Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Right Diagnosis but Need for a Clarification

  14 February 2012

  COMMUNICATION
  The debate initiated by Mr Ather Farouqui in Mainstream through his seminal piece ‘Indo-Pak Relationship and Urdu: Companions in a Paradoxical Syndrome’ (Mainstream Vol L, No 1, December 24, 2011 (Annual 2011) regarding the inactive—rather defunct—literary organisations of the Left is particularly relevant at a time when atavistic forces are hell-bent on strangling any dissenting voice and want to hang whoever writes something that does not conform to their agenda. In such a (…)

• Concealing Battered Realities

  14 February 2012, by Humra Quraishi

  Tell me from where to start off, to begin webbing details to the spread around! Murkier getting each single aspect—whether those scams, or those age rows of ageing Generals or babies lying battered or curtains getting drawn on the very screening of potently relaying documen-taries like Jashn-e-Azadi. Why can’t we see those realities that Sanjay Kak has focused on in his film—Jashn-e-Azadi? Why was its screening called off at a Pune educational institute? Why can’t the rest of India know (…)

• A Prejudiced View of Mahatma Gandhi Sixty Years after his Death

  14 February 2012, by P R Dubhashi

  BOOK REVIEW
  Catching Up with Gandhi by Graham Turner; 2010; pages 344; Rs 350. Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld; Harper Collins Publishers; 2011; pages 452; Rs 699.
  More than sixty years after Mahatma Gandhi has left the scene, two of his biographies have appeared—one by Graham Turner, a British journalist, and the other by Joseph Lelyveld, a journalist in America. What purpose do they serve? Do they tell us anything remarkable to enable a (…)

• Gandhian Democracy: Ignored by the Constitutionalists of India

  14 February 2012, by K G Somasekharan Nair

  “The condition of England at present is pitiable. I pray to God that India may never be in that plight. That which you consider to be the Mother of Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. Both these are harsh terms, but exactly fit the case.” —Gandhiji
  The cruel buffooneries of the English Parliament started in the term of King Henry VIII (1509-47) who inaugurated Reformation in England through his immoral life. He decided to divorce his wife, Catherine Aragon, to marry Anne (…)

• Need of the Hour

  31 January 2012, by SC

  Exactly a year ago, on the eve of our sixtysecond Republic Day, it was written in these columns:
  ...if one speaks of the political class, there is hardly any political leader of the Right, Centre or Left worthy of emulation in today’s India. They have all compromised themselves... At the same time the country is inexorably hurtling towards full scale polarisation resulting in political confrontation between the Treasury Benches and Opposition in Parliament where the winter session saw the (…)

• A Radiant Figure

  31 January 2012, by Jawaharlal Nehru

  On January 30 this year falls the sixtyfourth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. On this occasion we remember the Father of the Nation by reproducing excerpts from a piece that Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in homage to the pioneer of our freedom struggle three years after Gandhiji’s demise.
  What gods there are, I know not; and I am not concerned about them. But there are certain rare qualities which raise a man above the common herd and make him appear as though he were of different (…)

• No Walmart, Please

  31 January 2012, by Rajindar Sachar

  If the combined Opposition had sat down for weeks so as to find an issue to embarrass the UPA Government and make it a laughing stock before the whole country, they could not have thought of a better issue than the free gift presented to it by the UPA Government by initially insisting that it had irrevocably decided to allow the entry of multi-brand retail leader superstores like Walmart, USA and then, within a few days, withdrawing the proposal with a whimper.
  As it is, even initially (…)

• Belittling CAG Diminishes Parliament’s Effectiveness

  31 January 2012, by B P Mathur

  The Comptroller and Auditor General’s Report on the 2G Spectrum has created a great deal of controversy and his role is being questioned. The Public Accounts Committee could not finalise its report due to the splitting on the issue on party lines. The JPC currently examining the matter has taken an unprecedented step of taking evidence of a junior officer of the CAG’s set up, since retired, and quizzed the CAG about the manner of calculating the loss in the deal. It has asked the Finance (…)

• Swami Vivekananda: An Iconoclastic Saint

  31 January 2012, by Ajeet Jawed

  Bengal has produced a galaxy of prophets, poets, philosophers and patriots who, by their rare intellect, devotion and dedication for their motherland and compassion for humanity, have made India proud. One amongst them is Narendranath Dutta, whom we all know as Swami Vivekananda. He was born on January 12, 1863 and died on July 4, 1902, at the age of 39 years, five months and 24 days. In such a short span of life, he immensely contributed to rousing Indians not only against the foreign rule (…)

• Is Tradition Reactionary?

  31 January 2012, by Ashok Celly

  Tradition and modernity are supposed to be contraries: the former is seen as upholder of the existing order and inimical to all progress; the latter conducive to change thus leading to a more just and humane social order. The former is conservative, the latter progressive. The Hindu tradition, for instance, is supposed to be the upholder of the caste system—Manuvadi as the contemporary political lexicon has it. But is it really so? If we have a dispassionate look at the past, we may be in (…)