Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Brexit: What Happens Next?

  1 July 2016

  by Kavaljit Singh
  Britain has voted to leave the European Union. In a referendum held on Thursday (June 23), close to 52 per cent of Britons favoured leaving the EU. The referendum results reveal that the arguments put forward by Brexiters found greater resonance with the sentiments of the ordinary people than the ones put forward by the pro-European camps, the establishment and world leaders.
  Before the polls closed, the UK’s political establishment was expecting that voters would (…)

• Two Long Years and Nothing to Show

  1 July 2016

  by Mridula Mukherjee
  The Modi Government loves mythology. And not only as a substitute for history. But as a substitute for reality. And this for good reason. The reality that has unfolded in the last two years is so far removed from the dreamland or ‘Achhe Din’ promised in the longest election campaign in Indian history, that myth-making is the only choice left for the dream merchants of the Sangh.
  One-third of India is in the grip of severe drought, with many areas suffering for the (…)

• Shankar Guha Niyogi: 25 Years of Martyrdom

  1 July 2016, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Shankar Guha Niyogi, the legendary leader of workers in Chhattisgarh, was brutally murdered by the hired goons of industrialists in 1991. He started his political journey in the official Communist Parties in India and went beyond the frame of their politics. He was impressed by the Naxalbari peasant uprising, but severed his connection with the CPI (ML) as it decided to give farewell to mass organisations like trade unions.
  Niyogi’s notion of trade unions was com-pletely different from (…)

• Travesty of Justice

  1 July 2016, by Kuldip Nayar

  With all due respect to the Gujarat High Court, I beg to differ with its judgment that the firing by Ehsan Jafri provoked the mob to kill him. I knew him and he was a staunch Congressman. The Gulbarg Society massacre was the doing of local Gujarati leaders hoping to parochialise the people.
  When Jafri was surrounded by the Hindu mob, he rang me up, seeking my help to rescue him from the frenzied crowd he had around him. I rang up the Home Ministry in Delhi and told them about the telephone (…)

• A Tale of Elusive Justice

  1 July 2016, by A K Biswas

  Following the verdict in the Gulbarg Housing Society massacre, a television channel flashed as breaking news almost the whole day the Special Court’s observation imputing blame on the riot victim, former parliamentarian Ehsan Jafri that ‘his firing was the catalyst, infuriated the mob’.1 The communal violence claimed 69 lives including the former lawmaker himself. The case has captured the public domain for a long period. The riotous mob, said the Court, was not “really interested in causing (…)

• Can we Think of South Asia without Borders?

  1 July 2016, by Ambrose Pinto

  In dealing with neighbours, much of the energy of the leaders of South Asia is spent on responding to ceasefire violations on the borders. Each of these countries has become enemies of the other. There is rhetoric of hate, insecurity, control and domination in the public statements of all leaders of the neighbourhood as they respond to these violations. The daily news about new accumulation of increasing numbers of nuclear weapons and satellite launches as a part of competitive security (…)

• International Yoga Day

  1 July 2016, by Badri Raina

  International Yoga Day
  Is the time when you had
  Better take your rebellious
  Mind away from the price
  Of tomatoes and sundry other
  Woes that afflict the
  Preponderant millions.
  Where policy fails it is Yoga
  That will blaze the trails
  To conquest of hunger and
  Destitution, bringing world
  Leaders to accord accolades
  In profusion. When sense
  Threatens, recourse must be
  To collective Pretence. If the
  Standing rows of national discipline
  Served the Stalinists and the (…)

• Meaning of Yoga

  1 July 2016

  by S.N. Sahu
  This article could not be used before June 21, the International Yoga Day. But it is being published now as its contents retain their validity.
  Twentyfirst June has been declared as the International Day of Yoga at the initiative of our Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi. More than a decade back, in pursuance of Shrimati Sonia Gandhi’s initiative October 2, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, was declared as the Inter-national Day of Non-Violence. One of the foundational pillars (…)

• Sun Sets on the British Empire

  1 July 2016, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article5785.html

• President Pranab Mukherjee’s Trip to China

  1 July 2016

  by Rup Narayan Das
  President Pranab Mukherjee visited China from May 24 to 27. It was the most significant visit of the year in the narrative of the relationship between the two countries. Earlier in 2010, his predecessor, Pratibha Debising Patil, had visited China. Both India and China attached considerable strategic significance to the visit. The visit took place at a very critical strategic juncture in the bilateral relations between the two countries. In the first place China’s vetoing (…)