Mainstream Weekly

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• Behind Barbaric Lynching in Dimapur

  5 April 2015, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Those of us who’d looked and sounded aghast at those officially conducted beheadings and killings in several countries, need to speak out at the barbaric lynching of a rape accused in Nagaland’s Dimapur. For one, every rape accused needs to defend his case; chances are that the accused was framed and with that nailed. And in this bizarre case, the accused, Farid Khan, could not have been dragged out of the prison hell-hole without the official support of the jailor /jail staff and (…)

• Kejriwal, the Aam Admi Party’s supremo, silent on Communalism — the Gravest Menace to the country

  5 April 2015

  COMMUNICATION
  It is really shocking that neither during the election campaign of Delhi Assembly elections nor on the occasion of the swearing ceremony, Mr Kejriwal, the Aam Admi Party chief, has not condemned communalism which is the gravest menace not only to Indian secular democracy but to the very existence of the country. Over and above all this he has not uttered a single word against the RSS plan of converting India into a Hindi country and establishing a Hindu state and the Modi (…)

• Split In The Communist Movement — A Historic Necessity Or A Blunder?

  5 April 2015

  by Tika Ram Sharma
  The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) celebrated the 50th anniversary of its foundation last year. While for the CPM the split was a matter of ‘celebration’, for others in the Left it was a disaster. There have been statements from the CPM leaders about the achievements and failures of their movement of these fifty years. According to the CPI-M, the split in the movement in India was a ‘historic necessity’. As per the ideological document of the 2012 Congress of (…)

• Peace-loving People of Indore Rebuff Communal Forces

  5 April 2015

  by Vineet Tiwari
  Is it wrong for people of different communities to co-exist peacefully and celebrate each other’s festivals? Is it a sin for people to believe that the greatest faith on earth is humanity?
  On the other hand is this something to be proud of that in our effort to make our own religion great, we have to insult other religions? Is this good politics that instead of employment opportunities our unemployed youth should be handed swords and trishuls? That instead of providing (…)

• What is Fundamentalism?

  5 April 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Fundamentalism has become a much-used term today—in politics and in the academia. And there are in vogue various types of the so-called fundamentalists—political, religious and cultural.
  But before cataloguing these various tribes of fundamentalists, it is important to clarify what precisely is meant by fundamentalism. The Oxford English Dictionary says the term, fundamental, pertains to “the basis or groundwork, going to the root of the matter”. But the word (…)

• Lee deserved all the praise he got. But his idea of prosperity without freedom can never win

  5 April 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The way the world reacted to Lee Kuan Yew’s passing was a measure of the greatness he had achieved as the Prime Minister of Singapore. His lifelong disappointment was that he did not have a country big enough to match his vision. He made up by turning Singapore into a world showpiece, marked by efficiency, beauty, cleanliness and absence of perceptible corruption. In his later years he also achieved the status of a philosopher-king whose views were sought by other countries, (…)

• China’s High Stakes in Yemen Conflict

  5 April 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The level of interest in Beijing on the developments in Yemen is apparently very high. This is only to be expected, arguably, considering that China depends on the Gulf countries for half of all its crude oil imports, apart from having wide-ranging relationships with the countries of the region, which have been steadily expanding and deepening. The ‘Road and Belt’ initiative gives an added strategic dimension insofar as the Silk Route passes through the Red Sea.
  Indeed, China will be (…)

• How do we Live Down the Shame of Hashimpura?

  30 March 2015

  EDITORIAL
  There are enough flip-flops in the Union Government’s approach to the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill. While it is determined to push the legislation through even by calling a joint session of both Houses of Parliament, as conveyed by the PM himself, other Ministers like M. Venkaiah Naidu holding the Parliamentary Affairs portfolio are still trying to appease the Opposition as also dissidents within the ruling NDA coalition by stating that they were open to considering any (…)

• Miscarriage of Justice in Hashimpura

  30 March 2015, by Vidya Bhushan Rawat

  One of the most famous lines on the official All India Radio news bulletins during communal disturbances used to be ‘Sthiti tanavpurn lekin niyantran me hain (the situation is tense but under control)’ and police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in the ‘sensitive’ areas. It was well known to us as what ‘samvedansheel kshetra’ or ‘sensitive areas’ meant. Most of these ‘sensitive areas’ were the Muslim localities in the walled cities, almost ghettoised in the aftermath of each ‘riot’ (…)

• The Litmus Test

  30 March 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The menace of communalism looms large in this country today perhaps more than at any time before. With all the dire warnings being sounded repeatedly against the danger of destabilisation, the government so far has done very little to halt the advance of vicious communal hatred leading to orgies of violence in different parts of the country. It is amazing that while the Prime Minister concedes that there has been a deterioration in the communal situation—as he did at (…)