2014

On October 26 this year Prof Romila Thapar, the distinguished historian and Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, delivered the Third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture, organised by the Book Review Literary Trust, at the Capital’s India International Centre. (The first lecture was delivered by Prof Amartya Sen in 1999 and the second by Prof Eric Hobsbawm in 2005.) A report on the lecture was carried in The Hindu the following day and on October 29, 2014 appeared in (…)

by Jawed Naqvi
Increasingly of late, Prof Romila Thapar is required to assume the nearly impossible role of Emperor Akbar who, according to the official plaque at his tomb near Agra, had “created a nation out of a mob”. To her credit (and sorrow), the ageless historian stands firm among a handful of public intellectuals left in India who have refused to be pulverised by the rise of Right-wing Hindutva mobs.
Indeed, the more the lumpen hordes seek to turn what remains of Nehruvian India (…)

On November 7 this year falls the ninetyseventh anniversary of the historic October Revolution that changed the face of Russia and led to the birth of the USSR three years later. Remembering that Revolution we are reproducing excerpts from the chapter “Crisis of Socialism” in Prof Randhir Singh’s Five Lectures in Marxist Mode (published in 1993). These excerpts appeared fifteen years ago in Mainstream (November 9, 1996). Prof Randhir Singh is a distinguished teacher and a renowned Marxist (…)

It was Lenin who really conceptualised the idea of united front. Though it is found in Marx-Engels, united front as a concept emerged in full form in the imperialist era. Lenin was the founder of the concept of imperialism, and therefore naturally of united front.
Lenin defined the Russian revolution as the first major revolutionary product of the imperialist age. In his extraordinary theoretical breakthrough, he discovered imperialism as a higher stage of capitalism. His theoretical (…)

October 31 this year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The situation today is markedly different from the one that prevailed in 2004. Yet what appeared as an editorial in Mainstream (October 30, 2004) remains as relevant as when it was written ten years ago. Hence we are reproducing excerpts from it in lieu of an editorial this week when the BJP Government under Narendra Modi, blinded by hatred and prejudice, has decided against observing the anniversary. (…)

On the face of it, the BJP’s ascendancy in Maha-rashtra and Haryana mirrors an extraordinarily unipolar political fabric. The condition has to be viewed in the background both of the political and economic uncertainty which preceded the installation of the government at the Centre, and the undoubtedly decisive image Narendra Modi subsequently presented. The government’s credibility has been subsequently enhanced by a drop in global crude prices which has automatically kept food inflation in (…)

by Navneet Sharma, Harikrishnan B. and Pradeep Nair
Love Jihad would literally mean the ‘war for love’ but is understood more symbolically as a war cry for the spread and propagation of a particular religion wherein Muslim men entice or deceit Hindu women into their love and marriage thereby forcing them for conversion to Islam; thus, a conspiracy to rob the honour of Hindus and raise the number of Muslims.
Love Jihad as a social reality is either denied for its existence or feared for (…)

IMPRESSIONS
For a pregnant Sunday morning, only hours before history opens a new page, some timely queries: Is the NCP a Naturally Corrupt Party as Narendra Modi says it is? Is Narendra Modi lowering the dignity of prime ministership by resorting to cheap electioneering as Sharad Pawar says he is? Has the BJP betrayed Hindutva by ditching the Shiv Sena as Uddhav Thackeray says it has? Is Modi a street-level operator as the Congress says he is?
Elections are the feather on India’s (…)

I
The moment I heard that Indira Gandhi had been assassinated, I hoped the assassin was not a Sikh. My parents said that when they first heard the news that Gandhiji had been assassinated, they hoped that the assassin was not a Muslim. We live in a strange country; when our leaders are assassinated, we hope the assassin is not from the minority community. At least those of us who want India to belong to all communities.
II
The next morning I saw the Guru Harkrishan School opposite my (…)

by Kuldip Nayar
After the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the Muslims felt for the first time since independence that they were a minority in the real sense. The partition, on the basis of religion, did not cast a shadow on their future. But the liberal era of Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian Constitution guaranteeing equality to all citizens saw the country through a period which other-wise could have been more violent and more divided than what the migration of bloodshed that took (…)