Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Whither India: The Way Up or the Way Down?

  10 November 2010, by P K Chatterjee

  [(TRIBUTE
  Prabhat Kumar Chatterjee, eminent senior Supreme Court advocate, who passed away at his New Delhi residence in the morning of October 28, 2010, was born on October 10, 1922. His father, the late Rai Bahadur A.D. Chatterjee, was a member of the judicial service in Bihar. He completed his graduation from the Government College, Bhagalpur, and went on to do his Law from the Patna Law College. Subsequently he began his law practice in the Patna High Court before coming to Delhi and (…)

• Absorbing Narrative of a Community on the Move while being in Confrontation and Crisis

  10 November 2010, by Dipak Malik

  BOOK REVIEW
  The Warp and the Weft: Community and Gender Identity among Banaras Weavers by Vasanthi Raman; Routledge, New Delhi; 2010; pages 384; Rs 795.
  The Warp and the Weft is a serious attempt in building blocs in study of ‘the invisible’ in the mainstream social science discourse. Admittedly the dominant group of watchers of Indian society invariably, because of the perception bias, seem to ignore questions of plurality embedded in the scene, where distinct identities of minorities (…)

• US in Afghanistan: A Catch-22 Situation

  10 November 2010, by Mansoor Ali

  The US strategy in Afghanistan is “unsustai-nable”, writes Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times. Why? Because, as he opines, “it is inadvertently financing its adversaries” while simultaneously “backing a corrupt government that drives people to the Taliban”—a kind of double-edged sword. In a way it reflects a lack of policy on the part of the Americans to meet the enormous challenge that the country (which has never been under alien domination and can never be subdued if past history (…)

• Wanted Substance, Not Rhetoric

  30 October 2010, by SC

  As the third phase of polling for the Bihar Assembly elections ends today, it is still not certain if Nitish Kumar would return to power at the head of the JD(U)-BJP combine though there appears to be unanimity on the opinion that he and his alliance have a distinct advantage over his adversaries, and former CM Laloo Prasad in particular.
  Meanwhile as the country and the Union Government get ready for the Obama visit in the first half of next month, the Union Home Secretary and US (…)

• How to Meet the Caste Challenge in Politics

  30 October 2010, by Chaturanan Mishra

  Caste-based regional political parties have come up because the Central Government did not address the problem of regional backwardness. Such regional parties may appear to give the impression of democracy reaching the people down below. But there is one big danger: such regional parties may lead to the balkanisation of the country if they turn into separatist movements as in Kashmir, the North-East region, Bodoland etc. The threat to national unity springing from this phenomenon should be (…)

• US Administration Beating Hasty Retreat

  30 October 2010, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The sudden accretion of tensions in the United States-Pakistan ties in recent days raises several questions. Most certainly, they were contrived tensions and they dissipated as quickly as they gathered. It all began with a dramatic jump in the US’ drone attacks in Waziristan in the most recent weeks.
  Actually, there has been a four-fold increase in September as compared to the average during the past six-month period. In a single month alone, the drones rained death and destruction 22 (…)

• Bhagwat Puran of A Different Kind: Conflating Hinduism and Hindutva

  30 October 2010, by Subhash Gatade

  I
  Mohan Bhagwat, the ‘young’ supremo of an eighty plus-year-old exclusively male cultural organisation called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is in high spirits these days.
  It is not very difficult to understand the glee on his face which has to do with the latest developments in the cause célèbre of the Sangh Parivar. One can even notice that every member of this different kind of ‘family’ also seems to be upbeat, its representatives can be found in the neighbourhood playground in (…)

• Life, Dignity of Kashmiris have Lost Meaning

  30 October 2010

  by Zafar Meraj
  There seems to be no end to the vicious plan of what can easily be termed as selected killings of Kashmiri youth in the most brutal manner. Notwithstanding the tall daims made by the rulers both in Srinagar and New Delhi, a systematic killing spree by the butchers in khaki continues across the Valley.
  This leaves little doubt that all this is part of a well-thought-out plan to crush the Kashmiri, to be more specific the Kashmiri Muslim, to an extent that he dare not open (…)

• On ‘The Kashmir Calculus’

  30 October 2010

  COMMUNICATION
  This refers to Uddipan Mukherjee’s article “The Kashmir Calculus” (Mainstream, October 9, 2010). It’s a very well written article but towards the end when he delineates the path ahead, he has dwelt on a number diversions. I agree with him that at this stage our acceptance of the LoC as the international border will not put an end to the insurgency in the Valley or silence the movement for azadi. Neither do I accept Musharraf’s proposal as applicable to the entire state. It (…)

• Ethnicity, Religion, Politics and Nation

  30 October 2010

  by N.V.K. MURTHY
  As a teenager, growing up in India during the freedom struggle, I remember my heart swelling up with pride when I sang poet Iqbal’s celebrated song “Saare Jahan Se Acha Hindustan Hamara”. Now, looking back at my life over the last seven decades, I begin to wonder as to how any sane person could believe in such narrow nationalism.
  India has been variously described as a continent, as a group of disparate ethnic groups put together artificially by a colonial empire, and (…)