Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Goodbye Bhai: The struggle will continue

  13 May 2018

  TRIBUTE
  by Prem Singh
  His full name was Bhalchandra Bhai Vaidya but people used to call him Bhai Vaidya. I always addressed him as ‘Bhai’. In our village, it was an accepted norm to call a father ’Bhai’ and a majority of people followed this practice. I came in personal contact with Bhalchandra Bhai Vaidya after my father passed away, therefore I never really missed that close connection one feels with one’s father. Before the re-launching of the Socialist Party, he used to call me (…)

• PIPFPD’s Homage to Dr Ashok Mitra

  13 May 2018

  Co-Chairpersons of Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (India Chapter) Dr Syeda Hameed and Tapan K. Bose and General Secretary of PIPFPD (India Chapter) Vijayan M.J. have issued the following statement after the demise of Dr Ashok Mitra.
  Dr Ashok Mitra (1928-2018) is no more. Economist, politician, political and literary author, analyst, columnist, Dr Mitra was known to the world in many different contours, that truly reflected most of his life. For the members of the (…)

• Party Congress and After

  13 May 2018, by Badri Raina

  The following are reflections of a veteran CPI-M sympathiser after the party’s 22nd Congress at Hyderabad.
  In an article titled “Two Faces” (The Telegraph, March 27), this writer had speculated on the possibility that the Party Congress of the Communist Party of India-Marxist might well rethink the earlier decision of its Central Committtee not to have any “alliance” or “understanding” with the Indian National Congress going forward.
  Happily, intense and informed deliberations within the (…)

• The Congress of Hope and Unity

  13 May 2018

  by Binoy Viswam
  Members, sympathisers and friends of the CPI would consider the 23rd Congress of the party as a milestone in its history. But, the relevance of the Congress does not end there. It crosses the party barriers and would become something significant for the whole of Indian Left. The Congress held at Kollam, Kerala would be marked as a political catalyst that paved the path for building the broad platform of secular, democratic and Left forces to fight the menace of fascism. The (…)

• What Is My Philosophy?

  13 May 2018

  by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
  After I wrote ‘Why I am Not a Hindu’ and ‘Post-Hindu India’ the Brahmin-Banias (the castes that control the Hindu spiritual system and the whole business system of India) of Telugu States threatened to kill me. Several cases were filed against me. The intellectuals from these two most wealthy and most educated communities ask me: What is your philosophy? Why are you writing such books? These are important questions. Since I am challenging their religion after (…)

• India-China Relations on the Mend

  13 May 2018, by Kuldip Nayar

  India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, proudly supported Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai. He had emerged after defeating the First Front Army commander, Chiang Kai Shek. The Chinese Premier had supported India’s movement for Independence when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that the freedom of India was not dependent on the victory of Allies in the Second World War, which was a foregone conclusion when America declared support to Britain and such other democratic (…)

• Karl Marx’s Scientific Discovery

  13 May 2018

  The following article is being published on the occasion of Marx’s bicentenary of birth that fell on May 5, 2018.
  by Murzban Jal
  In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more (…)

• Loss of a Sane Voice in Troubled Times

  13 May 2018

  TRIBUTE
  by Sanjay Parikh
  It is often difficult to write about a person with whom you were close for several decades. So many thoughts come to your mind, some are chronological, bound by time and events, but many are those, which are eternal, which constituted that person—his sensitivities, concerns, simplicity, love and compassion, to which you were a witness.
  Justice Rajindar Sachar’s life can be easily encompassed by his achievements as a judge and later his immense contribution in (…)

• Indian Judiciary since 1993: Independent but Unchecked and Unbalanced

  13 May 2018

  by Kunal Ghosh
  Our Constitution-makers decided to follow the western model of parliamentary democracy in which there are three main organs of the state, the executive (that is, the government run by a Council of Ministers) and the legislature (that is, the Parliament) and the judiciary (that is, the system of courts headed by the Supreme Court). Their powers are separated and they are independent of each other. However, this independence is not absolute; it is subject to the “checks and (…)

• Cameos

  13 May 2018, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s 157th birth anniversary was observed last Wednesday (May 9, 2018). On this occasion we are reproducing a piece by N.C. on Tagore written 77 years ago, in 1941. It was published in The Calcutta Municipal Gazette—Tagore Memorial Special Supplement, September 13, 1941 (that appeared after the Poet’s death on August 7, 1941). This piece was carried under the pseudonym Vanguard. Though written during World War II when the global scenario was (…)