Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Factual Accuracy and Logic of Argument

  9 June 2013

  REVIEW ARTICLE
  by Achin Vanaik
  The Indian Ideology by Perry Anderson; Three Essays Collective, New Delhi; 2012; Hardback; pp. 191; Rs 550.
  The response by a great many Indian progressives to Anderson’s book of three essays on the Indian Ideology has been negative on a variety of counts. It is said to be an inadequate historical study of the National Movement leaving so much out of what went to shape this Movement inside and outside the Congress party; it is not even any kind of a (…)

• Allah Baksh: Unsung Hero of India’s Freedom Struggle

  9 June 2013, by Shamsul Islam

  On May 14, 2013 was marked the 70th anni-versary of the martyrdom of one of the greatest freedom fighters of India, Allah Baksh. He lived and sacrificed his life for a free and all-inclusive India. Allah Baksh was the Premier (those days the Chief Minister was known by this designation) of Sind during the eventful days of the ‘Quit India’ Movement of 1942 as the head of the ‘Ittehad Party’ (Unity Party) which represented all sections of Sind and did not allow the Muslim League to have any (…)

• Why is the Tribal taking to Killing?

  9 June 2013, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Killings are a barbaric form of revenge and unleash of anger, and should never be allowed to take place. No, never. Not under any of those garbs or excuses or camouflages or cover-ups. Whether inside jails and in those officially constructed cages, or out there in the open, in and around forests and jungles.
  Heated discussions on in the corridors of power and the blame-game takes off on this latest tragic incident, where several Congress-men and their aides and bystanders were (…)

• Remembering the victims of June 4, 1989 massacre in China

  9 June 2013

  June 4, 2013 marked the twentyfourth anniversary of the massacre of countless students and youth at Beijing’s famous Tiananmen Square. There have been the usual protests and candle-light vigils in Hong Kong with the participation of numerous people but, as has been underscored in The Globe and Mail, while the annual demonstration in the self-administered enclave under Chinese sovereignty “is the most vivid display of the continuing passions over the 1989 crackdown on student protests in (…)

• On IPL Spot-fixing, Bloody Maoist Operation

  1 June 2013, by SC

  Two developments of the last few days have stirred the country at large.
  First came the new revelations of spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League; these are assuming ever-serious dimension with every passing day and yet, as The Indian Express has aptly noted, “no official, either from the BCCI or IPL, has quit”. In fact the person holding the reins of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) continues to hold on to the chair of the BCCI head even though propriety demanded that he (…)

• Karzai Visit: India’s Dilemma

  1 June 2013, by Mahendra Ved

  Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, is a man in a hurry. He has one year left in office and he cannot seek a third term. He wants to leave “a legacy of democracy” before he quits.
  But he fears an onslaught from the Taliban, operating from across the border in Quetta once the NATO forces leave by the end of 2014.
  They are backed by Pakistan. Indeed, the Taliban leadership is called the “Quetta Shoora”.
  Battling detractors at home and critics in the West who are sustaining his (…)

• Pakistan Throws Down Gauntlet at the US

  1 June 2013, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The return of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to power in Pakistan after a hiatus of 14 years electrifies the regional politics of South Asia. Signals passing back and forth between New Delhi and Lahore underscore a subtle change having already appeared in the political vibes.
  Typically, even as the results from the May 11, parliamentary poll were pouring in, Sharif told an Indian television channel on the following day: “I will visit India whether India invites me or not.”
  Prime (…)

• Hotting up with China?

  1 June 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Once again China has appeared on the radar screen of Indian security. Although officially the Indian authorities have so far denied any knowledge of Chinese troop concentration all along the far-flung frontier, the fact that for over two weeks now a Chinese patrol has dug in at about seven kilometres within the Indian territory at a strategic point in the Arunachal Pradesh, can hardly be dismissed as just an accidental intrusion, innocently undertaken. Those who have (…)

• Armed Response to Political Issues a Threat to Secular Democratic Forces in India

  1 June 2013, by Vidya Bhushan Rawat

  The top leadership of the Congress party in Chhattisgarh came under a well-coordinated attack from the Maoists in Darbha Ghati in Sukma in the southern part of the Bastar region. The Congress leadership had been campaigning in the State as part of their ‘Parivartan Yatra’ as Chhattishgarh goes for polls during the year- end with several other States. Those who were killed are the Leader of the Opposition and a well-known Adivasi leader, Mahendra Karma, President of the Chhattishgarh Congress (…)

• Left and the Tribal Question

  1 June 2013

  by B.K. Manish
  While discussing the open invitation of the proposed Bastar Study Tour, which is an assertion by anthrophiles of visiting rights to a part of Dandakaranya, a virtually declared No-Go area by both the police and revolutionaries, two JNU professors postulated that the only hope of tribal autonomy is within revolutionary polity, and certainly not in bourgeois polity. Now this is a question which has perplexed at least two generations in the last thirty years so it could be (…)