Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Netaji on Our Freedom Struggle and India after Independence

  28 January 2019

  On the occasion of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s 122nd birth anniversary on January 23 this year, we are carrying the following excerpts from Netaji’s speeches and writings while remembering that stalwart of our freedom struggle.
  This is Subhas Chandra Bose speaking to you over the Azad Hind Radio.
  For about a year I have waited in silence and patience for the march of events and now that the hour has struck, I come forward to speak.
  The fall of Singapore means the collapse of the (…)

• Measuring the Colossus

  28 January 2019, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  The Republic of India is now thirty-eight years old. It has weathered many a storm and has come to be recognised as a functioning democracy. The tremendous interest of the voter to exercise his right to vote is taken as proof of the enduring quality of our democracy. From this phenomenon, our Prime Minister seems to have drawn the conclusion that an unlettered electorate has a wider vision, a broader outlook. According to him, literacy ”does more to narrow the vision (…)

• The Third Battle of Panipat: Let us examine its True Impact dispassionately

  28 January 2019

  by Basudev Mazumdar
  BJP President Amit Shah has again got his history wrong. While inaugurating the BJP’s national convention recently on January 11, 2019 in New Delhi for giving a push to poll preparedness, he compared the ensuing Lok Sabha election with the third Panipat battle of 1761 AD (January 14, 1761) when the Peshwa regime was vanquished by the Afghan ruler, Ahmad Shah Abdali. He said that the defeat led to a slavery of 200 years. People should not forget that and make similar (…)

• Survival Crisis and Increasing Relevance of Gandhiji’s Ideas for Resolving this Crisis

  28 January 2019

  by Bharat Dogra
  I Introduction
  There is a growing realisation that our world is increasingly faced with a survival crisis in the sense that the very life-nurturing conditions of our planet, which made such amazing biodiversity possible on earth, are threatened. Time-bound solutions have to be found within the next two decades to prevent several of these threats from crossing the much-feared tipping points beyond which these may slip out of human control. As finding time-bound solutions (…)

• Crossing the Constitutional Line on the Eve of Republic Day

  28 January 2019, by Badri Raina

  Until a week or so ago, the chief fare on the nationalist menu was clearly the Ram Mandir. Till the Kumbh took its place.
  A frenetic onslaught on the nation’s attention was in evidence, as diverse recipes for a quick execution of the building of the temple were unleashed by the many outlets of the Hindutva Parivar.
  One stalwart of the parivar went about feverishly recommending on television channels that since the Narasimha Rao Government had already acquired the land at the disputed (…)

• Specifics

  28 January 2019

  The other day I drafted a poem and showed it to a friend. He said: don’t generalise, be specific.
  I started chronicling the specifics: local bullying, cruel ragging, purchasable degrees, greased-palm delivered jobs, adulterated sustenance prolonged by spurious aftercare, listless drone of daily grind, opulence of the bragging thugs, acquiescence by the marginalised.
  And so on! They swarm over the page, leaving no elbow room for my humble poem. Yet it refuses to be stifled, wades through (…)

• Why Farmers and Farm Workers are demanding Special Session of Parliament

  28 January 2019

  by Gopal Krishna
  Inspired by the Long March of Maharashtra farmers and farm workers, that is, the astute practitioners of democracy who walked from Nashik to Mumbai to encircle the State Legislative Assembly in Mumbai in March 2018, this year’s fourth march of farmers and farm workers to Parliament Street has brought the demand for a 21-day joint session of Parliament on agrarian crisis to the centre-stage. This demand of the All India Kisan Struggle Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), (…)

• Bringing Farmers to the Centre-stage

  28 January 2019

  by Suranjita Ray
  The 2019 Lok Sabha elections, to be held in a few months from now, has compelled almost all the political parties not to miss the opportunity to promise fulfilling the demands of protesting farmers. Of the various demands the issue of farm loan waiver has become the most crucial for every political party across ideological and political differences as they claim to stand with the protesting farmers to fight their distress. Opposition parties from the Congress to Aam Admi (…)

• Reservation in Judiciary?

  28 January 2019

  by A.K. Biswas
  The demand for an inclusive judiciary is almost a century old, if not longer. When the Indian Statutory Commission with John Simon as its Chairman—also known as the Simon Commission—visited the Indian subcontinent in 1928 for consulting as also assessing public opinion for constitutional measures in the light of experiences obtained through the operation of the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, the Bengali Depressed Classes, the euphemism for the untouchables, submitted two (…)

• The Blood-soaked Kashmir

  28 January 2019

  by M.A. Sofi
  Conflict, they say, is the continuation of state policies by other means. Which is why attempts shall continue to be made by the state institutions to ignite passions between castes and communities, on the one hand, and to scuttle the prospects for the resolution of conflicts both within the country and without, on the other. What the people of this country have gone through over the past close to five years, it is becoming increasingly clear that in the tool kit of the BJP (…)