2013

Nikhilda was brought into journalism by Puran Chandra Joshi, better known as P.C. Joshi, during the Bengal famine of 1943. Joshi was the General Secretary of the CPI at that time. Before that, for a brief period, Nikhilda had taught History in the Calcutta University. Under Joshi’s guidance, several other young Communist activists contributed their best during that period and earned a name for themselves in their respective fields, like Sunil Janah as a photographer who chronicled the famine (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
As years pass by, one after the other, the past recedes more and more into distant memory. There are certain events in the life of a nation as of individuals, to which distance does not lend enchantment to the view. Rather the ugly visage falls into the pattern of historical evolution and lives on as such. One such event in our lifetime, and in our very land was the Emergency which was promulgated on June 25-26, twenty years ago.
Twenty years is but a short space in (…)

To mark the passage of thirtyeight years since the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi on June 25-26, 1975, we reproduce some extracts from the story of “Mainstream’s Journey Through Emergency” which was published in the June 25, 1977 issue of this journal. —Editor
The story of Mainstream during the nineteen months of Emergency is both exciting and rewarding. It has many lessons to impart. The confrontation with a despotic authority could not possibly be direct and formal: by its very (…)

India should never forget certain days in its history. One of them is June 26 when the Emergency was imposed late at night 38 years ago. The lights of personal freedom were switched off and the nation was left to grope in the darkness of dictatorship. The Constitution was suspended, the press gagged and liberty stamped out. The government became an illegal authority to harass, harm, detain and whatever went with it to silence critics. All this happened because the then Prime Minister, Indira (…)

MUSINGS
This entire episode around L.K. Advani seems layered. Even the politically naïve can under-stand that Advani has not been allowed to resign. No, just not allowed to break free from the controlling powers of his political party. As though, somehow forced to keep that mask intact, to keep up that façade of togetherness of the Right-wing brigades.
There seems a complicated build-up… an ongoing one. Probably Advani couldn’t cope with the frustration of being sidelined and wanted to (…)

COMMUNICATION
Krishna Majumdar’s response (Mainstream, April 27, 2013) to my piece (“Patriarchy and the Rise in Sexual Assaults in India: An Explanation”, Mainstream, March 16, 2013) calls for certain clarifications as she has, at places, grossly misrepresented my views and has missed out the main thrust of my arguments. Moreover, her arguments reveal an orientation which is somewhat commonplace in the mainstream feminist movements in India, namely, its implicit privileged caste bias and (…)

EDITORIAL
As national politics has taken a new turn with the JD(U) severing its 17-year-old ties with the BJP on June 16 on the lines of what had been forecast in this journal last week, the NDA led by the principal Opposition party in the country has suffered a real jolt regardless of the braggadocio of the top leadership in the Modi-inspired BJP.
However, the BJP-JD(U) streetfights in Patna on June 18 in the course of the BJP’s Vishwasghat Diwas (Day of Betrayal), called to expose (…)

On June 15, 2013 legendary Communist leader Satyapal Dang, an outstanding and extraordinary personality of impeccable personal and political integrity who served the cause of the downtrodden and oppressed with steadfast dedication and unflinching zeal, breathed his last at the age of 93. His wife, Vimla, who stood by her husband through thick and thin as a loyal comrade-in-arms and herself fought many a battle with the same devotion as ‘Satpal’, as Dang was known to all his friends and (…)

Statement by Shamima Kauser, Mother of Deceased Ishrat Jehan
My daughter, Ishrat Jehan, was abducted, illegally confined and killed in cold blood by officers and men of the Gujarat Police in June 2004. She was killed as part of a larger conspiracy which had a political agenda. Ishrat’s murder was projected as an ‘encounter’ and justified by branding her a terrorist who had come with three other men to attack the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. This was not the first fake encounter (…)

Gujarat Chief Minister and Hindutva icon Narendra Modi, while inaugurating an all-India conference on livestock and dairy development in Gandhinagar on June 11, 2013, announced a nationwide campaign to collect small pieces of iron from farmers and use them to build a ‘Statue of Unity’ in memory of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the first Interior Minister of independent India in Nehru’s Cabinet.
He announced: “On the day of Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary on October 31, 2013, we will launch a (…)