Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• To Overcome Societal Inequalities and Deep-seated Prejudices: Need for Transformative Potential of Universities

  15 August 2016

  by M.Hamid Ansari
  The following is the text of Vice-President M. Hamid Ansari’s Valedictary Address at the Centenary Celebrations of Mysuru University (July 22, 2016).
  One hundred years is an important milestone in the life of any institution. For a university, which ignites the light of knowledge in the minds of women and men, it is especially so. For the past hundred years, your university has been contributing to the making of India’s knowledge society. Thousands of students and (…)

• Conflict of Religions

  15 August 2016, by Eduardo Faleiro

  Religion has emerged as a major source of conflict all across the globe. A perceptive writer points out that ideological strife has now given place to the “clash of civilisations” and predicts that in the foreseeable future, religion will be a major source of conflict within and among nations. Samuel Huntington asserts that possibi-lities of conflict are greater in what he calls the “fault-lines of civilisation”, those areas such as India where different cultures and religions do meet. (…)

• Segregation in Democracy

  15 August 2016, by Kuldip Nayar

  Yet another Dalit family was hacked to death because it was suspected to have eaten beef. The laboratory tests of the “beef” showed that it was some other cattle. Some time ago, the Kerala House in Delhi was attacked by gau rakshaks because beef was served there. But the most shameful aspect is that there was no repentance among the upper castes and even the leaders of the RSS, who are supposed to work for social upliftment, did not utter a word of either condemnation or sorrow.
  All (…)

• Which Kashmir is Integral Part of India: The People or the Land?

  15 August 2016, by Barun Das Gupta

  The Kashmir situation is getting from bad to worse. The State has been on the boil since July 8, the day the Indian security forces took credit for exterminating a dreaded terrorist—the 22-year-old Burhan Muzaffar Wani, a commander of the separatist Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. The ‘encounter death’ (a phrase which has become all too familiar over the years and decades with all its sinister implications—from the North-East to Maoist-dominated areas to Jammu and Kashmir) of Wani, son of a headmaster (…)

• Wages of Deceit and Brute Force

  15 August 2016, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  I do realise that for the last four weeks I have been focusing on the Kashmir Valley—a region I have been covering and reporting from for over twentyfive years, a region and its people I bond with.
  It gets emotionally traumatic for me to see the Kashmiris going through the toughest possible phase. Unabated violence and havoc. Uncertainty-riddled conditions affecting each segment. Stress looms large and the scale of violence hits; trapped sit the inhabitants in a war-like zone. (…)

• ‘Recognise Kashmir as a Political Problem, Reach out to Kashmiris, Don’t Demonise them’

  15 August 2016

  INTERVIEW
  The following is the interview of Shujaat Bukhari, Editor-in-Chief of Rising Kashmir, Buland Kashmir (Urdu daily) and Sangarmal (Kashmiri daily) based in Srinagar, on the current situation in the Valley and the difficulties and hardships faced by the media in its functioning there. He replied to a set of questions (including one on what should be done now to improve the situation) from Mainstream.
  1. You are one of the leading professional journalists in Kashmir who had been (…)

• The Curfewed Valley

  15 August 2016

  Bulbuls are numb
  And wonder where humans have fled
  Pigeons haunt the shrines
  To search the hands that fed them
  Dogs with long faces
  Loll about on empty streets
  The gardens too are distraught
  And flowers reluctant to bloom
  A pallor hangs on every branch
  The gentle breeze draws back
  Loathe to disturb the stillness
  The eerie stillness
  Of this graveyard.
  —Nusrat Bazaz

• Portraying Kashmir: Local Media Vs National Media

  15 August 2016

  MEDIA
  by Mohd. Afsar
  Since the past few years, a section of the national media is misrepresenting the image of Kashmir in India either by exaggerating the events or by spinning the facts. It seems to be a part of some political strategy or pressure. So there is nothing surprising to see the kind of information which is being provided by the national media on the ongoing Kashmir events after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani by the security forces. The (…)

• It is Rasgotra’s folly, not Pandit Nehru’s

  15 August 2016, by M K Bhadrakumar

  These are of course extraordinary times in our country and the former Foreign Secretary M.K. Rasgotra might have for some incomprehensible reason felt the urge to be in sync with the zeitgeist, when he needlessly indulged in some Nehru-bashing at a function in New Delhi on June 13 as part of drumming up media publicity for his memoirs that has been published recently.
  According to Rasgotra, Panditji goofed up historically—and the nation has paid a heavy price consequently—when he spurned (…)

• Vivekananda against Hindutvavadi Obscurantism

  15 August 2016

  by Jayanta Kumar Ghosal
  The Hindu fundamentalist forces in India are now very active to destroy the secular and democratic fabrics of our country as enshrined in the Constitution. As a part of their agenda these forces have let loose a cultural offensive which is actually fascist in nature. In this process they have taken Swami Vivekananda as one of their educators and guides. But is this true? Do Vivekananda’s teachings and ideas help the Hindu fundamentalists who have killed Dr Narendra (…)