Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Daylight Murders

  9 June 2011, by Madhu Bhaduri

  The National Women’s Commission objects to calling them ‘honour killings’ and would prefer to call them “dishonour Killings”. The Commission has yet to do anything beyond expressing this preference even when these killings are common-place today. Young couples who dare to marry within their Gotra are murdered in broad daylight under instructions from the rich and powerful who call themselves Khap Panchayats. This has been happening in the villages of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and west UP. (…)

• Death For Honour : Khap Panchayats are a National Shame

  9 June 2011, by Sunita Vakil

  This is a ruling that couldn’t have come a day sooner. The Supreme Court’s directions to rein in Khap Panchayats for their bizarre edicts is a welcome step towards dismantling the clutch of these medieval community courts. This landmark judgment not only delegitimises caste councils which have become a law unto themselves but also conveys that nobody is above the law. The verdict is a bodyblow to Khap Panchayats that administer Taliban-style justice to promote caste-based politics in (…)

• Nehru for Today

  9 June 2011

  (On the occasion of Jawaharlal Nehru’s fortyseventh death anniversary on May 27, 2011, we remember the first PM of independent India by publishing the following excerpts from his writings. We are also carrying the piece that N.C. wrote within two days of Nehru’s demise in 1964 and two articles by distinguished personalities published in Mainstream in May-June 1965. —Editor)
  A Revaluation of the Congress Party
  We have to function in future as a compact political party with a well-defined (…)

• India without Nehru

  9 June 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The following piece, which appeared in the ‘New Delhi Skyline’ of Mainstream, was written two days after Jawaharlal Nehru’s demise on May 27, 1964. As the golden flame licked up the funeral pyre, an unforgettable scene ended near the banks of the Jumna and under the shadow of the Red Fort.
  It was an emotional experience without precedence, to watch this mightiest demonstration of love and respect that this great country has paid to any man. For Jawaharlal Nehru was, for the vast mass that (…)

• Remembering Nehru

  9 June 2011

  by BIBHUTI MISHRA
  About a year ago, Panditji left us for ever. We, who had followed him and worked under his guidance for more than three decades, were all of a sudden left to work without him. Though for a moment it seemed that we were helpless and leaderless, but we were mistaken. We had a flame lit by Panditji to guide us on to the path of national reconstruction and socialism
  The experience of the last one year has confirmed that without Nehru’s ideals and ideas we cannot go ahead, (…)

• Socialism and Nehru

  9 June 2011

  by K.N. RAJ
  The following is the text of the paper read by the distinguished economist and Director of the Delhi School of Economics at the symposium held in New Delhi to mark the first death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, May 27, 1965. Dr K.N. Raj, who passed away sometime ago, subsequently became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Delhi.
  Socialism, like democracy means now different things to different people. Almost everyone in India calls himself today a socialist. This (…)

• Nehru’s Vision of Building a Modern India and its Complete Negation since the 1990s

  9 June 2011, by Girish Mishra

  BOOK REVIEW
  Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 42 (April 1-June 30, 1958) edited by Aditya Mukherjee and Mridula Mukherjee; Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, Teen Murti House, New Delhi; 2010; pp. 922; Rs 100.
  Jawaharlal Nehru, throughout his days of the freedom struggle, was among a small band of leaders who strove not only for the country’s liberation from the yoke of colonialism but also had a socio-economic vision of independent India. In fact, he was the (…)

• Fifty Years of Independence: Gains and Losses

  9 June 2011

  [(TRIBUTE
  He was described as the “last of the towering personalities in Bihar’s communist movement”. Veteran freedom fighter and one of the pioneers in setting up the Communist Party of India in Bihar, Jagannath Sarkar, 92, breathed his last at his Patna residence last month (April 8, 2011) after protracted illness. He is survived by his wife Nilima, sons Abhijit (a scientist) and Gautam (consultant for a company in Bangalore), and daughter Usashi (a medical practitioner married to (…)

• Goof-ups and Refusal to Face the Reality

  24 May 2011, by SC

  The last few days have caused considerable embarassment to the Union Government and the Congress party.
  First came the blunder in including terror accused Wazhul Kamar Khan alies Murtaza Choudhary (he was allegedly involved in the 2003 Mulund blasts) in the list of 50 most-wanted fugitives that India had handed over to Pakistan (despite the fact that Khan was actually in this country and living in the densely populated Thane sub-city of Mumbai for years). The report in a newspaper (…)

• West Bengal — What Next?

  24 May 2011, by Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy

  The following is a piece written by S. Sudhakar Reddy, the CPI’s Deputy General Secretary, in response to the Mainstream editor’s request to pen down what he expects from the Trinamul Congress-Congress alliance that has just been elected to power in West Bengal under the leadership of TMC chief Mamata Banjerjee.
  Now the elections are over in five States. The defeat of the Left in West Bengal is a big setback. Though it was expected that the Left could lose, still there is a great (…)