Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Tribute to Anees Chishti / Reproduction of Anees Chishti’s Articles

  25 November 2018

  TRIBUTE
  Veteran writer and journalist Anees Chishti, who passed away in New Delhi after a brief illness on October 10, 2018 (just two days before his 77th birthday), was the biographer of our late President Dr Zakir Hussain. What is more, he covered the Bhopal gas tragedy which struck on December 3, 1984 and also wrote a book on the mishap, entitled Dateline Bhopal, a Newsman’s Diary of the Gas Disaster.
  He was a theatre critic for the Shankar’s Weekly anda journalist with Seminar, (…)

• Being a Proud Indian

  24 November 2018

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Amidst the profusion of tributes paid to Indira Gandhi on the tenth anniversary of her martyrdom on October 31, perhaps the most eloquent but concise was by the eminent scientist-philosopher, Professor Yash Pal, who said she had made us feel proud of being an Indian.
  To be proud of belonging to our motherland was the constant injunction that my generation had to abide by when we were young students—that was before the country became independent. The galling yoke of (…)

• Dr Ambedkar and Politics of Caste

  24 November 2018

  by S.R. Darapuri
  Dr Ambedkar is said to be the father of Dalit politics because he was the first person to fight for the political rights of Dalits. He was the person who during the Round Table Conferences (1930-32), called in connection with the framing of future Constitution of India, got the Dalits (Depressed Classes) recognised as a minority distinct from the Hindus and got the right to separate electorate just like Muslims, Sikhs and Anglo-Indians. On the announcement of the “Communal (…)

• Gandhi’s Satyagraha for Press Freedom: The Media is buckling under Corporate Control

  24 November 2018

  by S.N. Sahu
  It was on November 12, 1947 that Mahatma Gandhi was requested to broadcast on All India Radio an address to refugees from Pakistan facing trauma and suffering caused by the partition of India and were housed in a camp in Kurukshetra. It was his second live broadcast over the radio and the first and only live broadcast on All India Radio.
  Since 2000 the date has been observed as Public Service Broadcasting Day, for which Suhas Borker deserves commendation for taking the (…)

• Girls’ Madrasas—Countering the Stereotypes

  24 November 2018, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Madrasa children are the most vulnerable! The recent lynching of the eight-year-old child, Mohammad Azeem, staying and studying in a madrasa situated in the Begampur locality of South Delhi, should have been highlighted during television discussions and should have also figured high in the political circles but, alas, it did not! Nah, one did not see any of the Union Ministers or even Commission heads rushing to the madrasa site, to grasp the brutalities of the day where even (…)

• Kashmir’s Plural Ethos and Communal Harmony

  24 November 2018

  by Abid Ahmad Shah
  Peace is the foundation of prosperity among the nation-states of the world and harmony forms the basic foundation of that enterprise. Man is the wonderful creation of God with an inherent sense of metaphysical and worldly belongings. The savage societies of the pre-historic times without any order and hierarchy of social organisation subsequently in the long time-frame paved way for the foundations of nation-states and social organisations with a proper moral and social (…)

• Girish Patel will be Remembered as a Tireless Crusader for Human Rights

  24 November 2018, by Bharat Dogra

  TRIBUTE
  Girish Patel breathed his last on October 6, at the age of 86, in Ahmedabad. For several decades his name had been identified with almost any struggle, big and small, for justice in Gujarat. In his roles as an academic, human rights activist and lawyer, he always championed the cause of justice and help for the oppressed people. He studied at Harvard, was the Principal of one leading law college and Director of another. But he was all too willing to sacrifice the security and (…)

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  Positive Features and Ominous Signs

  18 November 2018, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  As the process of State Assembly elections is set in motion, one special feature of these polls has come out in bold relief in the first phase. One of the States where elections are taking place is Chhattisgarh. Out of the 18 constituencies that went to the polls in the first round in the State, the turnout was as high as 76.28 per cent, definitely significant since eight districts in this State are affected by extreme Left insurgency and the Maoists had given a call for poll (…)

• Dissolution of the Liberal-Democratic State

  18 November 2018, by Badri Raina

  In a collection of commentaries on contemporary issues, titled Idea of India Hard to Beat; Republic Resilient (2016), this writer had stipulated that whereas it no longer seemed “inevitable” that capitalism would collapse with finality under the weight of its own contradictions, it did seem, in the Indian context, that inevitability now attaches to the Constitution of India after seven decades of the practice of parliamentary democracy. (…)

• Burden of being Always Right

  18 November 2018, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has the advantage of knowing that he is always right. Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel has taken his own time to learn that. Which is Patel’s problem. He started out as Jaitley’s hand-picked man to replace Raghuram Rajan, who simply had to go as Arvind Panagariya had to go and Arvind Subramanian had to go. The international celebrity that he was, Rajan thought he knew banking and finance a tad better than the Finance Minister, whose foundation, (…)