Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• What about 2014?

  17 February 2014

  by Arko Dasgupta
  If people are to be believed, 2014 is slated to be a year of much significance for India and its citizens. What makes 2014 so special? Is it the numbers at play? They add up to 7, which I’m told can be a rather lucky number. That, however, is not an answer good enough to convince even the most credulous mind. Ah, the Winter Olympics are round the corner (where our athletes will be competing not under the national but under the Olympic Flag) and we have the FIFA World Cup (…)

• Delhi fails to win Japan’s ‘Nuclear Trust’

  17 February 2014, by M K Bhadrakumar

  When joint statements after high-level visits become verbose, a sense of uneasiness arises: is it an attempt to make a mountain out of a mole-hill? That impression becomes unavoidable when one reads the joint statement issued after the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Delhi, January 25-27.
  To be sure, Abe’s visit attracted a lot of commentaries by Indian pundits. Some have gone overboard by even attempting revisionist theories that India never ever heard about Japan’s war (…)

• Climate, Culture, Cosmopolitanism: The Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, Shillong

  17 February 2014

  by Nabanipa Bhattacharjee
  Clime as Muse
  Surrounded by lush green hills, Shillong, the capital city of Meghalaya, is widely known for its salubrious climate and natural beauty. As one of oldest hill stations of the subcontinent, Shillong was chosen—after the failure of the British administrators and soldiers to continue operating out of Cherrapunjee—to house the headquarters of the colonial government including the Sylhet Light Infantry in 1864. Following the creation of Assam as a Chief (…)

• Trading Cattle to Bangladesh

  17 February 2014, by Sunanda Sanyal

  Bengali society is at risk today, thanks to the political parties. I will discuss one of the issues which devalues democracy. The Statesman has reported a number of times about cattle theft to Bangladesh. I have seen it myself at Ghojadanga, off the border on Bangladesh, very close to Basirhat. Headlights are tied to lamp posts to prevent cattle theft. But according to Haji Nurul Islam, a Trinamul MLA, cattle theft occurred at the Bangladesh border on our Republic Day. The CPI-M-led Left (…)

• Tribal Women and Customary Law: A Focus on the Santal Tribe

  17 February 2014

  by Ivy Imogene Hansdak
  The recent incident in Birbhum, West Bengal —where a 20-year old Santal girl was allegedly gang-raped by over ten men of her own village on the orders of a tribal court for refusing to end her sexual relations with a non-tribal man of the Muslim community—has brought to the forefront an emotive issue regarding unions between tribal women and non-tribal men. In this process, an earlier assumption that women in tribal societies enjoy a higher social status as compared (…)

• Outrage over a Death in the Capital

  10 February 2014, by SC

  In the midst of repeated disruptions that have made transaction of business in both the Houses impossible during the ongoing extended winter session of Parliament, there has been one silver-lining. The fact that all sections cutting across party barriers rose as one man to unequivocally condemn the tragic death of a 19-year-old student from Arunachal Pradesh, Nido Taniam, in the national Capital testified to the MPs’ resolve to protect the North-Eastern inhabitants in the Capital currently (…)

• ’Tactical Unity of the Orthodox’: Who is Smiling Over The Judgement on Article 377?

  10 February 2014, by Subhash Gatade

  The recent judgement by the Supreme Court which has recriminalised homosexuality might have baffled a broad section of peace and justice- loving people but it has definitely emboldened many a self-proclaimed leader of religion and purveyor of morality who feel vindicated. It was only last month that a few of their representatives had held a press conference proclaiming their support to the decision of the Supreme Court on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code as it was “[n]ot only in line (…)

• AAP High Command Allows No Dissent

  10 February 2014, by Madhu Bhaduri

  The following piece, giving the reasons behind the resignation of retired diplomat Madhu Bhaduri from Aam Aadmi Party (of which she was a founder member), is being reproduced, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers.
  I am a founder member of the Aam Aadmi Party. I had made a request to the party secretary several days in advance of the National Council meeting in Delhi on January 30, that I wished to move a resolution to tender an apology by AAP to the Ugandan and (…)

• Moral Panic in India

  10 February 2014

  by L.K. SHARMA
  Transitions and disruptions are changing relations between generations, between genders, between classes and between religious groups. It is not just a simple conflict between tradition and modernity that sparks occasional violence. India has become an excellent laboratory for studying change.
  India has been gripped by a moral panic as a result of a spate of sexual and financial scandals. Seemingly unrelated, these have a cumulative quality. The Indian male is on trial. (…)

• The Anarchic Drift

  10 February 2014, by Uttam Sen

  Over the past few weeks we have faced the classic moral dilemma, when to obey one ethical imperative was to transgress another. There were several test cases. One was the Congress Vice-President’s largely uncelebrated interview with a leading television channel. In the normal course, a public figure would talk in generalities. But the national, or perhaps prime-time, mood was such at that moment that he was put on trial on specifics. He was not really grilled on them (for example, inflation (…)