Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Anti-Muslim Riots in Sri Lanka

  31 March 2018

  by Irfan Engineer
  The recent anti-Muslim riots in Kandy, Sri Lanka, once again demonstrate that religion is becoming more salient in the public domain, including politics, in South Asia. My recent visit to Sri Lanka and talking to a cross-section of people from different religions, including some people in the government, underscored this fact.
  Anti-Muslim riots were witnessed in Ampara town in the Eastern Province on February 26 and in Teddeniya and Udispattuwa in Kandy district from (…)

• India-Vietnam Ties in Changed Regional Setting

  31 March 2018, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Only 18 months separated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Vietnam (September 2-3, 2016) and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang’s visitto India (March 2-4, 2018). But the regional setting of the two countries’ so-called Comprehensive Strategic Partnership has phenomenally changed in this period. The power dynamic in the Asia-Pacific reflects the unraveling of the Obama administration’s ‘pivot’ strategy following President Donald Trump’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (…)

• PDP at Crossroads

  31 March 2018

  by Javid Ahmad Ahanger and Mudasir Ahmad Qazi
  Thomas Jefferson, the founding father of the United States of America, once said: “The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” Jefferson’s prophetic words identified the atrophy of governments when they cross a limit. This becomes relevant in the context of Jammu and Kashmir which is going through a tumultuous phase. There is complete anarchy in the State, although (…)

• Tribute to Dr Ajit Mozoomdar

  31 March 2018

  TRIBUTE
  Dr Ajit Mozoomdar, 94, who breathed his last in New Delhi’s Apollo Hospital on February 12, 2018, was a brilliant academic. A distinguished economist, he joined the IAAS in 1946 and was an eminent member of the Indian Administrative Service. He served in top positions in the Government of India’s Ministry of Finance and Planning Commission. He retired as the Secretary of the Planning Commission. Subsequently he was the Executive Director of the Asian Development Bank and also (…)

• Time for Revisionist Communism

  31 March 2018, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Governmental non-performance in Kerala and electoral devastation in Tripura gave the CPM its unfinest hour in history. Just then the imaginative leadership of the All India Kisan Sabha miraculously pushed it into its finest hour; the Nasik-Mumbai Long March of some 50,000 farmers marked a milestone in the political annals of the country. The lesson is obvious: the CPM as presently constituted and led has become irrelevant, but so many people are oppressed that a well-conceived (…)

• Threat to Constitutional Structure

  31 March 2018, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  A situation of unprecedented confusion synchronising with the onset of serious crisis for the entire constitutional structure of the Indian state presents before the nation today.
  On the one side is the outright challenge of the BJP, the most aggressive of political parties, threatening to defy the entire administration in a manner never seen before; and on the other, the ruling party at the Centre presents a picture of utter disunity with factions not only (…)

• Understanding Section 497 of IPC: Is it Gender-neutral?

  31 March 2018

  by Shiladitya Chakraborty
  The concept of adultery is as old as the institution of marriage. Adultery as a form of social deviance has been universally condemned since time immemorial. It has been condemned by all major religions of the world, though with varying degrees of severity. In the West, it is found in the Code of Hammurabi, the Holy Bible or the Holy Quran. As far as India is concerned, one finds detailed sanctions against adultery in religious texts of ancient India like the (…)

• JNU on the Roads: Protesting Injustice, Suppression and Repression

  31 March 2018

  by Rushda Siddiqui
  On March 23, 2018, thousands of students of the JNU, supported by students and teachers from a range of other universities, marched across the city seeking justice in a democratic India. On March 23, the scribes covering the event, students, teachers and supporters, were stopped, beaten and humiliated at the centre of the city. This was not the first time that a protest movement was halted and forcibly dispersed. Protest marches are not new to democracy. Protestors are (…)

• Xi Jinping Warns Taiwan against Move for Independence

  31 March 2018

  by Rajaram Panda
  After his re-election for a second term in office, the Chinese President has struck a strongly nationalistic tone in his closing address to the annual session of the National People’s Congress, the ceremonial parliament, with a firm assertion that China would never allow “one inch” of territory to be separated from it. Xi thundered that China was ready to wage a “bloody war” to assume its due place in the world. Against the background of the decision of the National (…)

• BJP’s Forays in North-Eastern States and Anti-Minority Agenda

  31 March 2018

  by Ram Puniyani
  From the last couple of decades one is coming across pamphlets, leaflets and other material containing the propaganda that Christian missionaries are converting the people at rapid pace; the examples given have been mostly of those of the North-Eastern States. This propaganda has been extensively used at the pan-India level, particularly before elections in most of the States. It is this propaganda which formed the basis of hate against Christians and we witnessed the (…)