2013

It is a great mystery to me why wolves should have been saddled with the ill repute of being sexual predators.
My experience of reading about animals and watching with commitment the many excellently researched documentaries about them on the chain of Discovery channels, including the National Geographic, teaches me this: that no animal, the wolf included, ever forces himself upon an unwilling or unready female of his species. Without a single exception.
The only animal that does so (…)

by Sudhanshu Tripathi
Whether accompanied by violence or not, rape is, in fact, one of the most heinous, savage and lifelong agony and also trauma-inflicted brutalities perpetrated on women, and a complete violation of her self-respect and dignity leaving not only permanent physical injury but also incurable mental scars. Her sense of humiliation and utter powerlessness at the time causes such abysmal inner throes to her heart which are far more difficult to heal than the external blots on (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Pakistan is in deep trouble. So it is pushing India into deep trouble. Our own professional patriots are pushing India into deeper trouble. The great television anchors would love nothing more than a full-fledged war, now, at this very moment, so that their ratings would go up. Some of our politicians too want their ratings to rise. A senior leader said that for one soldier’s head that Pakistan cut off, we must cut off ten Pakistani soldiers’ heads. This is how patriotism makes (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
With the onset of summer, the Indian scene has perceptibly changed in the last few weeks, adding to its complexities as also to its instability.
In the eyes of many, the rumblings against the RSS inside the Janata camp reaching the point of a challenge against it on the part of the BLD-Socialist-CFD combine was considered a significant development and it was expected to facilitate the forging of an entente with all Congressmen committed to fight against the return of (…)

January 30 is the day when Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic for the partition of India. Nathuram Godse, who killed him, remained unrepentant and said in his defence in the Punjab High Court, where the case was heard: “Gandhi was a hypocrite. Even after the massacre of the Hindus by the Muslims, he was happy. The more the massacres of Hindus, the taller (he raised) his flag of secularism.”
India paid a heavy price to uphold the values of pluralism. Yet a similar kind of (…)

At a time when increasing trends of corporatisation and heavy-handed commerciali-sation have led to the increasing alienation of the media from the real concerns of the people and society, small independent journals have an increasingly important role to play in arti-culating and representing the real concerns and needs of society. It is true that in a world increasingly dominated by big business interests the space available to such journals is shrinking. Indeed even the survival of several (…)

An abridged version of the following piece constituted the author’s introductory remarks before the panel discussion on ‘Indian Media Scene Today: Potential and Reality’ to mark fifty years of Mainstream (that took place at the India International Centre, New Delhi on January 29, 2013).
Mainstream first appeared on September 1, 1962. It owes its name to a well-known progressive US journal (currently defunct), Masses and Mainstream, which was at one time the voice of the other America and (…)

I find myself in a state of mixed bewilderment and despair. I try to keep abreast of what happens in my part of the world, and what do I see? In Tamil Nadu a motion picture, part of the entertainment industry, becomes the centre of people’s universe. In the west, an intellectual says something to a small gathering and that causes tremors across the land. Neither of these provocations would have been nearly so effective when I was a young man. This seems to me the unreal reality in which we (…)

The tiny North-Eastern hilly State of Tripura is gearing up for the Assembly poll, slated to the held on February 14, 2013. The Left citadel of the region has hardly seen any anti-incumbency factor till now when the regime is on a sticky wicket with its employees getting a raw deal because of the denial of a new Pay Commission.
Within no time the State Government school-teachers and the employees got united, cutting across political affiliations of the unions, to come under the banner of (…)

Former diplomat, artist, writer, photo-grapher and philanthropist, Madanjeet Singh 88, a UNESCO Goodwill Amba-ssador since 2000, passed away in Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the south of France on January 6, 2013 following a stroke.
He was a passionate advocate of South Asian regional cooperation and solidarity on a secular, democratic and progressive basis. His commitment to the cause of South Asian peace and harmony was backed by his extra-ordinary personal financial contribution to the South Asia (…)