Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Tuticorin: the Vedanta Doctrine

  2 June 2018

  First we give you bagfuls
  To make government,
  Then you commit not to meddle
  With our profit-piling hunt.
  But when people demonstrate
  Against our killer-loot,
  You promptly send the troopers
  To take aim and shoot.
  Thus it is that you and we—
  Government and Corporate—
  Define the nationalist feature
  Of the proud and ideal State.
  Government by, of, and for
  The men with currency
  Is thus the improved version
  We provide of democracy.
  Badri Raina

• After Karnataka

  2 June 2018, by Badri Raina

  The decline of the National Democratic Alliance is by now a dated story. The few partners of the Bharatiya Janata Party—who are still formally in the Alliance—may be understood to be in the throes of a judicial separation, pending divorce. The contest in a Maharashtra bypoll directly between the BJP and Shiv Sena tells its own story. The Akalis may eventually have nowhere else to go, but this may not be the case with the mercurial JD(U); should the Hindutva forces create mayhem leading upto (…)

• Lessons from Karnataka

  2 June 2018

  by Binoy Viswam
  Developments in Karnataka conveyed an important message to the nation. It marked the beginning of the end of the authoritarian rule of the BJP in the country. All secular, democratic and Left forces are expected to draw appropriate lessons from Karnataka. The CPI, being the first political party that has called for a broad platform of secular forces to face the fascist threat, naturally feels proud while evaluating the ups and downs in Karnataka. Those developments (…)

• Challenge to India’s Pluralism

  2 June 2018, by Kuldip Nayar

  However justified Delhi’s Archbishop Anil Joseph Thomas Cuoto may be in calling fellow Catholic Christians to pray for a change of government at the Centre, he is guilty of committing a grave mistake of mixing religion with politics. In a pastoral letter, he has asked fellow priests to pray and fast for change in the 2019 elections, arguing that India faces a turbulent political future which threatens the country’s democratic polity.
  Today, when India as a nation faces attacks from fascist (…)

• Is it Politically Relevant today to ask whether Nehru visited Bhagat Singh in Jail?

  2 June 2018

  by Ram Puniyani
  In the recently held Karnataka elections, Narendra Modi made statements which are not true, and which are made to raise the emotive pitch against his opponents. In a blatant lie, in a rally in Bidar, he asked: “When Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Batukeshwar Dutt, Veer Savarkar, greats like them were jailed fighting for the country’s independence, did any Congress leader went to meet them?...” One is surprised as to how this can be an electoral issue today! The central tactic of the (…)

• Finding Hope Amidst Despair

  2 June 2018, by Bharat Dogra

  During the first two decades of the 21st century it has become increasingly clear that this is going to be the most critical century of human history in the sense that survival issues or existential issues created by human activities are likely sooner then later to have an over-whelming impact. Among environmental issues there are climate change and at least eight or and nine other issues (like freshwater shortages, species extinction and drastic changes in oceans as well as land use). (…)

• BJP’s Dangerous Politics

  2 June 2018, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  One of my earliest reporting experiences was the great Calcutta killing of 1946. Fierce communal passions were unleashed and thousands were done to death on both sides in the course of a couple of days. But behind that gory carnage was the fight for the city of Calcutta: who should get it? Pakistan or India? Religious beliefs are made use of to rouse mass anger among innocent people, but those who whip up such passions do so only for political gains.
  In our immediate (…)

• Wise Philosophers, Fanatic Kings

  2 June 2018, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The time gap between voting day and results day is one of the afflictions of democracy. The tension is excruciating when it’s an election that will decide the temper of life for a considerable length of time. Will the freedoms we have taken for granted for 68 years continue as before, or will they be amended by a new set of values with new definitions of freedom and democracy? To know the answer, we must necessarily live through the pressure of waiting. One way to
  cope is to (…)

• Rape of Forms, of Psyches!

  2 June 2018, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  I’m finding it impossible to grasp the ruthlessness meted out to rape victims in this country. Take the case of the eight-year-old girl raped and murdered in Kathua, on the outskirts of Jammu, and also that of the 16-year-old girl raped in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao. In both the cases the rapists were more than identified and well within the jurisdiction of the State to have been nabbed and nailed immediately, yet look at the way hurdles are getting thrown in the way. Not to be (…)

• Impeachment

  2 June 2018

  by Sardar Amjad Ali
  I hope there may not be any noble soul to contradict, if I say the impeachment of Lord Warren Hastings before the British Parliament, beginning on February 18, 1788, was one of the most sensational and eventful trials, with the members of the House of Commons on the right and the Law Lords of the House of Lords on the left, ending after a period of seven years, though as a “failed move”.
  The most celebrated and powerful speakers like Edmund Burke and Sheridan had (…)