Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The Empire Peddles Back

  29 June 2015, by Badri Raina

  When you came Bible-peddling, I was not numero uno; Now that I am, take back with Interest wages for that meddling, As a hundred and seventy nations Back my awesome, acrobatic show.
  Watch the thrusting of my leg, Chest inflated, arms akimbo, Fire in my eye, beard aflame, Heart raging with dream Of conquest, mind intent on Weeding out all such element That questions my abhiyan, Kicking up an anti-national row. Espy these legions of health, Backed by bushel-fulls of wealth, Retreat, and (…)

• Mohan Kumaramangalam — Cameos: An Old Comrade

  29 June 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  On May 31 this year it was the fortysecond death anniversary of Mohan Kumaramangalam. On N.C.’s seventeenth death anniversary (June 27, 2015) we reproduce the following tribute that the founder of this journal penned under the pseudonym ‘An Old Comrade’. M.K. and N.C. were indeed close comrades since their days in England in the 1930s and the friendship bloomed during their collective struggle in the communist movement; it was retained in subsequent years and even when (…)

• BJP’s Dangerous Politics

  29 June 2015

  One of my earliest reporting experiences was the great Calcutta killing of 1946. Fierce communal passions were unleashed and thousands were done to death on both sides in the course of a couple of days. But behind that gory carnage was the fight for the city of Calcutta: who should get it? Pakistan or India? Religious beliefs are made use of to rouse mass anger among innocent people, but those who whip up such passions do so only for political gains.
  In our immediate context, this comes (…)

• We Must All Resist BJP’s Two-Nation Theory

  29 June 2015

  Ayodhya has become the epicentre of a cyclone that threatens to spell disaster for the political fabric of this country. For the fourth year now, it has virtually taken over the centre-stage of national politics.
  What has been achieved so far is that actual confrontation is averted almost at the very last moment by a desperate move to buy time, so that a little more space may be available to tackle the dipute over the question of the proposed Ram Mandir, requiring the pulling down of the (…)

• The Roots of the Emergency

  29 June 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  As years pass by, one after the other, the past recedes more and more into distant memory. There are certain events in the life of a nation as of individuals, to which distance does not lend enchantment to the view. Rather the ugly visage falls into the pattern of historical evolution and lives on as such. One such event in our lifetime, and in our very land was the Emergency which was promulgated on June 25-26, twenty years ago.
  Twenty years is but a short space in the vast canvas that is (…)

• Emergency (1975-77): Mainstream’s Rewarding Struggle

  29 June 2015

  To mark the passage of forty years since the imposition of the Emergency by Indira Gandhi on June 25-26, 1975, we reproduce some extracts from the story of “Mainstream’s Journey Through Emergency” which was published in the June 25, 1977 issue of this journal. —Editor
  The story of Mainstream during the nineteen months of Emergency is both exciting and rewarding. It has many lessons to impart. The confrontation with a despotic authority could not possibly be direct and formal: by its very (…)

• Mrs Gandhi’s Misrule

  29 June 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Forty years may seem to be a long period. But it is not long enough to efface the memory of a jungle raj which followed the imposition of the emergency in 1975. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, mother-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, should have stepped down after the Allahabad High Court disqualified her for using the official machinery during election. The Supreme Court’s vacation judge gave her reprieve by pronouncing a stay order.
  Still she was not certain about the final (…)

• Emergency (1975) is a Permanent Scar on the Soul of India

  29 June 2015, by Rajindar Sachar

  Nations which do not remember their immediate past are in danger of repeating the same tragedy. This thought comes to me when on random questioning of the significance of June 26, 1975 (the Emergency Day) from the age- group of 35 and below (who constitute two-thirds of the population of India) one draws an overwhelming blank look, and not so encoura-ging even from those in the 35-55 age-group. Even newspapers never frontpage it—some do not even carry the information, and a few may just (…)

• Emergency: What it meant

  29 June 2015, by Amiya Rao, B G Rao

  Not a leaf stirs in my kingdom without my leave. See how quiet my people sit. —Atahuallpa the Inca
  To those whose only preoccupation in life is to survive, June 26, 1975 was like any other day in oppressive June—the sun cruel, the wind searching, the dust blinding. But to some at least of those who heard the Prime Minister on the radio that morning, had no paper to read before they went to work, and learnt about the midnight arrests only by way of rumour, June 26 looked ominous, (…)

• Tagore for Today / An Eye-witness Account / Does it Matter?

  29 June 2015

  The Editor’s Notebook in Mainstream (June 28, 1975) after the promulgation of Emergency and the imposition of press censorship appeared as follows:
  Tagore for Today
  Somewhere in the excitement of National Emergency, the editor has lost his notebook. However, Rabindranath Tagore has, in the abundance of his generosity, lent him his own notebook:
  Freedom from fear is the freedom I claim for you, my Motherland!—fear, the phantom demon, shaped by your own distorted dreams;
  Freedom from (…)