Mainstream Weekly

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• A Revolutionary Turn in RSS?

  28 October 2018, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Imagine the Pope criticising Jesus Christ. If that is too ecclesiastical, imagine Sitaram Yechury rewriting Karl Marx. Actually we cannot imagine either because the Catholic Church and the Communist Party are rule-bound doctrinaire establishments that do not brook deviations. So is the RSS. Therefore, technically, we cannot imagine Mohan Bhagwat going against the tenets of M.S. Golwalkar, as sacrosanct in the RSS universe as K.B. Hedgewar.
  Yet it happened. In his eleventh (…)

• Re-Reading Michel Foucault: Present as History

  28 October 2018

  by Arup Kumar Sen
  The heretical French thinker Michel Foucault transformed our understanding of modern regimes of power. To put it in the words of Julian Reid, “For Michel Foucault the problem of war is the problem of political modernity par excellence.” Reid reminded us in this context that in examining how war is constitutive of modern power relations, Foucault lays down a challenge to the major traditions of political theory and their allied conceptualisations of war. We are further (…)

• Kerala’s Stabbed Modernity

  28 October 2018

  by V. Bijukumar
  The ‘public’ outrage in favour of protecting tradition after the historic verdict of the Supreme Court on September 28 allowing women of all age-groups into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala shows the advent of creeping irrationality in a progressive society and thereby puncturing Kerala’s much-acclaimed modernity. While the cohorts of tradition argue that women’s entry into the temple would be detrimental to the tradition and belief system related to the deity, the (…)

• Need for Reconciliation with Justice: Babri Demolition and aftermath

  28 October 2018

  by Ram Puniyani
  In a recent judgment, the Supreme Court by a 2-1 majority verdict refused to refer the Dr Faruqui verdict to the Constitution Bench. This verdict had stated that the mosque was not an essential part of Islamic practice. In the recent judgment the dissenter judge felt that the matter needs to be referred to a seven-judge Consti-tution Bench. There was a feeling that “the mosque not being a part of essential Islamic practice” might have had an impact on the 2010 Allahabad (…)

• Conquering Hunger: The Battle for Right to Food in India

  28 October 2018

  by Annapurna and Navneet Sharma
  There are so many hungry people. To them God has no other shape than bread.—Mahatma Gandhi
  India has recently crossed France to claim the sixth spot of being the largest economy and has also made a deal for Rafale fighter jets worth sixty thousand crore rupees with France. With these jets we are going to protect the largest number of hungry people in the world and the largest number of farmers who commit suicide. In this article we wish to emphasise that (…)

• #MeToo in a Country that worships God as Woman

  28 October 2018

  by L.K. Sharma
  During a festival celebrating the Goddess who kills a demon menacing Gods, scores of educated Indian women have unmasked their tormentors and sparked a mini-revolution.
  It has led to resignations in the media world, boycotts in the film industry and the closure of a famous film company. Junior Foreign Minister M.J. Akbar was made to resign. A journalist has compared these #MeToo revelations to the “eruption of a volcano”.
  These women had for years suppressed their trauma (…)

• Baubles

  28 October 2018

  Souls are freshly baptized in the purse; Lords of Capital allow all things But prying human converse.
  A pall of brainless sameness Suits Capital best; Watch out for the one who dares to put The nullity of sameness to test.
  Dictators are happiest When Capital and Faith embrace To snuff out the heresy of thinking Beyond the baubled race.
  Capital and Faith are satiate When noise and obedience reign, When we are the arms of the octopus, Slave to a single marauding brain.
  Are Capital and (…)

• And #MeToo: Discourse in Indian News Media

  28 October 2018

  by Santosh Kumar Biswal
  Following the suit of actress Alyssa Milano in response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood, And #MeToo movement has arrived in India. Actress Tanushree Dutta’s allegation has created commotion, taking actor, filmmaker, writer and philanthropist Nana Patekar’s reputation at stake. Moreover, in the wake of the movement, the Minister of State for External Affairs, M.J. Akbar, has stepped down and readied himself for a legal battle against the accused. The (…)

• Aadhar Judgment: Triumph of Expediency over Principle

  28 October 2018

  by Vijay Kumar
  The majority judgment in the Aadhar case represents triumph of expediency, whereas the dissenting judgment delivered by Justice Chandrachud is extremely liberating and will go down in history as one of the most celebrated dissents.
  The Aadhar and its mandatory insistence became an all-pervasive reality, particularly after its enactment in 2016. The stay granted by the Supreme Court by the Bench of Justice Chelameswar was intentionally flouted by the Modi Government with (…)

• Bhupesh : Some Reminiscences

  28 October 2018, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The 104th birth anniversary of the legendary Communist parliamentarian Bhupesh Gupta fell on October 20, 2018. On this occasion we have reproduced in this issue the tribute to Bhupesh Gupta by N.C. that was published in Mainstream’s August 22, 1981 issue. Bhupesh was born at Itna in Mymensingh district of Bengal (now in Bangladesh) on October 20, 1914 and he passed away in Moscow on August 6, 1981.
  From N.C.’s Writings
  To write about somebody whom one has known for more than four (…)