Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  Statement demanding a postponement of COP-26

  11 September 2021

  Friends of the Earth International.
  "Statement demanding a postponement of COP-26
  (Several other large Climate Justice networks have issued similar demands).
  7 September 2021
  "Friends of the Earth International joins calls for the postponement of the Glasgow COP26 climate negotiations in less than eight weeks. The UK government has not created the conditions necessary to host a safe, accessible and equitable COP, and the conference should not be held at the risk of human life and (…)

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  Table of Contents, Mainstream, Sept 4, 2021

  3 September 2021

  * Letter to the readers, Mainstream, September 4, 2021
  * A Plea for Liberal Education | Avijit Pathak
  * J.P. Naik and The Art of The Educational Revolution | Murzban Jal
  * Pandemic, Knowledge and Society | Banhi Baran Ghosh
  * Socialism and the Human Individual In Marx’s Work | Paresh Chattopadhyay

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Sept 4, 2021

  3 September 2021

  Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, September 4, 2021
  In the past seven years, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government of India and the various arms of the Hindutva right have been busy marking governmental institutions and society with their own ideological and social trademark. A reshaping of the social environment has been underway for some time. The process underway is directed at our minds at our social heritage and historical backdrop –-from built heritage, monuments, to social (…)

• A Plea for Liberal Education | Avijit Pathak

  3 September 2021, by Avijit Pathak

  by Avijit Pathak
  To begin with, let me make it clear. What I am going to write is not something bookish—yet another soulless academic exercise. Instead, my words emanate from the authenticity of my experience: the entire process of self-churning that I pass through as a learner, a teacher or a wanderer. Yes, I know that education, as social anthropologists are fond of saying, is a process of transmission of the entire social heritage— its traditions, symbols and knowledges— from one (…)

• J.P. Naik and The Art of The Educational Revolution | Murzban Jal

  3 September 2021

  by Murzban Jal
  In the era where one form of elites is opposed to another, where liberalism is not only opposed to conservatism, but where the former claims to confront conservatism and authoritarianism and then claims to solve all problems of the world from wars and hunger to the Taliban, it is necessary to recall what revolution and the art of revolution means. And since revolutions do not spring from the air, but occur in the manner that Lenin had pointed out in his What is to be Done?, (…)

• Pandemic, Knowledge and Society | Banhi Baran Ghosh

  3 September 2021

  by Banhi Baran Ghosh*
  Abstract
  Last one year, plunged into disarray and bewilderment, has caused great upheavals and rampages in the society. One way of confronting this is to embark upon how we do acquire a kind of knowledge that would guide us through this untrammeled rush of so many odds to the lasting abode. This article makes an attempt to articulate the rationality of a kind of knowledge that would, in all probability, embolden the society in pious courses to develop a persuasive (…)

• Why I Am Not Jealous of Ambani | T J S George

  3 September 2021, by T J S George

  In the normal course of things, people feel jealous of Mukesh Ambani for the phenomenal wealth he commands. I feel sorry for him. What is the use of wealth if it restricts your freedoms? He has more money than I have, but less freedom. I can have fun driving around in my car, continuously wondering about the old gear civilisation and today’s automatic culture. Ambani has a fleet of cars, but enjoying them is something else. You can enjoy a car, but you cannot enjoy an armoured vehicle, (…)

• Migrant Labour and the Pandemic: Domination and Resistance | Arup Kumar Sen

  3 September 2021

  In summarizing the devastating impact of the two World Wars, Hannah Arendt wrote in 1950: “Never has our future been more unpredictable...”. She also explained her reading of the post-war world: “Under the most diverse conditions and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena — homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth”. (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Preface to the first edition, 1951)
  During the seven (…)

• The Shudra Kings and Brahmins: A mirror image of history | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

  3 September 2021, by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

  But for the accidental reading of Shahu Maharaj’s letter to the retired Governor of Bombay presidency, Lord Sydenham, written in 1918, I would not have thought of writing this essay. In my life time experience of writing about the Brahmin-Bania power in contemporary times at the expense of life threats and cases in various levels of courts the Dwija pundits tried to dismiss my arguments about the Brahmin-Bania power over the society and state in post-independence times and in the (…)

• Socialism and the Human Individual In Marx’s Work | Paresh Chattopadhyay

  3 September 2021

  by Paresh Chattopadhyay
  Today there is a curious convergence of views between the Right and the dominant Left on the meaning of socialism. Put more concretely, for both the Right and the dominant Left socialism refers to the system which came into being with the conquest of political power by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, and signifies a society governed by a single political party — basically the communist party — and where means of production are owned predominantly by the state, and (…)