Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Reasons of the Backwardness of Pangals in Manipur | Md. Chingiz Khan

  9 October 2020

  by Md. Chingiz Khan
  It is not some new revelation or an instantaneous perception but an authoritative testimony that is given the green light in the state’s chronicle popularly known as Puyas that the settlement of Pangal community (local name for Muslims) in certain sectors of the state of Manipur had begun since the early period of the seventeenth century though there were ‘alleged’ claims and counterclaims of earlier settlements even before the seventeenth century by some local (…)

• In My Own Voice: Gulzar, Pramila Dandavate and dissent | Sagari Chhabra

  9 October 2020, by Sagari Chhabra

  At the Indian International Film Festival many years ago, I saw Gulzar, Sai Paranjape and Amol Palekar huddled together. I wished Sai who I knew, but she nodded perfunctorily and I thought she was rather preoccupied discussing her next film project. Then again, the next day I saw the three in deep conversation, heads put together talking in almost hushed whispers. I watched but this time I stayed away.
  Later I was invited to read my poetry at the Delhi International Literary Festival. It (…)

• India-Russia Relations and China | Barun Das Gupta

  9 October 2020, by Barun Das Gupta

  Since May, Sino-Indian relations have reached a stage which was succinctly summed up by our chief of air force R. K. S. Bhadauria as an “uneasy no war no peace status” Both countries have deployed infantry, artillery, tank, missiles and their respective air forces. The United States, France, Germany and Japan have made it known that they stand with India. How is the India-Russia relationship in the present context?
  Ever since the US subjected Russia to harsh economic sanctions in the wake (…)

• Gulf Sheikhs resent subaltern role | M K Bhadrakumar

  9 October 2020, by M K Bhadrakumar

  October 8, 2020
  The tabling of a “bipartisan” legislation in the US Congress on October 1 reiterating American commitment to Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME) creates an extraordinary dimension to the geopolitics and military balance in the Middle East region in the downstream of the so-called Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, which was signed in Washington three weeks ago.
  The bill’s short title is self-explanatory — Guaranteeing Israel’s QME (…)

• Russia: What’s behind the recent ecological disaster in Kamchatka? | Yekaterina Sinelschikova

  9 October 2020

  by Yekaterina Sinelschikova
  Kamchatka, Russia’s easternmost region, has been hit by an ecological catastrophe. Photos of lifeless marine animals strewn along the Pacific coast have been posted on social networks, and local surfers complain of nausea and eye cornea burns.
  In mid-September, Kamchatka surfer Anton Morozov started experiencing strange symptoms: dry, blurred, painful, and filmy eyes, plus sore throat and swollen ligaments. Morozov had been to a surfer camp on Khalaktyrsky (…)

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  [rouge]Table of Contents - Mainstream, October 3 2020 | Lockdown Edition no.28[/rouge]

  2 October 2020

  * Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Oct 3, 2020
  * The mythology of Justice | John Dayal
  * Criminal Raj in Uttar Pradesh | Barun Das Gupta
  . . .

• Letter to the Readers – Mainstream, Oct 3

  2 October 2020

  October 2 was the 151st birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi stood for truth but the leaders who are steering his country today stand for lies, all day every day.
  A court has just whitewashed the crimes of leading figures behind the demolition of the 15th-century mosque in Ayodhya. The Special CBI Court in Lucknow pronounced its judgement in the —28-Year-old — Babri Masjid Demolition Case acquitting all the 32 prime accused, including the top BJP leaders L K Advani and Murli (…)

• The mythology of Justice | John Dayal

  2 October 2020, by John Dayal

  It took crooked archaeologists and cultural mythologists to give a semblance of legality to the birthplace of Ram, the god. In the process, artefacts were found deep in the foundations where once stood the Babri Mosque. The artefacts were quickly dated, carefully avoiding the Buddhist period, on their way into a bygone era when King Dashrath reigned with his four wives, the senior queen giving birth to the heir.
  There was a finality to this pseudo-scientific defining of a timeline which (…)

• Criminal Raj in Uttar Pradesh | Barun Das Gupta

  2 October 2020, by Barun Das Gupta

  Under the ‘benign` leadership of Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh has become a paradise for criminals in cahoots with politicians in power. Four men in Hathras had brutally raped a 19-year old dalit girl. Not only was she raped but the criminals chopped off her tongue so that she could not speak, but her spine was broken and she sustained multiple fractures on her body. That was on September 14. She was first admitted to the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital at the Aligarh Muslim (…)

• On Bhagat Singh’s Birth Anniversary: Revisiting Bhagat Singh’s Sociological Imagination Through the Reading of “Why I am an Atheist” | Naren Singh Rao

  2 October 2020

  by Naren Singh Rao
  Bhagat Singh is one of the most unique and rarest of revolutionaries who significantly stand out amongst all revolutionists- his predecessors, contemporaries and successors. He did not just go to the gallows as a nationalist revolutionary. Rather, while striving to achieve political transformation, he ardently aspired to bring about deep social revolution by annihilating the retrograde and reactionary societal-cultural practices, ideologies and institutions. Hence, his (…)