Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The Indo-US nuclear deal is dead. Amen

  30 April 2017, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The Westinghouse company’s bankruptcy filing underscores that the entire range of criticism that was levelled by the Left in our country against the Indo-US nuclear deal has been proven right. The people who were lionised by the Indian media for negotiating the deal have gone into hiding. There is a saying that success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan.
  Fundamentally, what went wrong was that a decision was taken by the Indian ruling elites without due deliberation or national (…)

• Aping the Adversary

  30 April 2017, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  It is surprising how intelligent people in politics sometimes take up positions which should logically belong to their adversaries.
  The Muslim League in 1940 picked up the so-called ‘two-nation theory’ which a bunch of extremist intellectuals had first coined to back up their demand for Pakistan. Other parties in India rejected it. The Congress made it clear that it did not accept the theory itself though it agreed to the partitioning of the country on the basis of (…)

• A Curious Commonality Underpining Social, Global Events

  30 April 2017

  by M.A. Sofi
  As should be gleaned from the (sub)title of this write-up, it is intended to contend that howsoever randomly events may be seen to unfold at different levels of their occurrence in the society at a given point of time, there is an underlying unity (or commonality) of the causes which inform the coming about of these disparate events. To illustrate this point, let us look around and note that right now we are witnessing the unedifying spectacle involving a universal trend in (…)

• Govindrao Talwalkar

  30 April 2017

  TRIBUTE
  by Kumar Ketkar
  Culturally and socially, Govind Talwalkar was a quintessential middle class Brahmin, who grew up in Dombivali, then a small town in the Thane district, close to Mumbai. In the 1920s and even till 1950s, it was an extended village, or a potential urban centre. Proximity to Mumbai was a kind of association of Dombivali to modernity. The town had some well-known Marathi writers and poets and playwrights, like P.B. Bhave, S.N. Navre and others. Against the backdrop of (…)

• The Original Propagator of ‘Coercive Diplomacy’

  30 April 2017, by Apratim Mukarji

  BOOK REVIEW
  ndia’s Foreign Policy: Selected Writings by Prof Manohar Lal Sondhi; Editor: Harsh V. Pant; Har-Anand Publications Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi; 2017; pages 224; Price: 695.
  As the space for counter-thought in India is being sought to be constricted under virtual state sponsorship, re-reading Prof M.L. Sondhi’s writings on India’s foreign policy in 2017, nearly five decades since their first publication, one is immediately struck by his ‘audacious and dangerous’ thinking on subjects (…)

• Tribute to Ahmed Kathrada and Excerpts from an interview he gave in February 1991

  30 April 2017

  TRIBUTE
  Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada, who passed away at the Medical Center in Johannesburg on March 28, 2017 at the age of 87, was one of the best known freedom fighters of South Africa who waged a steadfast struggle against the aparthied regime and had to suffer long years of imprisonment in the Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison alongwith Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Andrew Mlangeni, Billy Nair, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Denis Goldberg, all of whom were sentenced to (…)

• Apex Court Fast-tracks Ayodhya Trial

  24 April 2017, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  With the Supreme Court today asking BJP patriarch L.K. Advani and his colleagues, notably Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti, to stand trial for criminal conspiracy in the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, that is, more than 26 years and four months ago, newspapers here are full of reports that this spells the end of his political career. [This may be true for Joshi and Bharti as well but Bharti seems unperturbed and at least for the moment has (…)

• Checkmated by Teesta: Hasina Visit and the Trajectory of India-Bangladesh Ties

  24 April 2017

  by Purusottam Bhattacharya
  The much hyped state visit of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, concluded on April 10, 2017 with feelings of satisfaction on both sides barring the much anticipated missing accord on sharing of the waters of the river Teesta between the two countries. This was the first state visit of the Bangladesh Prime Minister to New Delhi since the NDA Government of Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014 and the second one since she assumed power in (…)

• EVMs, Rapes and Kidnappings in UP

  24 April 2017, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  This entire week during my interactive talks with persons from Uttar Pradesh, there has been focus on three prime aspects: Their doubts about the very ‘proper authentic’ functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines! Those doubts coming up soon after the UP election results were announced and are getting strengthened after the EVMs did throw up some ugly truths in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind district. And why should it be presumed that only few EVMs were faulty—that is, those found (…)

• India should make a last-ditch effort to save Kulbhushan Jadhav from execution

  24 April 2017, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The government will need to go beyond self-righteous displays of ‘muscular diplomacy’ to save the brave officer.
  The death sentence handed down to former Indian Navy Commander Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav through Field General Court Martial in Pakistan seems to have taken the Indian establishment by surprise.
  The Ministry of External Affairs has been making demarches to the Pakistani authorities repeatedly, seeking consular access to Jadhav. As of end-March, we reportedly approached the (…)