Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Mahasweta’s Last Wish Remained Unfulfilled

  24 September 2016

  TRIBUTE
  by Chandrasekhar Bhattacharjee
  It was a scorching summer noon of mid-April, 2010. Mahasweta Devi landed at Birsa Munda Airport, Ranchi, from Delhi after receiving the Manavata Bikash Award, conferred by the IIPM. She was trying to find a statue of Birsa within the airport, but in vein.
  A wellbuilt middle-aged person (Mahasweta called him ’Lalji’) received her at the airport. As the car comes out of the airport, a huge statue of Birsa at Birsa Munda Chowk greets her. The (…)

• Remembering Mahasweta Devi

  24 September 2016

  TRIBUTE
  by Nirupam Hazra
  I met Mahasweta Devi when I was a student at Visva Bharati. It was my first interaction with her. In an informal gathering at a tribal village near Santiniketan, she was talking to a young tribal girl. She was so engrossed in conversation that she was quite oblivious of the the people around her. When the conversation ended she turned back, smiled at me and asked in Bengali: ‘bhalo aacho?’ (literal English equivalent will be ‘are you doing well?’) I was surprised (…)

• Mahasweta Devi

  24 September 2016, by Sagari Chhabra

  To you the universe Was a constellation of stars Towards which you took a leap, Only some of the stars Were shrouded in a darkness, so deep. You went close, you felt deeply, And in your manner so intense, Arose the speech of ants, Within a sentence; The sound of snails speaking, The torment of a hungry child, weeping. You discarded the middle-class morality of the Bengali bhadralok For the mud huts of the Sabar tribes of Purulia, And from them arose the words of Dopdi, Defying the cop who (…)

• Brazil’s Political and Economic Crisis threatens the Legitimacy of the country’s Democracy

  24 September 2016

  by Mark Weisbrot
  The following article appeared before Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s final impeachment and removal from power. This write-up gives a fairly detailed analysis of the crisis in Brazil today.
  On April 17, the Brazilian Lower House of Congress voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, who was elected in 2010 and re-elected at the end of 2014. It was a garish spectacle, with one Right-wing deputy dedicating his vote to the Colonel who headed a torture unit during the (…)

• Contours of the Naga Society: Some Important Missing Flakes Unfurled

  24 September 2016, by J.J. Roy Burman

  While dealing about the Naga problem, I wrote in a previous article that one of the most important political parties of the Nagas, the NSCN (IM), is a fascist party by nature. I failed in my efforts as an anthropologist to define the reasons for such a state. The Nagas by themselves are a peaceful society and even during the head-hunting days the raids were negotiated and pre-announced. I have myself received utmost love, care and supreme hospitality even in villages where I was a complete (…)

• Aam Aadmi turns into Harm Aadmi, then to Damn Aadmi. Yet another chance of Clean Politics gone

  24 September 2016, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  When Anna Hazare disowned Arvind Kejriwal, it was clear that all was not well with the Aam Aadmi Party experiment. When Kejriwal summarily dismissed his original team-mates, Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, the AAP’s intentions and directions came under a big cloud. Then Kejriwal’s chosen faithfuls began showing signs of absurdity: Minister Somnath Bharti raided and roundly attacked African women resident in Delhi; publicity-hungry court poet Kumar Biswas exposed his (…)

• The Anti-AFSPA Movement in Manipur: Common Cause, Diverse Strategies

  24 September 2016

  by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
  The Manipuri people’s struggle against the AFSPA holds that this counter-insurgency law has created more unrest in the State than it has curbed. The anti-AFSPA movement is raising issues of justice, accountability, and fundamental rights to life and liberty, all critical to the future —and indeed present functioning—of Indian democracy.
  Irom Sharmila is the visible face of the anti-AFSPA movement: her sixteen-year long fast helped create worldwide public (…)

• Understanding Complex Dimensions of Manipur

  24 September 2016, by Bharti Chhibber

  BOOK REVIEW
  Mother, Where’s My Country? Looking for Light in the Darkness of Manipur by Anubha Bhosle; 2016; New Delhi: Speaking Tiger; pp. 250; Price: Rs 499.
  Of late two very consequential developments captured the headlines of newspapers with one thing in common—the State of Manipur. In a recent judgment on a plea by hundreds of families in the North-Eastern State of Manipur for a probe by a Special Investigation Team into 1528 cases of alleged fake encounters involving the Army and (…)

• Karat’s Thesis and A Rejoinder

  24 September 2016

  “The BJP is an authoritarian, not fascist, force. The fight against it cannot be conductet in alliance with the other major party of the ruling classes,” writes Prakash Karat, the erstwhile General Secretary of the CPI-M, in the following article in The Indian Express (September 6, 2016). It is being reproduced here, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers. An effective rejoinder to this thesis follows in the subsequent pages.
  Know your enemy
  Prakash Karat
  The (…)

• Mainstream should promote Scholarship and Analysis over Unexamined Judgements

  24 September 2016

  COMMUNICATION
  The headline “Why Vegetarianism is Anti-National” [by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd in Mainstream (August 27, 2016) pp.11-13] is catchy. If the intent of the article was to incite visceral reaction, it served its purpose. But if the object of the article was to appeal to reason, especially at a time when the Hindutva madness has descended upon the country, it fell flat. Let me try by touching on some aspects of the article.
  The article says: “A nation’s strength is dependent on (…)