Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Whither Indian Theatre: an interview with alkazi

  6 June 2016, by Anees Chishti

  Veteran theatre personality Ebrahim Alkazi is now ninety. In this year, a number of programmes have been launched in different parts of the country to highlight the life-time achievements of this stalwart theatre director who has produced an illustrious crop of actors, directors, playwrights and practitioners of other crafts of theatre. Many of his students have become renowned film personalities as well. We reproduce here an interview of the theatre legend with Anees Chishti, conducted over (…)

• An Appeal to Jat Leaders for Restraint

  6 June 2016

  COMMUNICATION
  There have been several recent newspaper reports which indicate that there are strong possibilities of the revival of the agitation by several members of the Jat community. As at the time of the previous such agitation there was a lot of violence and arson and the peace of a huge area was disrupted for a long time, there are apprehensions among the people regarding their safety as well as prevalence of law and order. While the government of course has to initiate the (…)

• Dividing the Nation, RSS-Style

  29 May 2016, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  The BJP-led NDA Government has completed two years today. As it observes its second anniversary, one is reminded of what happened in 1979. That was the time when the first anti-Congress government at the Centre, represented by the Janata Party comprising the major non-Congress parties—the Congress-O, Jana Sangh, Socialist Party and Jagjivan Ram-H-N. Bahuguna-sponsored Congress for Democracy—and headed by the then PM, Morarji Desai, completed two years in power after having (…)

• Two Years of Modi Rule: Unfolding Hindutva Agenda

  29 May 2016

  by Ram Puniyani
  Introduction
  Modi came to power with a bang in 2014. Riding on the support of the corporate world, the RSS combine, media blitz and sky-rocketing promises, he managed to get 31 per cent of votes and 282 seats in the Lok Sabha. This is the first time the BJP managed a simple majority in the Lower House of Parliament. This also became an occasion for Modi-BJP-RSS to unfold their agenda in full. While economic promises have floundered, the protective policies for the average (…)

• Biggest Foreign Policy Failure: Ties with Nepal

  29 May 2016

  TWO YEARS OF MODI RULE
  by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
  In several ways it is conveyed that the Modi Government has performed extraordinarily well on the foreign policy front but the dark pimples are never talked about. The fact is that Modi’s South Asian foreign policy has been under stress since the day it was crafted. There are cracks in relations with Pakistan, Maldives and a big hole has been created in Indo-Nepal ties where a huge trust deficit exists.
  It began since the time of the (…)

• Nationalism and Patriotism

  29 May 2016

  by Sadhan Mukherjee
  If you shout “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, you are a patriot. If you don’t for some reason, you are not only not a patriot but anti-national as well. That is the latest funda of varied Hindutva fanatics among whom are those occupying key positions in both the governments at the Centre and elsewhere including the BJP party hierarchy. An era of ‘nationalism-test’ has begun.
  Hitler used nationalism to evoke patriotism in Germans and bolster his Nazi party. The current war-cry of (…)

• A Judgement Affirming Constitutional Values

  29 May 2016, by Sandeep Pandey

  The judgement from the Allahabad High Court on April 23, 2016, quashing my termination order from the Indian Institute of Technology at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi has come as a big relief for me because it essentially is a vindication of my thought and action. Moreover, without taking the name of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh or the majoritarian Hindutva ideology and the Vice Chancellor, Professor Girish Chandra Tripathi, it has spared no words in their criticism.
  The judgement (…)

• Nehru for Today

  29 May 2016

  May 27 this year marked Jawaharlal Nehru’s fiftysecond death anniversary. On this occasion we are reproducing the following excerpts from the speeches and writings of Nehru that are of exceptional relevance today.
  I have long been of opinion that the Hindu Mahasabha is a small reactionary group pretending to speak on behalf of the Hindus of India of whom it is very far from being representative. None the less misapprehensions have been created by their high-sounding titles and resounding (…)

• Remembering Jawaharlal Today

  29 May 2016, by C.N. Chitta Ranjan

  The following article, by the first editor of Mainstream, appeared six years after Jawaharlal Nehru’s death in this journal’s May 23, 1970 issue. Born on September 29, 1921 in Ooty, C.N.C., as he was known to his friends and admirers, passed away at Delhi on August 2, 1990. A veteran journalist, he worked in the Indian Express (Madras) in the 1940s; he joined The Hindustan Times in Delhi in 1960, and edited Mainstream when it was launched from the Capital in September 1962. In 1963 he joined (…)

• Remembering Nehru in Critical Times

  29 May 2016, by Barun Das Gupta

  The fiftysecond death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of modern India, will be observed this month at a time when the present dispensation is bent on rubbing out his name from the annals of history. Also, one of the principles Nehru stood and fought for, a principle which he thought was essential for the very survival of the plural polity that is India, namely, secularism, is being openly denigrated and denounced by those who have assumed office by swearing in the name of the (…)