Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  TV recording: Harindranath Chattopadhyay | Down Memory Lane - Ep.04 | Doordarshan

  16 September 2022

  Harindranath Chattopadhyay the poet, actor, singer, songwriter, dramatist, and actor, was born in 1898, This is a television interview he gave at the age of 88.

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  Video: Nancy Fraser on Crisis - David Frisby Memorial Lecture 2014

  16 September 2022

  The current sense of crisis–in economy, ecology, politics, and society–is prompting many critical theorists to revisit the problem of capitalism. I salute this return to core issues of social theory after a period of neglect. But received understandings of capitalism are not adequate to 21st century conditions. I propose, accordingly, to re-examine a basic theoretical question: How is capitalism best conceptualized–as an economic system, a form of ethical life, or an institutionalized social order? To answer this question, I will integrate some relatively familiar concepts from Marx with newer insights from feminist, ecological, and political theorizing. Whereas Marx sought the essence of capitalism by looking beneath the sphere of exchange to the “hidden abode” of production, I shall look behind production to abodes that are more hidden still. The result will be an expanded conception of capitalism able better to accommodate the multiplicity of crisis tendencies and social struggles that characterize the 21st century.
  David Frisby Memorial Lecture: Prof. Nancy Fraser

  Prof. Fraser is currently Diane Middlebrook/Carl Djerassi Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge and Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research.

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  [bleu]Table of Contents, Mainstream, Sept 10, 2022[/bleu]

  9 September 2022

  * Lanka: as Gotabaya returns… | Apratim Mukarji
  * Democracy – Beyond the Reform versus Revolution Binary | Aditya Nigam
  * Gandhi’s Satyagraha and Untouchability | Anshu Srivastava
  * Audio: Amid Tributes to Queen Elizabeth, Deadly Legacy of Colonialism

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Sept 10, 2022

  9 September 2022

  Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, September 10, 2022
  There was much talk recently in sections of the Indian media over the leadership contest in the Britain’s ruling Conservative party, where Indian origin politician Rishi Sunak was among the top contestants. Sunak finally lost the race but won some 42.6% of the vote in the conservative Party; Had he won the numbers he would have been the Prime Minister of England. Sunak along with many others from the South Asian Diaspora have already (…)

• Lanka : as Gotabaya returns… | Apratim Mukarji

  9 September 2022, by Apratim Mukarji

  Two newspaper headlines define Sri Lanka as it was on the 10th of July 2022 that an Indian newspaper The Sunday Express headlined the previous day’s story as “Colombo Overthrow.” The 4 September 2022 edition of the same newspaper captioned its story as “Gotabaya gets special security and bungalow on return to Colombo.”
  The first story related to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s great flight to escape the raging public on Colombo streets. The second story descibed how Gotabaya, the (…)

• Democracy – Beyond the Reform versus Revolution Binary | Aditya Nigam

  9 September 2022, by Aditya Nigam

  An arcane intra-Marxist debate has suddenly resurfaced, on social media, following the parting of ways of former Politburo member Kavita Krishnan with her party, the CPI(ML) Liberation. Arguments from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s — especially those that crystallized after Khruschev’s disclosures about the Stalin era — are being retailed all over again. I am not particularly interested in these arguments, having both once been on the other side, defending Stalin and then having gone through (…)

• To Rahul with Love from Kanyakumari | S. P. Udayakumaran

  9 September 2022

  An Open Letter to Mr. Rahul Gandhi and His Team of Yatris
  Dear Mr. Rahul Gandhi,
  Vanakkam! First of all, please accept India’s sincere thanks for shouldering this great responsibility of defending our Republic, and saving our citizens from the Fascist onslaught along with hundreds and thousands of our people from across the country.
  When we all met on August 22, 2022, at the Constitution Club in Delhi, I pointed out the Sangh Parivar’s nightmarish vision of establishing a divisive (…)

• Hoping Congress Party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra Turns Into A Mass Contact Campaign | Arun Srivastava

  9 September 2022

  by Arun Srivastava
  Sceptics are apprehensive of the real objectives of the Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, whether it has been launched to check the spread of the rightist forces, communalising the Indian society and restore the dignity and prestige of the Constitution or to unite the Congress. They also seek a clarification about the capability of Rahul Gandhi in uniting the Congress as the party has lost its mooring and credibility after he emerged as the new face of the party. (…)

• Swarna Aayog Movement and the Politics of Caste Polarization in Himachal Pradesh | Rohit Kumar

  9 September 2022

  by Rohit Kumar *
  As state assembly’s elections are approaching in Himachal Pradesh many new factors and issues have found their headway in state politics in last few months. Where the results of five assemblies’ elections recently have once again established that the BJP is new dominant political force of the country, the victory for Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab state assembly’ elections created tensions for the political parties in upcoming elections in Himachal and Gujarat. Other than this (…)

• Kartavya Path: Forget about your rights | Faraz Ahmad

  9 September 2022, by Faraz Ahmad

  It is now crystal clear that there are only two things that motivate Narendrabhai Damodardas Modi to act. One, the desire to suppress the citizens, not Muslims alone under the heavy spiked boots of his alma mater the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with all its widely spread tentacles all around the country and even across the seas. Second, to obliterate each and every achievement of the Nation under primarily the Congress party which like any Swaymsevak pracharak he should be resenting (…)