Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• No Countering the Poison of Garbage Utterances

  25 April 2015, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  It is getting more than disgusting to hear those horrifying outbursts of the Hindutva elements directly or indirectly linked to the present-day government. These elements ought to be banned or thrown in those hell-holes. But here creeps in another of those horrifying realities—they are part and parcel of the entire set-up, so are left not just untouched but well-protected under layers of political patronage.
  How could the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut get away with this totally (…)

• Appropriating the Modus Operandi

  25 April 2015

  by Saurabh Bajpai
  To destroy the legacy of the Indian national movement, the RSS-BJP has appropriated its modus operandi. It sounds harsh but true; the RSS-BJP is imitating the methods adopted by the anti-imperialist struggle led by the Congress. The question arises: how can it be? How can a secret-fascist organisation imitate the world’s largest democratic movement? The RSS-Muslim League-led communal politics was an anti-thesis of the nationalist mobilisation in India. Ideologically they (…)

• Union Budget 2015-16 : A Beautiful Carriage with Lame Horses

  25 April 2015, by Kobad Ghandy

  The following analysis of the union budget by the marxist/maoist thinker, kobad ghandy, was written this month and reached us last week for publication in this journal. He sent it from tihar jail where he is once again lodged in jail no. 3 (where he had stayed earlier before being transferred to jail no. 2, ward 5). It is now being published here for the benefit of our readers.
  However grand a carriage, without robust horses it is useless—it cannot move even an inch forward. So also it is (…)

• The Communist Rishi

  25 April 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings The following is a tribute that N.C. wrote after the demise of the first General Secretary of the CPI-M, P. Sundarayya, in 1985. Sundarayya was the undisputed leader of the Telangana movement along with C. Rajeswara Rao and M. Basavapunnaiah. It is being reproduced here following the election of Sitaram Yechury, also hailing from Andhra Pradesh, to the post of the CPI-M General Secretary at the recently concluded 21st Congress of the party at Vishakhapatnam.
  On May 19 (…)

• No Indication that Nehru Ordered Surveillance on the Bose Family: Sugata Bose

  25 April 2015

  by Shoaib Daniyal
  From 1948 to 1968, the Government of India meticulously spied on Sugata Bose’s father, Sisir Bose, along with the rest of Subhash Chandra Bose’s immediate family in Kolkata, as has been recently revealed.
  Sugata Bose is the grandson of Subhash Chandra Bose’s brother, Sarat Chandra Bose. He teaches History at Harvard University, is a Trinamul Congress Member of Parliament and has authored a book on Netaji, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle (…)

• Bose Aircrash was Faked. Was he Shot in Siberia? Was he the Baba in UP? The Mystery Must End

  25 April 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Spying, the very idea, has a bad aura about it. To that extent the declassified information that Jawaharlal Nehru spied on Subhas Chandra Bose and his family makes Nehru look bad. Unexpectedly Bhagat Singh’s family has pitched in with the allegation that Nehru’s government was spying on them too, planting intelligence agents inside the family in the guise of domestic servants and research scholars. All of this may be true because it’s a familiar game governments play. Some day (…)

• State Violating Saibaba’s Fundamental Rights

  25 April 2015

  In the eleven months that the Delhi University’s teacher-activist Dr G.N. Saibaba has been incarcerated, under the UAPA provisions, in the Nagpur Central Jail, he has been subjected to barbaric treatment by the jail authorities and Maharashtra Police. Dr Saibaba’s acute physical disability and life-threatening conditions have been disregarded and he has been denied basic facilities including toilet facilities and helper, prescribed nutrients and medicines necessary for his survival. He is 90 (…)

• Beef, Buffalo and Brahmanism: The Politics of Food

  25 April 2015

  by Navneet Sharma, Pradeep Nair and Harikrishnan B.
  Cow is a national animal. Cow is our mother. Cow is a useful domestic animal. Cow has four legs, two eyes, one mouth and one tail. Cow gives us milk.... cow has a calf that grows into Sanjay Gandhi.
  Excerpts from the essay written on The Cow by a class 5 student in 1976. Source: Verbal testimony of a teacher educator
  The ‘image’ and imageries are very important in electoral democratic politics. The above essay reflects how Mrs Gandhi (…)

• Putting AAP’s Historic Victory in Perspective

  25 April 2015

  by Sanjay Mishra
  This article, which reached us in March, could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. Its contents, however, are still valid even though a bitter struggle has lately broken out within the AAP. It is thus being published for the benefit of our readers.
  Sixtyseven seats in an Assembly of 70 seats, with a vote percentage of 54.3 per cent and an average victory margin of about 28,000, almost three times the 2013 average!1 Even the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had not (…)

• India: An Emerging Regional Hegemon

  25 April 2015

  by Shatakshi Bhargava
  South Asia, as a region, has always been a victim of political instability and economic disequilibrium. It is not hidden that political and economic affairs are interlinked amongst states. Nonetheless, the states have together contributed to regional development, India being the major contributor. Hence, not from now but decades, India has been tagged as a regional hegemon. It implies the influential behaviour of a state (in this case, India), the regional hegemon, (…)