Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Stooping to Conquer: Will it Work?

  17 March 2019, by Badri Raina

  In his time Jesus of Nazareth was an oppositional figure, hounded by both the priesthood and the Roman overlords. So, when he gathered his choice followers to a Last Supper, at which he washed their feet and shared his body and blood with them, he told them that their path would be full of thorns and suffering. Although none greater than his own crucifixion on behalf of the meek and the powerless.
  Narendra Modi’s replication of the washing of indigent feet at Prayag Raj recently was of (…)

• People Will Win

  17 March 2019

  BINOY VISWAM
  We are passing through a very crucial period in the history of our country. The political battle for which we are gearing up is to determine the destiny of our nation. The formations and strategy of the battle are being finalised by various forces depending upon different factors. Political developments are taking place in a swift manner. The Left and democratic forces understand the complexity of the political conditions. The questions they pose before the nation are also (…)

• Modi’s War Rhetoric may Boomerang on India

  17 March 2019, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The government should welcome Islamabad’s move to ban militant outfits designated by the UN Security Council as a step in the right direction. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain by making a gesture. But a leap of faith is needed.
  Pakistan is crossing the Rubicon. Even if it is only acting under compulsion to conform to the standards set by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, which has included Pakistan in its ‘grey list’, the Pakistani move overlaps certain templates (…)

• In the death of Namvar Singh, not only Hindi but the world of all Indian Languages lost its Greatest Critic

  17 March 2019

  TRIBUTE
  by ApoorvAnand
  A critic is never the central figure in literature but Namvar Singh remained the first citizen of the world of Hindi, in all its aspects for more than sixty years. It amazes one to think that a critic attracted so much attention and also affection of the writers and readers as well for such a long time. He was awe-inspiring but his partiality for the new voices was too apparent. Many of them remember fondly his phone calls or post cards after he had read something (…)

• State Murderers of Jamal Khashogi and their Cohorts Must Not Get Away

  17 March 2019

  by Gautam Sen
  Jamal Ahmed Khashoggi, a journalist of the Washington Post newspaper of the USA, was brutally and in a unique diabolical manner, put to death on October 2, 2018 when he went to obtain documents connected with his proposed marriage with his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cenghiz. The incident occurred inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, and was executed by a hit squad of the Saudi Government headed by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBD), specially sent to Istanbul to (…)

• The Anatomy of Capital Punishment in India

  17 March 2019

  by Saumitra Mohan
  Prison administration is an inalienable part of our justice delivery system which, many feel, calls for urgent relook and attention. The prison administration in India has existed almost unchanged since its inception though a nomenclatural change has been effected in the meanwhile. Our prisons are no longer called ‘jails’ and have been christened as correctional homes today in keeping with the changed ethos.
  Even though the prison infrastructures have improved (…)

• Ten Per Cent Quota: The Megalomania of Savarna Reservation

  17 March 2019

  by Navneet Sharma and Anamica
  “The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.”
  —Bertrand Russell
  The year 2019 arrived with a thud. The highly branded “invincibility” of the concordant couple at the helm bit the dust in electoral politics in the Hindi heartland. The land beneath their feet had slipped and (…)

• Leaves from the Jungle and Anthropological Jigsaw

  17 March 2019, by J.J. Roy Burman

  Introduction
  The anthropological method did not exist the way we know today almost a century back. It was established through prolonged field data collection, as was established by Malinowski in the study of the Trobriand Islands in the Western Pacific. Almost a similar trend was followed through by Radcliffe Brown in the study of the Andaman Islands. The method entailed prolonged interaction between the researcher and the studied community—better known as the ‘Participant Observer’ method (…)

• Subhas Mukhopadhyay: A Heretical Bengali Intellectual

  17 March 2019, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Poet Subhas Mukhopadhyay’s birth centenary was recently observed in February 2019. An article on him appeared in Mainstream (March 2, 2019). This is another article on the poet. It was sent to us quite sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
  Subhas Mukhopadhyay was a unique intellectual, who enriched Bengali poetry and journalism by his distinct styles of writing, choice of words and idioms. Other than being a major Bengali poet and prose writer, he made (…)

• Anatomy of Governance in Kashmir over the Years

  17 March 2019

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Muzamil Yaqoob
  What Happened to Governance in Kashmir? by Aijaz Ashraf Wani; Oxford University Press; 2019; pp. 387; Rs 995.
  “Breakdown occurs when a civilisation fails to respond creatively to its challenges. Instead of changing with the times, the declining civilisation idolises, say, an outworn technique, or institution, a form of government, a particular type of marketing, and so on, which was effective for one challenge but not for the next one.”
  ‘Democracy, Good (…)