Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  The Engulfing Darkness

  24 October 2015

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  As the season of festivals and lights comes, darkness has engulfed the literary and cultural spheres of the country. Growing religious intolerance and intolerance of thoughts and opinions that do not conform to the ‘ideology’ of the powers that be is forcing one litterateur after another to return the Sahitya Akademi awards as a mark of protest against the ’onslaught on freedom of expression` and ‘rising intolerance’.
  Instead of pausing and pondering over the peaceful (…)

• Will India Survive?: Reasons to believe she may

  24 October 2015, by Badri Raina

  In the past week or so, one writer after another, who has been a recipient of a state award, has been returning that award to the state in protest against the targeted mafia-style killing of a renowned dissident scholar/writer, M.M. Kalburgi, also an awardee of the Sahitya Academy. That assassination, it will be recalled, was to come after similar killings of two other prominent rationalist thinkers, Dabholkar and Pansare, all of that rather menacingly like the series of murders of (…)

• Debate on Beef

  24 October 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  India has been pushed into an unnecessary debate whether beef should be banned or not. This is a wrong question to ask in a country where the emotions of Hindus are linked with the cow, which they revere. The real question is whether a person should have been lynched on the ground that he had consumed beef. Even this allegation was based on false rumours. It looks as if the Hindu extremists have come to dictate their view of the religion.
  It is a blessing that the debate on beef did not (…)

• Third Front and Left Front stand exposed in Bihar

  24 October 2015

  COMMUNICATION
  The ones who are opposed to the National Democratic Alliance Government at the Centre, headed by the Pradhan Parcharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, wrongly and euphe-mistically called the BJP Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, find it absolutely unjustified and unprincipled the positions of the Third Front and Left Front in the ensuing Bihar Vidhan Sabha elections. Incidentally, the BJP is the political child of the mother RSS.
  The Third Front, christened as the (…)

• BJP’s Politics of Social Engineering in Bihar

  24 October 2015, by Harish S. Wankhede

  Kanshiram, the late Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo, had brought bahujan as a viable political constituency to forge a political alliance between the Dalits, Other Backward Castes and Religious Minorities. This social engineering was one of the most imaginative political construc-tions to counter the domination of the social elites in politics. (Teltumbde 2006) On many counts the BSP’s social engineering attempts were unsuccessful; however, it created a dynamic social process that ensured (…)

• Bihar: Patronising Class Interest behind the Facade of Caste Consolidation

  24 October 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  As Bihar heads for what is being described as a mini-Lok Sabha election, the politics of pretention has been replaced by pragmatism and the leaders of both the conglomerates, the NDA and Mahagathbandhan, have started focusing on the strategy of caste collaboration. The BJP, which had taken the early initiative to reach out to the voters, has also been the first to experiment with this as the party has much at stake than the Mahagathbandhan and its leader, Nitish Kumar. (…)

• The Supreme Court Revives Collegiums System — a Fresh Debate Begins

  24 October 2015, by Rajindar Sachar

  The much-awaited judgment of the Supreme Court has held on October 19 that the Constitution (Ninetyninth Amendment) Act, 2014 and the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014, are unconstitutional and void and the consequence is that the ‘Collegiums System’ existing prior to the Constitution (Ninetyninth Amendment) Act, 2014 has been declared to be operative.
  The Court found fault with the constitution of the National Judicial Appointment Commission, mainly for its composition. (…)

• When Damn Lies, Damn Truths are both Damn Right—the Games we can Play with Census Figures

  24 October 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  As everyone knows, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Mark Twain did not specifically mention census because census is statistics. Ten people interpret census figures in ten different ways, all of them being damn lies and damn truths at the same time. That’s the beauty of census statistics: We an use them to suit our purpose.
  The 2011 Religious Communities Census testi-fies to this beauty. The Congress-led govern-ment did not release it, for political reasons. The (…)

• The C. Achutha Menon Government: An Effective Template Against Fascism?

  24 October 2015, by Ajayakumar Kodoth

  October 2015 marks the 45th anniversary of the first Congress-Communist Minstry headed by C. Achutha Menon. In the wake of the communal onslaught on all walks of life, a critical re-assessement of the aforementioned Ministry’s noteworthy achievements, as presented in the following article, offers an effective template against fascism.
  by Ajayakumar Kodoth
  We are just a year shy of the twentyfifth death anniversary of C. Achutha Menon (1913-1991), one of the most respected and best loved (…)

• Kerala and Beyond

  24 October 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Kerala has a remarkable capacity of being the harbinger of significant developments in Indian politics. In 1957, a new element in Indian democracy—the Communists in office—appeared for the fist time in Kerala; and less than two years later, was seen the most massive anti-Communist crusade ever organised under the aegis of the Congress with the label of “Liberation Struggle”. The 1965 elections registered the CPM as the most organised political entity in Kerala thereby (…)