Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Upholding Objectivity beyond the Culture of Sycophancy

  12 December 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  We as a nation have taken pride in the fact that in political life, a liberal and tolerant approach has become the hall-mark of Indian democracy. While differences have always cropped up in our national movement involving the giants among its leadership, there was by and large adherence to the principle of live and let live.
  In our young days, we in Bengal looked upto Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das as our leader, and yet when he and Motilal Nehru differed from Gandhiji (…)

• Free Speech in the History of Ideas

  12 December 2010, by Meher Engineer

  Preamble
  “Indian historians have forgotten the history of ideas.” The claim appeared as the headline of a recent newspaper article.1 Add it to your worry-list if you will, but do not forget as you do that similar claims can be made, with as much force, about many of the country’s civil and political societies. The frequent rows that erupt over “seditious speech” make that obvious.
  Seditious Speech in India
  LOTS of people make such speeches, without any- one saying anything. But (…)

• When the Police Break the Law

  12 December 2010

  by Arup Dasgupta
  India’s emergence as the fourth largest economy with its burgeoning growth story conceals the grim world of poverty and deprivation of her teeming millions across the vast countrywide. The largest democracy of the world has spawned a kind of political culture of arrogance and muscle-flexing that every political party has adopted as its working principle. When there is disaffection among the poor resulting in the decline of law and order, the state intervenes with (…)

• End of Human Rights in Post-Modern Era

  12 December 2010, by Sunita Samal

  Though in the wake of 9/11 and attack on Iraq there is a shift from deconstruction towards politics, deconstruction is of great assistance to post-human cultural studies when it comes to analysing its relationship with politics. Cultural studies have tended to place human rights in a transcendental position with respect to all other discourses. Human rights cannot flourish without interaction of the civil society with the constitutive outside in a particular order.
  It is through rhetoric (…)

• Understanding the Status of Climate Change and Refugees

  12 December 2010

  by Sonali Narang
  It is now a well accepted fact that climate change has become the most dangerous problem before humanity. In this paper, I have tried to explain how the process of migration, which is stimulated by climate change, is leading to displacement of people particularly in South Asia.
  Climate Change and Displacement
  MILLIONS of people around the globe are at the risk of displacement due to climate change turning them out of their homes, whether temporarily or permanently. It (…)

• Comprehensive Plan Needed for Helping the Homeless

  12 December 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  No matter how tired we are in the course of a difficult day’s work, there is always the reassuring feeling that at the end of the hard work we’ll go back to sleep in the comfort of our home. But there are millions of people in our cities who simply do not have a home. The homeless of our cities suffer the most; yet they are the most neglected. No matter how adverse the weather conditions, they’ve to generally spend their nights on the footpath, near the railway station or bus stop or (…)

• Salute to a Purushottama

  12 December 2010, by T J S George

  TRIBUTE
  These are days when the success of an author depends less on the worth of his writings and more on the vigour with which he promotes himself through book launches, television conversations and lectures organised by the marketing department of publishing companies. P. Lal did none of these. So his death (November 3) went almost unnoticed. A newspaper para-graph or two in his home town of Kolkata and that was that.
  Yet P. Lal’s place in the literary history of India will be more (…)

• Delaying Enactment of Law on ‘Honour’ Killing

  12 December 2010

  by M.S. Jaglan
  There is a growing concern among the liberal minded individuals, social and democratic organisations and even international institutions on the rising trend of brutal killings of innocent youngsters in the name of family or clan honour in India. The United Nations also takes a very serious view of such heinous crimes. The naked brutality of such acts against women is in contravention of the spirit of the ’United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of (…)

• Honour Killing is Not Caste, Religion-specific

  12 December 2010

  by M.S. Rana
  Honour is the most precious moral attribute of mankind. It is deeply ingrained in its nature. Defence of honour even at the cost of life has been prevalent in human beings since ages. It is a commonwealth of close blood relatives. Defilement of honour is taken as the most atrocious social crime and its redemption becomes a joint and sacred duty of close-knit people. Debased groups have a soft approach towards transgression of honour. The sentimental chord dormant in them may (…)

• Destructive Face of Nuclear Attacks

  12 December 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  We are all aware how destructive modern war, particularly nuclear war, can become, but still very few people may be aware that for a considerable period of recent history as many as 170 to 290 million (17 to 29 crore) killings were to be carried out in a single overwhelming nuclear attack. This doesn’t include deaths from the longer-term impact of nuclear weapons.
  This happened around the year 1960 when the US military prepared its first formal nuclear war plan called the (…)