Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Why Is Kashmir Quiet?

  25 July 2011, by Uddipan Mukherjee

  “After a winter’s gestation in its eggshell of ice, the valley had beaked its way out into the open, moist and yellow. The new grass bided its time underground; the mountains were retreating to their hill-stations for the warm season.“
  —Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, p. 5
  In such a landscape, as Aadam Aziz set foot on the streets of Srinagar, he was fortunate not to observe any Army camp on the lakeside. He was privileged not to exchange unfriendly stares with any khaki-clad (…)

• Tribute to Shiela Gujral

  25 July 2011

  A sensitive writer and poet Shiela Gujral, 87, passed away peacefully in New Delhi on Monday, July 11, 2011 leaving behind her grief-stricken ailing husband Inder Kumar Gujral, our former Prime Minister (1997-98). As a token of our tribute to her abiding memory we are reproducing the following reviews of her books by noted personalities that appeared in Mainstream at different times. The first one is by Bhabani Sen Gupta, the well-known strategic expert, litterateur and a good friend of the Gujrals; he himself passed away on January 18 this year. The second is by K.S. Duggal, the distinguished writer and a former nominated Member of the Rajya Sabha.

• Wages of Drift

  20 July 2011, by SC

  Terror has returned to Mumbai. As The Times of India wrote bringing out the trauma of the people residing in the premier metropolis, the country’s commercial and industrial nerve-centre,
  No other city in the world has been the target of as many serial terror attacks and bombings as Mumbai, which went through the agony in 1993, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2008 and now July 13, 2011. On Wednesday evening, three serial bomb blasts in the span of ten minutes ripped through three of the busiest hubs in (…)

• In God We Trust … Rest Strictly Cash!!

  20 July 2011, by Sandeep Shastri

  The politics of Karnataka has verily become the theatre of the absurd! Having been ‘sworn- in‘ three years ago to govern the State, the political leadership was heading for a ‘swear- out‘ at Dharmasthala, an important seat of religion and spirituality in the State. This was to affirm one’s commitment to the truth. The Chief Minister (B.S. Yeddyurappa) challenging a former Chief Minister (H.D. Kumaraswamy) to testify before God at Dharmasthala by means of a government advertisement in all (…)

• The Importance of being Pakistan

  20 July 2011, by Apratim Mukarji

  While the Pakistani state is being periodi-cally buffeted by a series of highly volatile events exposing certain inherent weaknesses of its institutions, its increasing relevance to the world community is also being brought into sharper focus than before.
  This apparent contradiction is easily explained when we examine various parameters to determine the changing status of the Pakistani state in the comity of nations.
  To simplify our task, we can deal with four of these (…)

• Deceiving the People in Legal Ways is Still Deception. It Won’t Work

  20 July 2011, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Deceiving, alas, has become part of democracy. It can be brazen or it can be subliminal, the latter being more cunning and therefore more destructive. India goes brazen when big private interests have to be protected. But at the subliminal level, it is continuously deceptive—and continuously corroding the vitals of the country.
  When Union Carbide’s Anderson was given a special plane and helped to flee the country in the wake of the Bhopal gas catastrophe, the state was (…)

• Notes on Forbesganj Violence

  20 July 2011

  by Ashok Yadav and Khalid Anis Ansari
  The police firing and subsequent killing of five OBC Muslims in Bhajanpur village in Forbesganj of Araria district in Bihar on June 3, 2011 has been analysed in most reports in the public sphere through the frame of ‘communalism’ and there has been little effort to grapple with the other dimensions that the event entails. Increa-singly, it is being felt that the discourse around secularism/communalism is being employed to reinforce the restorative (…)

• Confusion worse Confounded

  20 July 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Former PM P.V. Narasimha Rao, who would have completed ninety years on June 28, 2011, was close to N.C. and frequently interacted with him. There existed quite a deep friendship between the two who knew each other well. When P.V. was elected the Congress President after Rajiv Gandhi’s tragic assassination in 1991, N.C. wrote editorially in this journal: “The choice has naturally fallen on the senior leader in the party who can never be accused of domineering—rather he (…)

• Contours of Emerging World

  20 July 2011, by P.V. Narasimha Rao

  [Former PM P.V. Narasimha Rao’s ninetieth birth anniversary was observed on June 28, 2011. He was born on June 28, 1921 at Vangara village in Bheemdevarpalli mandal of Andhra Pradesh’s Karimnagar district and he breathed his last in New Delhi on December 23, 2004 at the age of 83. Besides serving the Congress party and the Andhra Pradesh State Government in various capacities, he became the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in September 1971 and remained in that post till January 1973. (…)

• Chaturanan Mishra

  20 July 2011

  COMMUNICATION
  I was grieved to learn of the death of Chaturanan Mishra. His presence and his interventions enriched political life in the country. Never hidebound by party affiliation, never personal, always constructive. His writings provoked thought. If his articles in Mainstream in particular in the last twenty years or so are put together, the publication would constitute a valuable and inspiring collection from the point of view not only of the Communist but also of the (…)