Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The Difficulty of being a Hindu

  22 September 2014

  by Baisali Mohanty
  “Hindustan is a Hindu nation... Hindutva is the identity of our nation and it (Hinduism) incorporates others (religions) in itself,” words of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, Mohan Bhagwat, in a congregation in the country.
  He further identifies every true ‘Hindu’ as the rightful owner of the land of ‘Hindustan’. His immensely pugnacious speech has stood the test of time, been heavily applauded in the public constituency, the RSS community (Sangh Parivar) in (…)

• Revisiting Development and Social Justice Agenda

  22 September 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  These are difficult times for social activists in India. These are also times when an honest appraisal of previous work—achievements as well as limitations—is needed, as also fresh thinking about the challenges ahead.
  India has a rich and diverse heritage of social activism which continues today despite many adversities and setbacks. There are many senior activists who have spent their entire adult life in this work. They have many achievements to their credit but despite this, today they (…)

• To be ‘Modern’ and ‘Hindu’: Mobilising Ayurveda for the Nation

  22 September 2014

  by Shivangi Jaiswal
  The decades spanning the early 20th century in India were marked by competing claims on ideas, identities and symbols characterising reformist campaigns of the time. In this context, delivering lectures by the educated elite was one of the means through which claims of nation-making were made. This paper is an attempt towards exploring how a well-known Ayurvedic practitioner, Mahamahopadhyaya Gananath Sen Saraswati, in his lectures, employed a version of Ayurvedic past (…)

• Money-Muscle Power in Student Union Elections and National Politics

  22 September 2014

  by Kamal Kumar and Alisha Dhingra
  Student politics is seen as one of the interesting and lively aspects of the student’s campus-life, something which leverage and shape her/his future personality as well as political under-standing. The model of student politics in India has been encouraged to spread the ethos of democracy among the youth and to stimulate them to actively partake in national politics. From India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the former Indian President and (…)

• Tribute to Saifuddin Choudhury

  22 September 2014

  reproduced also is an Interview with Saifuddin Choudhury from 2000

• Voters Realise Dangers of Communal Politics

  22 September 2014, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Finally, the people of this country have woken up! The by-poll results are enough to show that we, as an electorate, have matured and can see, rather foresee, the dangers of communal politics. We don’t want to be divided and ruined by communally charged politicians. We want to exist in peace and earn our daily bread without the politicians grabbing those morsels.
  Enough of hate politics! Enough of communal propaganda! Enough of poison unleashed! It’s a combination of all this (…)

• Positive Signs amid Persisting Negative Features

  13 September 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  It is a welcome sign indeed that politics has taken a back-seat while confronting nature’s fury in Kashmir. As floods ravage and cause havoc in large parts of the Valley including the capital Srinagar taking quite a toll of lives and numerous citizens are still stranded across the State, the armed forces and Air Force alongwith the National Disaster Response Force have mounted rescue efforts braving all odds with the nation united behind them to meet the challenge of the (…)

• India, Japan at the Global Crossroads

  13 September 2014, by Uttam Sen

  Key diplomatic exchanges or matters of state are almost axiomatically obscured from the world. Reportage does not necessarily sharpen our flair for analysis or speculation. Yet it could provide the ineluctable reality, as much as the grist for a searching hypothesis. In that tentative vein, has Narendra Modi’s reported bonding with Shinzo Abe opened up a worldview that others have either not grasped, or are no longer inclined to dare, particularly when it is more immediately utilitarian than (…)

• Why Japan Matters for India

  13 September 2014

  by Ramakrushna Pradhan
  Undoubtedly, India and Japan are friends from antiquity; share a superb and timeless bonding free of any kind of dispute—ideological, cultural and territorial. And the naturalness of the partnership opened up only recently with Modi’s assumption of the Prime Minister’s office in India. Although they are unique kind of nations in Asia having reciprocal sentimental standing, generous gestures and popular goodwill towards each other which can rarely be found among other (…)

• Irom Sharmila, Released by Law, is Rearrested by Police

  13 September 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Vietnam: the Mai Lai Massacre is known as “the most shocking episode of the Vietnam war”. One morning in 1968, a platoon of US soldiers entered the sprawling Vietnamese village, saw men and women and children getting ready to go to the market, and began shooting without warning. A man was pushed into a well and a grenade thrown into it. Some 20 women and children kneeled before a temple deity praying. They were all shot in the head. Some 70-80 villagers were pushed into an (…)