Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Indian Constitutional Courts and Secularism—II

  9 December 2018

  by Irfan Engineer
  The first part of this two-part article appeared in last week’s Mainstream (December 1, 2018). This is the second and concluding part.
  In the previous issue of Mainstream (December 1, 2018) we briefly outlined the tension between rights of denominations or any sections thereof under Article 26 of the Constitution to manage their own affairs in matters of religion, and to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purpose on one hand and rights of (…)

• Human Rights: Basic Issues / Not Sorrow but Atonement

  9 December 2018, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Human Rights Day is observed on December 10 every year commemorating the day, in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To mark the occasion we are reproducing the following article N.C. wrote twentysix years ago.
  Human Rights: Basic Issues
  The government’s decision to set up a National Human Rights Commission is a significant indication of its being able to read the signs of the times. The Prime Minister has (…)

• Renaming Places, Rewriting History

  9 December 2018

  by Aishwarya Bhuta
  “Abhito haur naam badalne hain,” (more names are yet to be changed) proclaimed Yogi Adityanath even before he was named the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. Hence, it should not come as a surprise that his Cabinet has approved the proposal of renaming the historic city of Allahabad as Prayagraj. Barely three months ago, in August 2018, Mughalsarai Junction in UP was rechristened Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction after the RSS ideologue. Faizabad is now to be known as (…)

• Deconstructing the Politics of Renaming

  9 December 2018, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Renaming cities and places is nothing new in world history. The socio-political context of its happening is important. Catherine Epstein in her book, Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), drew our attention to what happened in Poland under Nazi occupation: “Throughout Nazi-occupied Poland, Poles were deemed to be second-class persons... They lost all property rights and were subject to a special, stringent criminal code... Nazi policies in western Poland offer a primer (…)

• Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific: Indian Dream versus the Indian Fairy-tale

  9 December 2018

  by Shrabana Barua
  With the rebalancing of the Asia strategy of the Trump Administration, Indo-Pacific as a term began to overlap with that of Asia-Pacific. Though broadly both these terms roughly point to the region east of the Indian subcontinent and beyond, there are fundamental differences between the two that India should not overlook. While Asia-Pacific has an economic overtone to it, Indo-Pacific has evolved within a strategic context and can be said to be a concoction mostly of the (…)

• Arrest of “Urban Naxals” decried at Public meeting in the Capital

  9 December 2018

  A public meeting was held at the Constitution Club on Saturday, December 1, 2018 to discuss the worrisome trend of anti-terror laws being used to stifle democratic dissent by harassing civil rights lawyers, poets, writers. The meeting was called by the group of petitioners who had approached the Supreme Court in the matter of the arrest on August 28 of persons alleged to be “urban Naxals” (Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Fereira and Vernon Gonsalves). Their petition, (…)

• Rohingya Sympathisers’ Open Letter to Union Home Minister

  9 December 2018

  Hon’ble Home Minister,
  We understand from news reports that under instructions from your Ministry, the intelligence agencies, have prepared a State-wise list of several organisations and individuals, who are sympathetic to the Rohingya refugees in India and are providing assistance to them. According to the news story published in The Pioneer (November 19), the list includes the names of a former Ambassador, top lawyers, civil society members and a professor of a renowned university as (…)

• Do Women Really have a Reproductive Choice?

  9 December 2018

  WOMEN’S WORLD
  by Ramneet Kaur
  When we refer to the concept of reproductive choice, it means women’s right, control and choice over their reproductive abilities. The right to decide whether they want to have a child or not, the control over their bodies, and the choice of refusing or accepting motherhood.
  But, when we think about women’s right, control and choice over their bodies in a patriarchal country like India, these terms appear more of a question than an answer to one of the (…)

• Why Let Religion Destroy India?

  9 December 2018, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  What’s happening to our country? A huge and diverse land of 135 million people, 29 States and 22 scheduled languages, yet we are caught in a single obsession—religion. All discussions, all decisions, all policies are shaped by religion. Sabarimala is on the edge of civil war. “Hindus are losing their patience,” a Union Minister tells the Supreme Court after it postponed the Ayodhya case hearing. Uttar Pradesh changes Allahabad into Prayagraj. Soon Azamgarh will be Aryamgarh, (…)

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  Black and White

  2 December 2018, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  Last week African nationals staying in the Capital were subjected to wanton attack once again. According to reports, two Tanzanian women and two Nigerian men were hounded by a mob in the wake of rumours that they had kidnapped a local boy and even ‘eaten’ him, an allegation which was ultimately found to be totally false. Thankfully they were rescued on time before they could suffer physical assaults leading to grievous injuries. Such attacks on Africans in the National Capital (…)