Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• On Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Birth Centenary

  16 March 2011

  The birth centenary of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of the most powerful Urdu poets of our subcontinent, was observed last month but even now several functions are being held in both Pakistan and India to commemorate the occasion and offer homage to his abiding memory. He was born in Sialkot on February 13, 1911. His father, Khan Bahadur Sultan Mohammad Khan, an eminent barrister, was a well-read person and enjoyed the company of distinguished literary figures; he also wrote the biography of Amir (…)

• Faiz: A Tribute

  16 March 2011

  by S.M. Mehdi
  Urdu can boast of many great poets—from Meer Taqi Meer of the 18th century to Josh, Firaq, Iqbal, Faiz and others of our own century. But few were recognised as great in their own life-time. Iqbal and Faiz were perhaps the only two exceptions. It may be said that Iqbal’s philosophy and his unique style were not taken up by any other poet after him. Faiz was, however, in many ways his successor. Faiz put Iqbal’s philosophy and world outlook on its feet and took from it the (…)

• Struggle for Peace and Struggle for Independence are Indivisible

  16 March 2011, by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

  The following is the acceptance speech of Faiz Ahmed Faiz on receiving the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962.
  Creating words and shaping them in an orderly form is the vocation of poets and men of letters. But there are occasions in life when one is left speechless. This is one such occasion for me: I don‘t have the words with which to adequately thank the Lenin Peace Prize Committee, as well as other Soviet institutions and friends, for the honour they have conferred upon me. The Peace Prize is (…)

• Remembering Zahida Zaidi

  15 March 2011

  Eminent scholars, colleagues, friends and relatives of Prof Zahida Zaidi gathered at the Arts Faculty of the Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh on March 1, 2011 to offer homage to Prof Zahida Zaidi, 82, the outstanding scholar, poet, dramatist, playwright and literary critic who breathed her last in Aligarh on January 11, 2011. The memorial meeting, held under the aegis of the Sabira Zaidi Memorial Trust, was presided over by Prof Irfan Habib, the renowned historian.
  Born on January 4, (…)

• Tragedy of Culture in Indian Anthropology

  15 March 2011, by J.J. Roy Burman

  Anthropologists the world over have devoted quite a bit of attention to cultures of ‘Primitive Men’ as exotic elements and romanticised them. In India not only the cultures of the tribes but even that of general society has been romantically put within the Western framework. No wonder most Indian anthropologists eulogise the works of N.K. Bose for his contribution to the concept of culture and the role it has played in the sustenance of Village India in general and Indian civilisation in (…)

• Unimpressive and Mired in Controversy

  21 February 2011, by SC

  Within a day of the PM’s televised interaction with editors of TV channels the Union Government has annulled the contract which Antrix, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), had entered into with Devas Multimedia in January 2010 wherein 70 MHz of S-band spectrum had been given to Devas at throwaway prices and without competitive bidding resulting in a loss of crores of rupees to the exchequer.
  While this is doubtless welcome (especially when various (…)

• Civilisational Cairo versus Fools

  21 February 2011, by T J S George

  Cairo has a distinction other ancient, continuous-civilisation cities like Damascus, Baghdad and Varanasi have never had: It is the heart-beat of pan-Arab culture, its influence stretching for beyond its national boundries. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mehfouz was the Arab world’s novelist, not just Egypt’s. Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram was the Arab world’s newspaper. Egypt’s Al-Azhar university was the Arab world’s university.
  Typical of Egypt, the Al-Ahram newspaper was always (…)

• People’s Power

  21 February 2011, by Shree Shankar Sharan

  The world has been charmed by the exercise and display of people’s power in Egypt. It all started in Tunisia over a common man setting himself aflame because of the callousness of authorities setting off huge demonstrations ending with the resignation of the President. But it reached its apogee in Egypt by what the Egyptians fondly called the march of a million in the Tahrir Square from day to day, unafraid and undeterred by the presence of the Egyptian Army, whose mind none could foretell, (…)

• Bliss was it in that Dawn!

  21 February 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  In the wake of the memorable mass upsurge in Egypt we reproduce the following piece by N.C. on a similar uprising in China in 1989—it was published on May 27, 1989 precisely a week before the massive student movement in Beijing was brutally suppressed on June 4, 1989.
  Like a thunder-lap it has burst. The massive student upsurge that has gripped China today has no parallel in history. A new page is being added to the great revolutions in the annals of humankind—the (…)

• A Zillion Brilliant Blooms of Tahrir: Egypt’s Tryst with Destiny

  21 February 2011

  by Rajarshi Mitra
  Egypt is magic, the land of stories, memories, and the exotic. She never failed to mesmerise the world, and as the present shows, she continues to. Observing and admiring, like the world is, I was reminded of Shakespeare’s moving dramatisation of a similar node in Egypt’s remarkable past. In Antony and Cleopatra, a romantic and sybaritic Antony, ever forgetful of his magisterial duties, cries out: ‘Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch/ Of the ranged empire fall! Here (…)