2011

With this Annual Number Mainstream completes fortynine years of its eventful journey through crests and troughs to step into the fiftieth year of its modest existence.
It has doubtless been a purposeful voyage with all the trials and tribulations it had to encounter on its path which was indeed quite arduous due to its resource-constraints in particular. The difficulties have continued to mount over the years as the nation’s politico-economic scenario has undergone a sea-change with money (…)

[(The following lead piece was written by that outstanding Communist leader P.C. Joshi, the first General Secretary of the CPI, in the party’s weekly organ, New Age, on December 24, 1961, five days after Goa’s liberation from Portuguese colonialism. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of that momentous event, we are reproducing, with due acknowledgement, this piece alongwith a reportage on Goa’s liberation by journalist-cum-academic Raza Ali, also published in New Age (January 7, (…)

by RAZA ALI
Panjim, December 21—The lush, luxuriant wild beauty that is Goa has risen and gripped our entire country these days in a close embrace, as it were.
The story of the triumphant march of our Army to bring Goa back home is known already. But close upon the heels of our Army, a bare six hours behind the advancing line, was a batch of people from places near and faraway from Goa, who had found their way to Panjim to celebrate Goa’s liberation together with the Goanese and our own (…)

The recently declassified documents of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan have without any doubt established the fact of the absolute tilt of US President Nixon and Kissinger against India.
This hostile aggressive stand taken by Nixon was sought to be justified under the false premise that Indira Gandhi was right from the beginning determined to attack East Bengal. This, however, was a lie and Nixon, above all the people, knew that on the other hand she had tried her best to avoid (…)

This is how my sorrow became visible: in dust, piling up for years in my heart, finally reached my eyes, the bitterness now so clear that I had to listen when my friends told me to wash my eyes with blood Everything at once was tangled in blood--- each face, each idol, red everywhere. Blood swept over the sun, washing away its gold. The moon erupted with blood, its silver extinguished. The sky promised a morning of blood, and the night wept only blood.... Let it flow. Should it be dammed (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
Both India and Bangladesh have on December 16 this year befittingly observed and celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the liberation, with New Delhi’s generous and unstinted assistance, of what was known as East Pakistan from the exploitative and oppressive West Pakistani yoke. On this occasion we are carrying two pieces by N.C. that appeared in Mainstream soon after Dhaka’s emancipation from Islamabad’s brutal rule. The first piece appeared as ‘Political Notebook’ (…)

by SUKHARANJAN SENGUPTA
Anticipating the imminent fall of Dacca and the surrender of nearly a lakh of Pakistani troops to the Indian Army at any moment, my photographer colleague Ganesh and I (both of us were representing the Bengali daily Jugantar) left Calcutta for Silchar in Assam on December 15, 1971.
From Silchar we proceeded to Agartala, Tripura’s capital, which was one of the main operational theatres of the Indian armed forces to help liberate tens of millions of (…)

The Beginning...
The Bangladesh liberation war started in the night of March 25/26, 1971. I was working as a reporter for Patriot at Gauhati (Guwahati was still not the spelling). On March 30 or April 1, I got instructions from my Delhi office to go immediately to ’some place close to the Indo-Bangla border’ and report what was happening. I decided to go to Karimganj. A journalist friend of mine, Sachin Barooah, also joined in.
We flew to Silchar where another local journalist, Shantanu (…)

by JAIRAM RAMESH
I
I am not just privileged but also truly humbled to be part of this prestigious lecture series launched a half-century and six years ago by none other than C. Rajagopalachari. Many distinguished personalities have preceded me and this makes me feel all the more honoured to be here this evening.
To say anything about such an indomitable colossus as Sardar Patel, one of our Founding Fathers, would be gratuitous. Often referred to as the “Iron Man” and as the “Bismarck (…)

by SUJATO BHADRA
From 2001, the people of West Bengal began to acknowledge—albeit slowly—that in the remote areas of three districts, namely, West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia (traditionally considered as the most backward districts), the Maoists (in local popular parlance "Bon [Forest]” party) had been a political force to reckon with. Sporadic arrests, regular raids in villages for nabbing the Maoists and various kinds of human rights violations became the regular feature. Human rights (…)