2015

How does one prepare the report-card on the performance of one year of the NDA Government headed by Narendra Modi? There are obvious contradictions in the ideological conviction and commitments of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues and the imperatives of having to run a government which the Constitution mandates is a secular one. All the Ministers and Members of Parliament have to take oath that they will “bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India”. But many (…)

If words were deeds,
And catch-phrases files,
If sophistry were argument,
And achievement intent,
The strong man with fifty-
Six inch starched frontispiece
Has indeed fulfilled every
Bharti’s needs to heart’s content.
How the prices of quotidian
Eatables have been smashed,
How bushels of wealth are stashed
In swelling jandhan ledgers,
Cunning marvels of zero treasures,
How hungry pockets have been
Stuffed with moolah from
The Black trough of money bags (…)

I have not been able to make out why General Pervez Musharraf, who is under house arrest on charge of treason, has made a public speech on the Kargil war which I watched on a television channel. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif must be under pressure from the Army to allow Musharraf to propagate an account which is not factually correct.
Surely, Nawaz Sharif remembers how he was removed through a coup staged by General Musharraf. Yet, the Pakistan Prime Minister sought US President Bill (…)

On the night of Monday, June 4, 2015, less than a fortnight of the swearing in of the new government headed by Narendra Modi, 28-year-old Information Technology manager Mohsin Mohammed Shaikh was lynched in Pune, Maharashtra. The Times of India reported on June 5 under the headline “In Pune, ‘Hindu zealots’ kill man over ‘offensive’ Facebook post, 13 arrested”. Shaikh was killed randomly after rumours spread over an objectionable post on Facebook. His killers were members of the Hindu (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
The following piece, which appeared in the ‘New Delhi Skyline’ of Mainstream, was written two days after Jawaharlal Nehru’s demise on May 27, 1964. It was published on May 30, 1964.
As the golden flame licked up the funeral pyre, an unforgettable scene ended near the banks of the Jumna and under the shadow of the Red Fort.
It was an emotional experience without precedence, to watch this mightiest demonstration of love and respect that this great country has paid to (…)

May 27 this year marks Jawaharlal Nehru’s fiftyfirst death anniversary. On this occasion we remember him by reproducing the following excerpts from his speeches and writings. We are also reproducing several articles on Nehru by noted personalities as well as excerpts from a paper presented by the present editor of Mainstream at a Nehru seminar in Kolkata this year.
Hinduism has ever prided itself on its toleration. But today it stands in need of a reminder. ‘All sects deserve reverence for (…)

I loved and respected him, worked with him and even followed him in many ways, and yet I was among his severest critics, and perhaps no one was a greater disappointment to me and to my group than Jawaharlal Nehru.
Our two families were known to each other, from Lucknow and Allahabad, so it was not difficult for me when I came back from England in 1935, an Oxonian and a barrister-at-law, to be taken under the protective wing of Nehru. He knew, of course, that I was a red-hot Communist, but (…)

Science has brought all these mighty changes and not all of them have been for the good of humanity. But the most vital and hopeful of the changes that it has brought about has been the development of the scientific outlook in man. —Jawaharlal Nehru
Nehru’s understanding of science in relation to the country’s development was penetrating. He, unlike some of his senior contemporaries, viewed science with an unbiased and realistic attitude. His belief in the scientific method was unshakable. (…)

by Urvashi Dhamija
While the cityscape of Allahabad may be quite unremarkable today, the management of its municipality under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru from 1925 till 1927 is generally regarded as a bright patch in the city’s history. It is also a phase in India’s past which Delhi’s governing elite could consider reflecting upon because like Nehru in the early 1920s they face a double challenge of undertaking measures to improve the quality of life of ordinary citizens in the (…)

The French writer, André Malraux, had once asked Jawaharlal Nehru what had been his “greatest difficulty since independence”. Nehru’s instant reply was: “Creating a just state by just means.” Soon he added as an afterthought: “Perhaps, too, creating a secular state in a religious country.” [André Malraux, Antimemoirs, translated by Terence Kilmartin (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968), p. 145; the conversation took place sometime in 1958—cited in Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History (…)