Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Team Anna and the New Style of Political Activism

  6 September 2011

  by NIRMALYA
  Political activism is not new in India. India has had a long tradition of political activists, usually Leftists or Gandhians. Yet when we look at the way the Anna Camp has done things, it is clearly different from the usual cases of activism. It has not been only more popular than perhaps any other movement, it has also been better managed, better marketed, more ambitious, more impatient, more populist, less concerned with ideology and more practical than any other example of (…)

• Satyagraha in Today’s India

  6 September 2011, by Syed Shahabuddin

  COMMUNICATION
  I have seen Shri Alok Bajpai’s article on ‘Duragraha’ (“Duragraha in the Name of Satyagraha: A Gandhian Perspective” in the Mainstream issue of July 30, 2011) in which he has concluded that the peaceful and non-violent Satyagraha by Gandhiji was conceived as a strategy against the British rule and that ‘once people were free and had a parliamentary government, the legislature can be the means of achieving the concrete pursuit of truth and non-violence’. This was Gandhiji’s (…)

• Don’t Goof-up on Hazare, Comrades!

  6 September 2011, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The statement following the meeting of the State Committee of the Communist Part of India- Marxist in Kolkata taking exception to the agitational methods of Anna Hazare gives a sickening feeling that the party’s State leadership remembers nothing about its debacle in its 30-year old citadel just a few months ago. The CPM should have been the first to know that debunking Mamata Banerjee’s agitation took it nowhere and landed it in a cul-de-sac. The heart of the matter is that laws will be (…)

• Conversations

  6 September 2011, by Sagari Chhabra

  I was on the eleventh day of my fast, tired and weary, with a film floating over my eyes, I began wondering when would every child get enough to eat and go to school. We had replaced the Empire with another and they had tried their utmost to turn us into subservient tools.
  Just then an old man appeared. I knew I was hallucinating, but in exhaustion, I said, ‘Go on, speak!’ He offered me a packet. ‘What is it?’ I asked with suspicion. ‘Salt,’ he replied with humility. ‘Salt!’ I spat (…)

• Massive Success of Gandhian Mass Crusade

  2 September 2011, by SC

  A Gandhian leader has won hands down at least for the present. This is an outstanding victory for Gandhi’s India. To deny this is to be blind to the reality that has unfolded and is still unfolding before our very eyes.
  By all accounts it is a massive success. Frightened by the growing mass backing for Anna Hazare’s crusade against corruption, epitomised in his tenacious campaign for the Jan Lokpal Bill, the Manmohan Singh Government beat a hasty retreat on August 25 with the PM himself (…)

• Requiem for My Friend Kamala Prasad

  2 September 2011, by Muchkund Dubey

  Kamala Prasad, an outstanding civil servant of post-independent India, a formidable intellect, a prolific writer on current affairs and a perfect gentleman, passed away in Delhi on August 9, 2011. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1957 and retired as the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bihar in 1992. In addition to going through all the rungs of the Service, he was primarily involved in policy-making on development issues at the highest administrative level. He was the (…)

• The Anna Factor

  2 September 2011, by Devaki Jain

  Beginning as it did with not only deep skepticism about the legitimacy of the crowds —starting with aspersions that this was a middle-class urban community, triggered and extra-polated by the media, especially TV—the comments of the gatherings in Delhi in particular and elsewhere have begun to see the ‘crowds’ differently. From Left to Right, from journalists to commentators there is an acknowledgement that the crowds have all classes as well as all sects and are truly gripped by the (…)

• An Ill-conceived Essay

  2 September 2011

  COMMUNICATION
  The article “Duragraha in the name of Satygraha: A Gandhian Perspective” by Alok Bajpai, published in the July 29 issue of Mainstream, is utterly misconceived. It itself seeks to kill the Gandhian spirit. By declaring the Parliament supreme, over the voice of the people’s movement supported by virtually all cross-sections of the society across the country, it forgot the Gandhian dictum that representational democracy (which includes both parliamentary and presidential forms (…)

• Some Aspects of the Vastanvi Episode in Dar-ul-Uloom, Deoband

  2 September 2011, by Syed Shahabuddin

  The mass media has highlighted the decision of the Dar-ul-Uloom, Deoband, to terminate the recent appointment of Maulana G.M. Vastanvi as Mohtamin (Rector) and focused on the Muslim Indian’s continuing rejection of Narendra Modi, the mastermind of the Gujarat Genocide of 2002.
  The economic development of Gujarat under Modi is totally irrelevant to the Muslim Gujaratis who have re-built their shattered lives to the extent possible since the Genocide of 2002 with their own efforts without (…)

• Combating Corruption — The Ethical Dimension

  2 September 2011, by B P Mathur

  Just as it is impossible not to taste honey or poison that one may find at the tip of one’s tongue, so it is impossible for one dealing with government funds not to taste, at least a little bit, of the King’s wealth.
  Just as it is impossible to know when a fish moving in water is drinking it, so it is impossible to find out when government servants in charge of undertakings misappropriate money. —Kautilya: Arthshastra
  The only definition that can be given of morality is this: That which (…)