2013

From N.C.’s Writings
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 (…)

The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India has issued the following statement to the press.
The secretive hanging of Afzal Guru, a secondary accused in the Parliament attack case, and certain irregularities in completing the judicial process have expectedly created controversy and strengthened the feeling of injustice resulting in further alienation in the Kashmir Valley.
As reported in the media, the authorities did not wait for completion of the judicial process after (…)

To mark fifty years of Mainstream, a panel discussion was held at the India International Centre, New Delhi on January 29, 2013; the topic was “Indian Media Scene Today: Potential and Reality”. Those who spoke on the subject were Kuldip Nayar, Nikhil Dey, Medha Patkar, Bharat Dogra, and Suhas Borker was the moderator. Anees Chishti, one of the panelists, could not attend as he was indisposed, but he sent the following piece as his contribution to the discussion. However, it could not be read (…)

The following message of greetings were received for the January 29, 2013 meeting in the Capital to mark Mainstream’s fifty years.
Thank you so much for the invitation. In fact I was thinking of it today. I am slightly unhappy because I am missing something I was so eager to attend. But I feel proud that I and my husband have written in Mainstream for more than forty years at least. I remember Nikhilda and Chitta Ranjan on this occasion.
January 24, 2013 Thiruvananthapuram
K. (…)

“From Kashmir to Delhi, Intolerance Cuts Across Religious Boundaries”—read The Times of India’s February 5 frontpage headline over two reports of (i) J&K’s first all-girl rock band quitting after online threat by conservatives on social media and the Valley’s Grand Mufti Bashiruddin’s fatwa against the band’s public performance; and (ii) an art exhibition in the Capital coming under attack from a fringe Rightwing group (the VHP’s Durga Vahini) that branded the paintings as ‘provocative’ (…)

Desh Raj Goyal, 84, passed away in New Delhi after a brief illness in the afternoon of February 3, 2013. A veteran journalist and academic, he was the editor of Secular Democracy. From 1963 to 1967 he edited Mainstream. He leaves behind his son Ashit. His wife and younger son had predeceased him.
We had invited him to attend a meeting at the India International Centre, New Delhi on January 29 to mark fifty years of Mainstream with a discussion on ‘Indian Media Scene Today: Potential and (…)

by D. R. Goyal
For a person nurtured in the RSS culture it was not possible to share the euphoria touched off by the advent of independence. All the more so in Punjab which was bearing the brunt of partition.
I did not belong to that part of Punjab which became part of Pakistan but I had been reading newspapers which first gave expression to the anxiety that gripped the Hindus in that area. As the historic day approached, expression of anxiety gave place to tales of horror, of murder and (…)

If the gang-rape of a 23-year-old student—on a Delhi bus on December 16, 2012—led to a sense of both outrage over and despair about the entrenched violence women experience in India, the Report of the Justice Verma Committee —emerging exactly five weeks after that incident —came as a heartening glimmer of hope for reform and justice.
The response of women’s activists to the Report was unanimous: It was, potentially, a game-changer and transformed the manner in which the issue has been (…)

The latest spurt in crime is focussed on rape, brutal rape, brutal gang-rape. Women who resist rape and fight back are brutally mauled after being raped. In the December 16, 2012, Delhi bus gang-rape case (referred to as the “Damini case” hereinafter), one of the rapists allegedly tore out the young woman’s uterus with his bare hand. It would be insulting beasts to call these acts bestial. Men who commit rape are morally and socially at the depths of depravity and viciousness, the lowest of (…)

“A wave of sexual assaults has rocked the northern Indian State of Haryana. In the last one month alone, a dozen, mostly Dalit, girls and women have been raped, raising concerns about the security of women in India.” Thus went in the air a breaking news of the German television, Deutsche Welle DW TV, which is an international public broadcaster, under the headline “Sonia Gandhi promises to act as series of rapes shocks India.”1 Broadcasts of the DW are carried in 39 languages including (…)