 2020, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The President of India in June 2019, six months ago said: “My Government has decided to implement the process of NRC (National Register of Citizens).” The Prime Minister of India in December 2019, just a few days ago stated: “My Government has never discussed the word NRC.” So whose government is running the country? In other words, who is lying?
  For the general elections early this year, the BJP’s manifesto said: “We are committed to the enactment of the Citizenship (…)

• Governor of Another Kind

  27 January 2020, by Devaki Jain

  TRIBUTE
  Shri. T.N. Chaturvedi, was a Governor of another kind. I had a personal experience of witnessing how he conducted the business of a Governor. It was exemplary. He kept a distance from both bureaucracy and civil society but was always there as an arbiter of justice.
  I had three close encounters with him as a citizen of Bangalore during his governorship. The first revealed both his magnanimity and his consciousness of what can be called national events, national initiatives. In (…)

• Re-orienting the Republic Day

  27 January 2020

  by Bhartendu Kumar Singh
  When the first Republic Day was celebrated in 1950, people just poured out here, there, and everywhere on the Delhi roads to catch a glimpse of their first President as he drove from the majestic Rashtrapati Bhavan towards the then Irwin (now National) Stadium, venue of India’s first Republic Day parade. However, as years have passed by, there is an artificial distance between the Republic and its people, best evident in the contemporary Republic Day celebrations. (…)

• Understanding Arab Spring: Interrogating the Role of Media and Diplomatic Communications

  27 January 2020

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Bharti Chhibber
  Arab Spring: Not Just A Mirage by Nilofar Suhrawardy; New Delhi: Gaurav Book Centre; 2019; pp. 167; Rs 825.
  It has been nine years since the world witnessed one of the largest wave of democracy of the 21st Century in the form of Arab Spring. There were pro-democracy protests and uprisings against the authoritarian rules across the Middle East and North Africa starting from 2010 with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. It was followed by uprisings in Egypt, (…)

• Women targeted by the Cops!

  27 January 2020, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Shouldn’t all possible Commissions for Women and also those for the Human Rights sit up and take note of the fact that in these very recent protests against the CAA and NRC and NPR, the police force has been not just blatantly brute whilst dealing with the protestors but there are also news reports that confirm the fact that policemen have kicked and punched women in the abdomen, have pulled off veils and burqas and hijabs and also touched breasts of the women protestors! Even (…)