2013

The following report by Nikhil Chakravartty, the Calcutta correspondent of People’s Age (published from Bombay), appeared in the weekly’s August 24, 1947 issue (it was wired from Calcutta on August 17, 1947) under the following headlines: ‘End of a Nightmare and Birth of New Dawn!’; ‘Calcutta Transformed by Spirit Of Independence’; ‘Hindus, Muslims Hug Each Other In Wild Joy—Tears Roll Down
Where Blood Once Soaked The Streets’.
Frenzy has overtaken Calcutta. It is a frenzy which no city (…)

This following is one of the best exposés of N.C. as a reporter and it was carried in the India Press Agency feature news service N.C. had founded with another outstanding Communist journalist, David Cohen (who thereafter left the Communist Party on the issue of Jewish persecution in the Soviet Union), in 1957. This report resulted in M.O. Mathai’s resignation from the post of the PM’s Special Assistant following a furore in Parliament in 1959.
New Delhi, January 3—A question is very often (…)

Military aid has suddenly become the main topic of political discussion in New Delhi, almost downgrading Sheikh Abdullah’s olive-branch mission to Pakistan and Sri Nehru’s repeat offer to Peking to open negotiations.
This is somewhat natural in view of Sri Chavan’s mission to Washington. But even a few weeks back, the Defence Minister’s US trip was regarded in the Capital as of secondary importance to Sri T.T. Krishnamachari’s multi-purpose approaches to America. It was also made clear (…)

As the golden flame licked up the funeral pyre, an unforgettable scene ended near the banks of the Jumna and under the shadow of the Red Fort.
It was an emotional experience without precedence, to watch this mightiest demonstration of love and respect that this great country has paid to any man. For Jawaharlal Nehru was, for the vast mass that is engulfed in sorrow today, not just a symbol of freedom, he was part of their very personality: it is difficult for this entire generation of ours (…)

It is like the end of a long night for men, women, and children of this country as Bangladesh proclaims her independence from Pakistan’s military junta. The rejoicing is not merely in the feat of arms—though the military defeat of the much-vaunted war machine of Pakistan has brought no little credit to this country’s armed forces, officers and men alike.
What is of abiding value is that this confrontation has demonstrated that democracy in this country has not only come to stay but has (…)

The following appeared under Editor’s Notebook in the first Mainstream issue to come out after the proclamation of Emergency (June 25, 1975).
Somewhere in the excitement of National Emergency, the editor has lost his notebook. However, Rabindranath Tagore has, in the abundance of his generosity, lent him his own notebook:
Freedom from fear is the freedom I claim for you, my Motherland!—fear, the phantom demon, shaped by your own distorted dreams;
Freedom from the burden of ages, (…)

Twelve years ago Jawaharlal Nehru died is harness on May 27. Inevitably, much has changed in these twelve years among his people and in the humanity at large. He was not the man who would have preferred the status quo to change; and if the landscape and the skyline of his country have changed—at places beyond recognition—Nehru, had he been alive, would have tried to understand them, accelerate the process of change.
What we who belong to the generations after him have to ponder over is (…)

Parliament has just repealed the Parliamentary Proceedings (Protection of Publication) Act which came into force twenty years ago in 1956. Late Feroze Gandhi, who initiated and piloted the Bill in Parliament, made a powerful case which might have been useful for the present Government to bear in mind. Sri Bhupesh Gupta, in his signed article in New Age of February 1, 1976, has recalled Feroze Gandhi’s speech, from which a significant portion is reproduced here below:
“For the success of (…)

Whatever may be the substance of the much-advertised point of difference between Peking and Washington over the question of détente, it may be safely assumed that Gerald Ford’s talks with Mao Tse-tung and his cohorts explored the further potentialities of Sino-American collusion, particularly in the countries of the Third World. Angola shows the enormity of this entente while the happenings in Bangladesh underscores this danger in our immediate neighbourhood.
The Sino-American (…)

There comes a moment in the life of a paper, as in the life of many an individual, when the sense of purpose is in danger of being lost by the constraints of circumstances. Such a moment has come today for Mainstream, after more than fourteen years of toil and tribulations, of successes as well as setbacks.
Throughout these fourteen years, there has never been any questioning of the cherished values, the ideals and principles, born out of the struggle of this nation for freedom, democracy (…)