Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Defining Moment in the War on Terror

  14 May 2011, by SC

  Osama bin Laden is no more. The Al-Qaeda supremo, regarded as the world’s most dreaded terrorist, was shot dead by US forces in the early hours of May 2, 2011 at a spacious building in a massive compound, fortified with high walls and barbed wires, in Abbottabad (about 60 km north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad), a city where the Kakul Military Academy is located. This has stunned both the Pakistani establishment and people at large—and the general impression of well-informed experts and (…)

• Revoke the Illegal Clearance to the POSCO Project

  14 May 2011

  DEMAND AT PRESS CONFERENCE IN NEW DELHI
  A press conference was held in New Delhi on May 4, 2011 to protest against the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest’s “final clearance” to the POSCO project in Odisha. The following is the press release issued by the POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity (PPS-Delhi) in association with NFFPFW, CSD, NAPM, INSAF, and others at the press conference.
  The ‘final forest clearance’ by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to the controversial POSCO (…)

• West Bengal: Land, Money and the Marxists in New Town

  14 May 2011

  by Sanjeeb Mukherjee
  Most governments in India are regularly in the news for the wrong reasons. Corruption, murder, rape and mayhem have become routine pastimes of Ministers and their men. It has to be recognised that the Left Government in West Bengal has a much brighter image; no major scam has embarrassed it. Though charges have been levelled against some Ministers and rumours are afloat, the media and the Opposition as well as whistleblowers and intellectuals have failed to properly (…)

• The Legacy for Tomorrow

  14 May 2011

  Lenin once asked a group of Soviet students as to whom they regarded as the greatest literary figure of Russia. “Mayakovsky,” they replied. “Yes, but what about Pushkin?” asked Lenin, and added, “Could there have been a Mayakovsky without a Pushkin?” A hundred years from today the people would speak of Tagore in the same way and with more truth. At the moment we are too near to his personality to fully appraise its greatness. You cannot size up a Titan when you stand next to him. Tagore (…)

• Vignettes from Tagore

  14 May 2011

  On the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, we present here some vignettes from his writings providing an insight to his wandering spirit. These vignettes appeared in Mainstream (May 4, 1963).
  I was one day summoned upstairs to my father. How would I like to go with him to the Himalayas, I was asked. Away from the Bengal Academy and off to the Himalayas?
  Our first halt was to be for a few days at Bolpur. Satya had been there a short time before with his parents. No (…)

• The Nemesis

  14 May 2011

  RABINDRANATH TAGORE
  Your breathern you have treated with disrespect,
  You have denied them their simple human rights.
  You have made them stand and wait before you,
  And not given them a place in your affection.
  You must share with them all, their ignominy.
  II
  You have made of your neighbour an untouchable,
  You have offended that of God in every man.
  If famine visits your land like the wrath of God,
  You shall have to break your crumbs with the poorest.
  You must share with (…)

• Tagore and Nehru

  14 May 2011

  This contribution from the distinguished scientist who was closely associated with Tagore for over two decades throws interesting light on the approach and attitude of the two greatest sons of India. It is being reproduced from Mainstream (Republic Day Special 1965) for the benefit of our readers.
  by P. C. Mahalanobis
  I have read with much interest in Mainstream (June 20, 1964) the article about Jawaharlal Nehru’s talks with Rabindranath Tagore. I had the good fortune to be present on (…)

• South, North and the United Nations in a 21st Century World part III | Boutros Boutros-Ghali And Branislav Gosovic

  14 May 2011

  Global Leadership And Global Systemic Issues
  Boutros Boutros-Ghali And Branislav Gosovic
  The following is the third and concluding part of a lengthy article being published here in three parts. The first and second parts appeared in the Mainstream issues of April 23, 2011 and April 30, 2011 respectively.
  —

• China Impressions

  14 May 2011, by V.P. Dutt

  [(TRIBUTE
  Prof V.P. Dutt, 86, one of the most renowned Indian scholars on China—he was the doyen of Chinese Studies in this country—and noted foreign policy expert (whose speeches on international issues were heard with rapt attention in the Rajya Sabha when he was a nominated member of the Upper House of Parliament in the seventies), passed away in New Delhi on April 26—he had fallen ill in late March. His wife, Dr Gargi Dutt, also a distinguished China scholar, predeceased him some (…)

• Cameos

  14 May 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary falls on Monday (May 9, 2011). On this occasion we are reproducing two pieces by N.C. on Tagore written 70 years ago, in 1941. Both were published in The Calcutta Municipal Gazette—Tagore Memorial Special Supplement, September 13, 1941 (that appeared after the Poet’s death on August 7, 1941). The first piece was carried under the pseudonym Vanguard. Though written during World War II when the global scenario was (…)