2014

On June 27 this year falls Nikhil Chakravartty’s sixteenth death anniversary. On this occasion we reproduce the ‘Political Notebook’ by S. Viswam in the first issue of Mainstream to appear (on July 4, 1998) following N.C.’s demise; the then President K.R. Narayanan’s message on N.C.’s death; and four pieces by distinguished journalists Inder Malhotra, Chanchal Sarkar, Prabhash Joshi and Malini Parthasarthy on N.C. (published in several issues of Mainstream in 1998).
Nikhil Chakravartty (…)

It was with some trepidation that I first met Nikhil. I was then just past 21 and working for the tottering United Press of India (UPI) on whose ashes is built today’s UNI. But within a few minutes in his company I realised that I needn’t have worried. Unlike other very senior members of the profession, some of whom had dismissed me summarily, in one case without even looking at me, he was all attention and surprisingly generous with his time. He listened to me patiently and gave me the (…)

When I first came to work in Delhi the most respected journalistic figure here was Sir Usha Nath Sen, one of the founders of the Associated Press of India which eventually became the PTI (Press Trust of India). Sir U.N. once told me of his guru K.C. Roy, the real founder of the API, that in any matter concerning the Government of India, in Delhi or Simla, K.C. Roy could figure out exactly with whom the matter rested and who would take the decision.
Delhi has grown exponentially since K.C. (…)

prabhash joshi
Nikhilda had turned eightyfour. Some people live for hundred years and stay perfectly agile, alert and healthy. Though he had an ageing physique, Nikhilda was not a person who would live by obeying the regulations of keeping fit.
Four years ago, he took a taxi and went out in the hills. Alone. He was to meet me at the institutes in Mussoorie/Nainital. He reached there on time, attended the workshops, but again went out in the hills. I returned to Delhi and then left for (…)

by Malini Parthasarathy
In the passing of Nikhil Chakravartty, this country has lost a distinguished member of a diminishing tribe of nationalists who were unabashed about their zeal and pride in being seen as the first generation of citizens of the new Indian republic. That sense of patriotism in the classical sense imbued all Nikhil Chakravartty’s writings even as it made him stand out as a rare spokesman for the highest political values that he strongly desired the Indian state to (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
On May 31 this year it was the fortyfirst death anniversary of Mohan Kumaramangalam. On N.C.’s sixteenth death anniversary we reproduce the following tribute that the founder of this journal penned under the pseudonym ‘An Old Comrade’. M.K. and N.C. were indeed close comrades since their days in England in the 1930s and the friendship bloomed during their collective struggle in the communist movement; it was retained in subsequent years and even when Mohan joined the (…)

EDITORIAL
As in his pronouncements last week in both Houses of Parliament where he struck a bipartisan note, PM Narendra Modi’s statements in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, which he chose as his first foreign trip after assuming the prime ministerial office, were bereft of any partisan approach. While in his banquet speech on June 15 he reassured the Himalayan Kingdom steadily marching towards a democratic set-up that India would, despite the government change in New Delhi, continue to (…)

The following are excerpts from a statement on the crisis in Iraq issued by the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party in Baghdad on June 10, 2014.
It is truly the battle of the homeland that is now being threatened. Political, material, logistic and military prerequisites must be provided to stop the expansion of this malignant cancer. Terrorism is targeting all, and it has no religion or denomination or nationality, and it wants to finish off the political process in our country (…)

MUSINGS
Near complete mess in Iraq. The once flourishing land is breaking apart, as rebel groups are taking over. Without taking you towards those details of the grand past of an unparalleled civilisation which this land boasted of, I’ll take you just about till the early nineties, when Iraq was Iraq. That is, before it was intruded into and ruined by American and Allied Forces. They used that alibi of ‘looking for weapons of mass destruction’ but didn’t find any. Instead destroyed that (…)