December 22, 2007 - Annual Number 2007

As Mainstream completes fortyfive years of its chequered life there is no gainsaying that the world has changed beyond recognition from the time it made its appearance in 1962.
Mainstream’s birth almost synchronised with the first and till date only major aggression the country was forced to withstand. In the wake of that momentous development India suffered a severe jolt and its unity and integrity were severely undermined. What is more, there was a distinct possibility of the government (…)

On October 28 Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed EiBaradei said on CNN that there were no reasons to blame Iran for seeking nuclear arms. The head of the UN atomic watchdog also warned of a possible catastrophe in case of any military operation against Iran, stressing that negotiations and inspections of Iran’s nuclear installations were the only means to resolve the problems relating to allegations of Tehran’s clandestine moves to manufacture nuclear (…)

Swaraj for whom? Ambanis or adivasis? For the proprietariat or proletariat? For a developmental future of the destiny of a billion Indians or an MNC-mortgage of our national resources to foreign freebooters for whom the bells of Bharat’s material and human wealth toll the knell of social justice and egalitarian right to life of the have-not sectors in dignity and divinity? For a ‘socialist, secular, democratic Republic’ which belongs politically to “We, the People of India” geared “to (…)

The following editorial, written in the Mainstream Annual 1970, is being reproduced here as this journal completes fortyfive years of dedicated service to the nation.
Eight years ago Mainstream came into existence with a pledge which, through the stresses and strains of a momentous as well as difficult decade, it has endeavoured honestly to live up to, with a measure of success, although the goal it set before itself is still far off.
In its inaugural issue, in 1962, Mainstream took (…)

The USA has kept on “encouraging” (read “urging”) India to complete the nuclear deal despite its manifest disapproval by the majority of Indian parliamentarians. This way it exposes its own hypocritical love for democracy. The USA is eager for completion of the deal because this will put India under the same obligations as all other non-nuclear state signatories of the NPT are. This way India, which has long been protesting the discriminatory NPT, will be ending its isolation in the US (…)

[(FROM MAINSTREAM FILES
The birth centenary of P.C. Joshi, the outstanding Communist leader and General Secretary of the CPI (1935-47), was observed this year (April 14). We reproduce here the following tribute he wrote in this journal following the death of S.V. Ghate in December 1970. Ghate, incidentally, was the first General Secretary of the CPI (1925). Ghate and Joshi were the most humane leaders the communist movement has produced till date.)] __3__
Among us Communists it is real (…)

[(FROM MAINSTREAM FILES
This year marked the birth centenary of Prof Hirendranath Mukerjee (November 23). While remembering the veteran CPI parliamentarian (who also functioned for some time as the Leader of the CPI Group in the Lok Sabha) and distinguished scholar-historian, we reproduced the following that appeared in this journal in 1970—this was based on a speech he delivered in the Lok Sabha.)]
__3__
There is a completion lack of a sense of proportion and a fundamental irrelevance (…)

[(WOMEN’S WORLD
The following is the Second Sumitra Chishti Memorial Lecture delivered in New Delhi (March 2, 2007).)]
It is an honour to stand here before you today to deliver the Sumitra Chishti Memorial Lecture.
Tribute to the memory of Sumitraji
‘We learn from history how many a deadly lion has emerged from the harem and how many hennaed hands have held the reigns of kingdoms… And how many daughters, educated by wealth and cultured by poverty, have become heads of the harem and (…)

Speaking to a group of reporters who managed to sneak through the tight security cordon around her in the Rajasthan House in Delhi on November 25, 2007, the famous Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen said:
What crime have I committed? Is it that I write about women’s rights and my life is dedicated to upholding secular humanity and human rights?
This reminds me of one of the poems written by the great Russian novelist and poet Boris Pasternek. When after winning the Nobel Prize in (…)

On November 22, 2007, Ms Taslima Nasreen, the noted Bengali writer, was clandestinely and forcibly whisked away from her residence at 7, Rowdon Street, Kolkata, by a posse of plainclothes men presumably of the West Bengal Intelligence Branch and or, the Special Branch. She was made to board an IC flight bound for Ahmedabad and Jaipur, reportedly under a false name. She was taken to Jaipur where she was not welcome by the Rajasthan Government and had to be moved out to a secret location in (…)