Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Bihar Poll: Mother of all Elections

  4 November 2015

  by Sanjay Mishra
  Dubbed as “the mother of all elections”, the five-phase election for the 243 seats of the Bihar Assembly has justifiably evoked a lot of media attention and buzz among political parties, psephologists and commentators. Bihar has not only been the epicentre of the earliest empire in India presided over by an emperor who later converted to Buddhism and non-violence and gave to the world some of the earliest principles of governance and secularism, but it has also been the (…)

• Nikhil Chakravartty and Some of his Times

  4 November 2015, by Anil Nauriya

  The Communist Party of India (CPI) was born in the aftermath of the ferment generated by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 on the one hand and the non-co-operation movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress in the 1920s on the other. Nikhil Chakravartty inherited this twin legacy. He recalled in “A Personal Testament”, written on Karl Marx’s death centenary, that he had started out as “god-fearing nationalist putting on khadi-kurta”.1 It was this combined legacy that was (…)

• From the High Noon of Indian Journalism

  4 November 2015, by John Dayal

  In the current wave of litterateurs and poets returning their well-deserved national honours to protest the hate-murders of three fellow writers, one was struck by the fact that there was just one professional journalist in that distinguished list, a poet-editor once with a Hindi newspaper.
  There are dozens of journalists who have been awarded the Padma awards, some for their long years at work, some perhaps for their proximity to the governments of the day, and several for the hard work (…)

• Bhupesh: Some Reminiscences

  4 November 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  CPI leader Bhupesh Gupta’s 101st birth anniversary fell on October 20 this year. While remembering him we reproduce the following piece that N.C. wrote after his death in Moscow on August 6, 1981. it was published in Mainstream (August 22, 1981).
  To write about somebody whom one has known for more than four decades—sometimes very closely—is not easy after his or her passing away. For me, Bhupesh Gupta was one whom I have known from the early beginnings of my active (…)

• After Indira Gandhi

  4 November 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Indira Gandhi’s 31st death anniversary falls on October 31 this year. On this occasion we are reproducing the following ‘Editor’s Notebook’ that N.C. wrote after her death.
  Twenty years after her great father’s passing away, Indira Gandhi fell, her frail body riddled with the assassin’s bullets, in the winter morning of October 31, 1984.
  She died as she lived—taking danger as her constant companion. And she left behind a nation not only benumbed with searing sorrow but engulfed in (…)

• India-China: Reflections on 1962 / In the Name of Ram / Bijbehara: A Challenge to Nation’s Conscience

  4 November 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The following article appeared in Mainstream to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Chinese aggression (that began on October 20, 1962).
  India-China: Reflections on 1962
  This week, thirty years ago, the Chinese Army had mounted a full-scale military attack along the entire length of our northern border. For three years previous to that there were occasional clashes, accompanied by angry polemics and tension over border claims.
  What happened on October 20 was entirely different in (…)

• Dissecting Civil Conflicts in South Asia

  4 November 2015, by Bharti Chhibber

  BOOK REVIEW
  Civil Wars in South Asia: State, Sovereignty, Development edited by Aparna Sundar and Nandini Sundar; Sage, New Delhi; 2014; pp. 273.
  The Oxford dictionary of Politics defines civil war as a ‘military conflict centred on territory within a state, involving combatants from the state, over the political right to control that territory. Civil wars usually involve govern-ment forces and the territorial aspect of the conflict means that civilian involvement and civilian deaths are (…)

• I am a Dalit and proud to be one

  4 November 2015, by Suhas Borker

  I am a Dalit and proud to be one. You set my family on fire in my village Sunped-Faridabad You burnt alive my nine-month-old daughter, Divya, and my two-and-a-half-year-old son,Vaibhav. My twentythree-year-old wife, Rekha, is still critical in the Burns ICU.
  I am a Dalit and proud to be one. You held my fourteen-year-old brother, Govind, in Gohana-Sonipat for stealing a pigeon and got him killed in police custody. You said after the postmortem the doctors had said he died of hanging and (…)

• ’RSS leading a Systematic Campaign to Create a Hindu Rashtra’ - admiral L. Ramdas’ Letter to the president and Prime Minister

  4 November 2015

  Honourable President and Honourable Prime Minister,
  It is with a heavy heart, that I write this open letter to you at a time when our beloved country and people are facing severe challenges and threats to our shared heritage.
  I have served in the Armed Forces of India—joining soon after Independence as a 14-year- old, to end up 45 years later as the Chief of the Indian Navy [1990 to 1993]. I have witnessed many transitions in India—from the horrors of Partition in 1947 to the very (…)

• Protect Relationship of Trust between Officers and Jawans

  4 November 2015, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  One of the great strengths of our Army has been the relationship of trust between officers and jawans. Therefore if this relationship of trust is threatened in any way, then the highest authorities should intervene immediately to repair this damage and restore the relationship of trust.
  It is with this wider aim that I appeal to the highest authorities in the Defence Ministry and overall in the Government of India to intervene immediately to provide justice in all cases (…)