Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Aruna Asaf Ali: A Tribute

  29 July 2017, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  July 16 this year marked legendary freedom fighter Aruna Asaf Ali’s 108th birth anniversary. She passed away twentyone years ago on July 29, 1996. As a tribute to her abiding memory we reproduce here N.C.’s moving piece and a poem on her by Som Benegal—both published after her demise.
  Generations spanning over centuries have been told that the French Revolution devoured its own children. In a sense, this could be said also of the Russian Revolution in which many of (…)

• Raisina Hill’s New Tenant / President’s Moral Standing

  29 July 2017, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Raisina Hill’s New Tenant
  Since President Pranab Mukherjee is laying down office this week, we carry here two pieces by Nikhil Chakravartty, written twenty years ago in July and November 1997, that bring out the importance of one of Mukherjee’s most illustrious predecessors as the country’s head of state, K.R. Narayanan, in our polity and the significant role he played as the President.
  By the time these lines reach the reader, India will be having a new President who, according to the (…)

• Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the Man and his Personality

  29 July 2017, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  I heaved a sigh of relief when the Opposition came up with the name of Gopalkrishna Gandhi as their vice-presidential candidate. As I’d mentioned in one of my earlier columns, this grandson of Mahatma Gandhi has been a former civil servant-turned-diplomat and now an academic-commentator-writer.
  I had interviewed him soon after his book— Dara Shukoh: A Play (Tranquebar Press)—was launched.
  I’m putting excerpts from that interview with Gopalkrishna Gandhi; enough to relay details (…)

• An individualist President

  29 July 2017, by Kuldip Nayar

  It is not difficult to assess the regime of Pranab Mukherjee who retires from the office of President after completing his tenure of five years. He was a wrong choice and should not have adorned the gaddi at the first instance.
  Pranab Mukherjee was the man Friday of Sanjay Gandhi, an extra-constitutional authority who ruled the country during the Emergency. It was a dictatorial rule by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, who had suspended even the fundamental rights. Pranab Mukherjee (…)

• Hindu nationalism risks pushing India into war with China

  29 July 2017

  by Yu Ning
  The following article appeared in China’s official publication Global Times on July 19, 2017. It brings out the Chinese stand on the Sino-Indian confrontation at Doklam.
  Since Indian troops illegally crossed into the Doklam area, China and India have been locked in a stand-off for over a month. Regardless of China’s call urging India to withdraw its troops that have crossed the border, New Delhi has continued its provocation. At the same time, anti-China sentiments are rising (…)

• Doklam Standoff: Beyond Border Dispute

  29 July 2017

  by Ramakrushna Pradhan
  The recent border standoff between arch rival China and India has been further escalated with Beijing holding live fire drills in the Tibet-Qinghai plateau at a height of 5000 feet. The telecast of the drill by the Chinese Central Television suggesting China is well prepared for a war in the high altitude Himalayan region adds further fuel to the already tense situation. Training with the T-96 tanks suggests an all-out war in the entire disputed border between the (…)

• Strong Action to Stop Mob Lynchings Should Get Top Priority

  29 July 2017, by Bharat Dogra

  At the time of writing this the Union Government appears to be waking up rather belatedly towards its responsibility for checking mob lynchings and related violence which, instead of being checked, have been worsening rapidly in recent months. According to statistics on such lynchings compiled by the India Today magazine, in the three years starting from June 2014, at least 50 cases of mob lynchings have been reported in 11 States. The words ‘at least’ are important here, as this compilation (…)

• Lynching to Power

  29 July 2017

  by Irfan Engineer
  Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old journalism student, was seized from his dorm room by a mob that stripped and beat him, then shot him dead on April 13, 2017 in Mardan in North West Pakistan. Khan was accused of offending Islam. (Rasmussen and Baloch 2017) In the month of May 2017, a mob attacked a police station demanding that Prakash Kumar, a 34-year-old Hindu, arrested under the blasphemy laws of Pakistan, be handed over to the mob. (AFP 2017) Just over a week later, a mob (…)

• Manipulating Narratives

  29 July 2017

  by Garima Mani Tripathi
  Karl Marx once said that the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas. This is apparently relevant in recent times, when many minority community people have been lynched on petty issues like beef-trading (or mere suspicion of that). Such attacks are due to manufactured and divisive narratives being imposed on the hitherto harmonious social order. Unless these narratives are questioned and countered through an affirmative and inclusive action, (…)

• Rumour to Riots in Bengal: Who do we blame and what do we do?

  29 July 2017

  by Rumela Sen and Niloy Sengupta
  In the first week of July, an inflammatory Facebook post by a teenage Hindu boy set off several days of communal violence in West Bengal’s Baduria-Basirhat region. Several senior BJP leaders blamed the violence on policies of minority appeasement they say Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamul Congress (TMC) have instituted. The TMC Government, on the other hand, blamed malicious rumour-mongering by digital warriors and leaders affiliated to the (…)