Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Nehru’s Words in Present Context

  12 November 2011

  [On November 14 this year falls Jawaharlal Nehru’s one hundred and twentysecond birth anniversary. On this occasion while remembering him, we reproduce the following addresses made by him. We are also reproducing N.C.’s editorial he wrote on the occasion of Nehru’s birth anniversary on November 10, 1985 (it was published in the Mainstream issue of November 16, 1985), three contributions from three eminent personalities made in the publication, Nehru: The Nation Remembers (Tributes from (…)

• Nehru for Today

  12 November 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS

• Splendid Partnership

  12 November 2011, by A.K. Damodaran

  Of the many achievements of Jawaharlal Nehru as a national leader, world statesman and a sensitive individual who had the rare oppor-tunity of shaping the destinies of a whole nation and, at the same time, possessed the gift for standing back and eyeing with some detachment his own strengths and weaknesses, and also commenting upon them in an anxiously honest fashion, the institutional aspects are the most impressive.
  In spite of the many popular taunts and repeated gibes, Jawaharlal (…)

• Grace Under Pressure

  12 November 2011, by K. Natwar Singh

  Jawaharlal Nehru. What a man!
  This May, we observed his twentyfifth death anniversary. Six months later, India and the world celebrate his centenary. Without Jawa-harlal Nehru the history of the twentieth century would be incomplete. Nehru, the statesman and leader, left his imprint on India and the world. He changed the course of history.
  Jawaharlal Nehru was much else. He was a great author. He enriched the Republic of Letters. Through his writings he reached out to history. But even (…)

• Progressive Statesman

  12 November 2011

  by C. RAJESWARA RAO
  I am glad that the centenary celebrations of the late Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru have been held throughout the country with due solemnity. He is not only one of the tallest leaders of our freedom movement, but also the creator of modern India and a universally respected world statesman.
  We Communists had our own differences with Pandit Nehru in matters of policy and practical issues. But we always held high his contribution to the cause of our country and (…)

• Nehru in the Era of Collapsing Neoliberalism

  12 November 2011, by Girish Mishra

  Twenty years ago, while presenting his first Budget as the Finance Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh launched “a sweeping set of neoliberal reforms that would dramatically alter the country’s economic landscape. Viewing the crisis as a historic opportunity to ‘build a new India’, Singh argued that it was essential to terminate ‘outmoded’ commitments to Nehru’s economic nationalism. Spouting with gusto French novelist Victor Hugo’s line that ‘no power on earth can stop an idea whose time (…)

• Urgent Need for Left Unity and Coordinated Progressive Action

  12 November 2011, by S G Vombatkere

  AN APPEAL
  The following is an appeal Major General (retd) S.G. Vombatkere sent to the leaders of the Forward Bloc, CPI-ML (Liberation), CPI (Maoist), CPI-ML (New Democracy), RSP, CPI, CPI-M, CPI-ML (K.N. Ramachandaran), PDS, UCPI, SUCI (C ), Socialist Party (India), Samajwadi Jan Parishad, Loktantrik Samajwadi Party (Raghu Thakur).
  Dear Comrades of All Left parties, groups and persuasions,
  I address you in all humility as a Left-leaning person with abiding faith in the Constitution of (…)

• ’A Vast Majority of Muslims were Not with the Muslim League’

  12 November 2011

  INTERVIEW
  November 11, 2011 marks Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s one hundred and twentythird birth anniversary. On this occasion we offer our humble tribute to the abiding memory of that courageous secular nationalist by reproducing the following interview and publishing a relevant article.
  Rizwan Qaiser teaches history at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia. In his new book, Resisting Colonialism and Communal Politics, he explores Maulana Azad’s role in building an idea of India. Qaiser spoke with (…)

• Nation, Nationalism and Islam: Maulana Azad and Beyond

  12 November 2011

  by MUHAMMAD TAJUDDIN
  The only form of state structure legitimate and legal in the world after the Second World War is the nation-state. The same is not true about the nature of governance. Liberal democratic governance has become the universal ideal but still there are autocratic and authoritarian dictators and absolute monarchies in the comity of nations. The idea of the nation and the ideology of nationalism emerged in Europe in the eighteenth century after the renaissance and (…)

• Guru Nanak Combined Bhakti and Social Reforms with Great Communication Skills

  12 November 2011, by Bharat Dogra, Reshma Bharti

  November 10 marks Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary.
  Guru Nanak combined deep spiritual yearnings with ideas of social reforms that were far ahead of his times. He emphasised equality at all levels—social, economic and religious—and openly declared that he is with those whom the society considers to be the lowest of the low. He openly spurned the hospitality of the most powerful persons and told them on their face that he cannot accept the invitation of exploiters. He spoke strongly against (…)