Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• China Needs to see India as an Equal. Economic Ties are No Substitute to Solving Border Problems

  28 September 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  It’s a remarkable coincidence that Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping are brothers cast in the same mould. Both are believers in centralised authority, who spent their initial months in office consolidating their hold on the power structure. Both seek enlarged international status for their countries and for themselves. Both are fighters behind their smiles. Both are shrewd with the capacity to be, when necessary, ruthless. Both manoeuvre and manipulate with skill. Preparatory to his (…)

• Changing the Character of Political Discourse

  28 September 2014

  by Arun Srivastava
  Narendra Modi, an RSS pracharak, could not be expected to possess a broader view of the national and global perspective as Atal Behari Vajpayee had. Modi suffered from a sense of personality complex but strove hard to project himself as the independent, new face of the Indian as well as Hindutva politics. He followed the political line: if you have to occupy the centre-stage in the political arena oppose and deride all, challenge any person who crosses you. He has been (…)

• How is the Cookie Crumbling?

  28 September 2014, by Badri Raina

  I had concluded my last article (“Troubling Times for the Constitutional Republic,” Mainstream, Vol LII, No. 36, August 30, 2014) on a note of speculation about how Modiji’s equation with the ground-level Hindutva campaign directed chiefly at Muslims and women might or might not shape in the coming days and months.
  That speculation derived from the general criticism that India’s chief executive who had assumed the numero uno position within the democratic-constitutional scheme was not (…)

• Nation-states and Frontiers: Old Tumours or New Tremors?

  28 September 2014, by Javed Jabbar

  VIEW FROM PAKISTAN
  This article was sent to us by the author for publication some time ago but could not be published earlier. —Editor
  Pakistan completes 67 years as a nation-state while its Armed Forces conduct an unprece-dented campaign to crush the sanctuaries of terrorists who breach the country’s land fron-tiers with impunity. Another country, located 10,000 miles away, uses drones with equal impunity to violate Pakistan’s aerial frontiers. But it does so implicitly, with a (…)

• BJP Cannot Take Voters For Granted

  28 September 2014

  by Harihar Swarup
  What message does the by-elections in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Assam and West Bengal send? One loud and clear message is that the Modi wave is losing its momentum. Coming on the heels of the setback in the Uttarakhand and Bihar by-polls, last week’s by-election results in five States show a steady decline in the BJP’s rating. The Congress won all the three seats in Assembly by-polls in Uttarakhand on July 25. Laloo Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar turned their (…)

• Promising Prospect

  28 September 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The Prime Minister’s visit to China has falsified the wishful forecast of his critics and adversaries at home who had pronounced in advance that it was going to be a non-event. If anything, it has turned out to be an event of positive significance.
  The agreement on the maintenance of peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas has been justly characterised as a “landmark” along the long and tortuous road of India-China (…)

• Lest We Forget: The Batla House Case, Six Years On

  28 September 2014

  The following is the press release by the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association.
  Ninettenth September marked the sixth anni-versary of the Batla House ‘encounter’. Six years ago, on this day, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police claimed to have hit upon the perpetrators of the serial blasts that had struck the Capital city the previous week. The so-called encounter resulted in the death of Inspector Sharma, a veteran of dozens of encountersand two young men, Atif Ameen and Sajid.
  Sajid (…)

• Shahid Bhagat Singh

  28 September 2014, by Bharat Dogra, Jagmohan Singh, Madhu Dogra

  September 28, 2014 marks the immortal revolutionary martyr Bhagat Singh’s 107th birth anniversary. On this occasion we are publishing the following article on Bhagat Singh and a review of a book on him in the subsequent pages.
  Introduction
  Shahid Bhagat Singh is widely recognised as perhaps the most famous and respected revolutionary of the freedom movement of India. Although he, along with his two comrades Sukhdev and Rajguru, was hanged by the colonial regime at the extremely young age (…)

• Useful, if Controversial, Book on Bhagat Singh, his Life and Times

  28 September 2014, by Barun Das Gupta

  BOOK REVIEW
  Understanding Bhagat Singh by Chaman Lal; Aakar Books, Delhi; pages: xii+258; price: Rs 550.
  Bhagat Singh was a star among the stars in the galaxy of India’s freedom fighters who immolated themselves for the emancipation of the country from the yoke of colonial rule. He was born in 1907 and was executed by the British rulers on March 23, 1931, at the age of 24. So strong was the public reaction to his trial and death sentence that fearing a huge explosion of public anger, the (…)

• How Ukrainian President Poroshenko Won Over the West against Russia

  28 September 2014

  by R.G. Gidadhubli
  During the last one year, Ukraine has been passing through the worst period of its current history, torn as it is between the pro-Western civil society activists and pro-Russian East Ukrainian separatists. For not conceding to sign the association agreement with the European Union, the former Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, had to flee the country in February 2014. The present President, Petro Poroshenko, has been facing a tough time during the last few months to (…)