Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Have You Looked at Barsa Lakhma’s Face?

  10 June 2010, by Nirmalangshu Mukherji

  The Hindu, May 25, posted the photograph of a person in its frontpage under the head “Six Naxals held for Dantewada massacre”, http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/25/stories/20100525 62010100.htm
  The person, Barsa Lakhma, is alleged to be a Naxal “leader”, a “commander” who is said to be involved in the gunning down of 76 security personnel. He along with five others—Oyam Hidma, Podiyami Hidma, Kawasi Budra, Oya Ganga, and Dura Joga—are in police custody after a “major breakthrough”.
  Take a (…)

• Relevance of the Caste-based Census

  10 June 2010, by Dilip Chavan

  India is gearing up its decennial census now. The present opposition to the caste-based census has a long lineage. G.S. Ghurye, one of the pioneers of Indian Sociology, had, way back in 1932, criticised the colonial practice of the caste-based census and the consequent politicisation of caste. He also attributed the origin of caste-based reservation to this politicisation and recorded his disapproval to the idea of caste-based reservation.
  Caste in India is increasingly seen as an obscure (…)

• Missing Elements in the Union Home Minister’s New Security Architecture

  10 June 2010, by K S Subramanian

  As a former IPS officer with experience of working in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Union Home ministry for many years and author of two recent books on the Indian police, I have read with interest the IB centenary endowment lecture, titled “A New Architecture for India’s Security”, delivered by the Union Home Minister on December 23, 2009. The lecture lacks credibility and carries no conviction because it ignores the long history and present predicament of the Indian Police, which (…)

• Why Naxalism?

  10 June 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  This article was written by N.C. forty years ago as ‘Observer’ in Mainstream (May 2, 1970) at the height of the first wave of the Naxalite movement. The spate of terrorist violence in West Bengal has pin-pointed public attention on what has come to be known as the Naxalite problem. Many so-called specialists on communism have aired very profound views on the nature of this phenomenon and have not hesitated to deliver homilies on how to deal with it.
  The Union Home (…)

• The Contrast

  1 June 2010, by SC

  In between the country’s most tragic air accident in a decade at the Mangalore airport in the early hours of May 22 and the former Haryana DGP, S.P.S. Rathore, being sent to jail following his sentence to one-and-a-half years behind bars on May 25 (20 years after he had molested 14-year-old Ruchika Girhotra forcing her to commit suicide when he dodged the judicial system by misusing his office and intimidatory tactics) came the Prime Minister’s first fully-publicised press conference since (…)

• Afghanistan: The New Game-plan

  1 June 2010, by Mansoor Ali

  It is quite a well-known fact that Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Americans are at odds with one another. Rumours are rapidly spreading with effortless ease that US President Barack Obama dislikes Karzai and his distaste for the latter is growing. As a consequence Karzai is becoming defiant and even promising to join the Taliban and carry out unspeakable acts to defend the honour and independence of the Afghan fatherland. However, at the same time behind-the-scenes the US authorities (…)

• Nehru for Today

  1 June 2010

  (On May 27 this year falls the 46th death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, widely known as the architect of modern India. On this occasion we are carrying some relevant excerpts from his writings and speeches for the benefit of our readers. We are also reproducing articles by distinguished public figure and women’s leader Aruna Asaf Ali, historian Bipan Chandra, and writer and littérateur Mulk Raj Anand that came out in a volume at the time of Nehru’s birth (…)

• Acharya Rammurty

  1 June 2010, by Shankar Sharan

  TRIBUTE
  Bihar lost one of the ikons of the JP movement, Acharya Rammurty, on May 20, 2010, which has been widely mourned. He was a man of immense learning reflected in his honorific title of Acharya, lovingly conferred on him by the people.and acknowledged by JP by nominating him as his second-in-command of the Bihar movement. He was one of the few people JP took counsels from. Post-JP he was the most respected leader of the followers of JP who would rally to his call whenever he made (…)

• Caste in Census 2011—Is it Necessary?

  1 June 2010, by Rajindar Sachar

  The country is in a vortex of challenges, counter-challenges and suspicious suggestions even amongst good friends on the desirability or otherwise of inclusion of caste in Census 2011. I feel that a calmer discussion may clear a number of cobwebs.
  It is common ground that the caste system exists in our country since centuries. It is unnecessary to dilate upon the origin of caste; whether due to the freezing of the guild system, helped and encouraged no doubt by the Brahamanical (…)

• Women’s Resurgence: The Gandhi-Nehru Alchemy

  1 June 2010, by Aruna Asaf Ali

  Jawaharlal Nehru’s contribution in the post-independence years to improving the status of Indian women, specially through the reform of Hindu law, is part of recent history and is fairly well known. In this article I shall attempt, as one who was a witness to and participant in the freedom struggle in an earlier era, to narrate to the present generation the story of how Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, between them, exercised an alchemy that turned the common clay of Indian humanity into (…)