Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Dynasty Needs to Explain

  6 July 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  I am sorry to revert to the Emergency yet again, over two successive weeks. R.K. Dhawan, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s confidante, has disclosed that Sonia Gandhi had no qualms about the Emergency. This is contrary to what I had heard when the Emergency was imposed. It was reported that both her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, and she were thinking to return to Italy to bring up their children in a “free atmosphere”.
  Dhawan’s observation about Sonia Gandhi makes all the more obligatory for her to explain her (…)

• An Out-of-Touch Indian Journalist

  6 July 2015

  by Syed Badrul Ahsan
  The first time I heard of Kuldip Nayar was in the early 1970s. His slim work, Distant Neighbours: A Tale of the Subcontinent, had just been published in India. It was the theme of the book, Nayar’s interviews of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on their meeting soon after Pakistan’s military defeat in Bangladesh and the Bengali leader’s release from solitary confinement in Mianwali to house arrest near Islamabad, which aroused my interest in (…)

• The Akhand Hindu Rashtra: Micro World Macro Nationalism

  6 July 2015

  by Navneet Sharma, Pradeep Nair and HarikrishNan B.
  “Ye, who by race, by blood, by culture, by nationality possess almost all the essentials of Hindutva and had been forcibly snatched out of our ancestral home by the hand of violence—ye, have only to render wholehearted love to our common mother and recognise her not only as Fatherland (Pitrabhu) but even as a Holyland (Punyabhu): and ye would be most welcome to the Hindu fold.” From Essentials of Hindutva by Savarkar)
  The above (…)

• Recollections of Legendary but Forgotten Freedom Fighters

  6 July 2015, by Sagari Chhabra

  The following are a few excerpts from Sagari Chhabra’s recently released book, In Search of Freedom: Journeys Through India and South-East Asia (Harper-Collins Publishers India).
  Interview of Subhadra Joshi, New Delhi, 1998
  ‘And tell me about your work during the communal riots?’
  ‘During the riots we brought out an appeal that looted things should be returned. We wrote it by hand, saying that whatever happened in the labour area was distressing. To our surprise whatever was stolen was (…)

• A Unique Journey—a Spiritual Voyage and a Quest for Freedom

  6 July 2015

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Amrita Bhalla
  In Search of Freedom: Journeys Through India and South-East Asia by Sagari Chhabra; Harper Collins Publishers India; 2015; pages; (i to x) + 344; Rs 499.
  “We were always there,... But you discovered us.”
  “If it wasn’t for you, Gouridi, my generation and I wouldn’t be walking in a free India!” I responded with a deep sense of gratitude and humility as I acknowledged the privileges of being born free.
  Sagari Chhabra’s In Search of Freedom: Journeys (…)

• Unpardonable Crime of helping a Fugitive Criminal

  6 July 2015

  COMMUNICATION
  External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s contention—that the help that she gave to Lalit Modi to go to Portugal to sign the consent papers of his ailing wife was on humanitarian grounds—does not in any way exonerate her from committing a serious crime of helping a notorious fugitive criminal who is not involved only in cricketing-betting, match-fixing, rigging and money-laundering but in a number of cases. By requesting the Indian origin Labour MP, Keith Vaz, and the British (…)

• Neoliberalism and the Euphoric Diasporics

  6 July 2015

  by Ravindra K. Jain
  Prime Minister Modi’s rousing reception by Indian diasporics in advanced Western countries—the USA, Australia and Canada in particular—has been a constant refrain and cause for celebration in a number of media reports. Given the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Right-wing and corporate-friendly investor policies, has the intelligentsia in India seriously queried the reasons, characteristics, and consequences of this mass euphoria? The phenomenon of globalisation by itself is (…)

• India’s Sincere Friend in Post-Soviet Russia

  6 July 2015, by Arun Mohanty

  TRIBUTE
  Russia lost its great statesman, veteran diplomat and outstanding academic in the demise of Evgeny Maximovich Primakov, Russia’s former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister and one of the most eminent political leaders of the post-Soviet period. Primakov’s death brought down the curtain over an entire epoch in Russian history. Primakov—the journalist, academic, diplomat, political leader, statesman—would be remembered in Russian history mostly as the man who rescued Russia from the (…)

• Towards New (Undeclared) Emergency ?

  29 June 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  It was written in these columns last week that ‘Modigate’ (or more precisely ‘Lalitgate’)—the revelations of the ruling party’s bigwigs’ deep connections with the fugitive evading questioning by the Enforcement Directorate, Lalit Modi—had exposed the rampant corruption within the BJP-led Narendra Modi Government. The past one week has only magnified the scale of such connections while highlighting the magnitude of corruption.
  The latest disclosures have exposed Rajasthan CM (…)

• (Lalit) Modi’s India resembles an Animal Farm

  29 June 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The “Modigate” is sure enough producing a lot of political heat, but not enough light is thrown into the scam. But then, no one is demanding an inquiry into the whole episode.
  Some sections of the political class do not even want to hear about the scam. So strong is apparently their personal loyalty to Lalit Modi, which, clearly, makes him out to be one of the most powerful men in modern India.
  Succinctly put, what we have here is an extraordinary level of personal interest that External (…)