Mainstream Weekly

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• Witch Killings of Malda: A Study in ‘Our’ Conspiracy | Sujit Chakraborty

  23 July 2021

  by Sujit Chakraborty*
  INVESTIGATION
  [brun]Dozens of women are killed in the tribal belts of North Bengal each year, accused of being ‘witches’. But more than superstition, the story is really about non-tribals marginalising tribals, grabbing their lands and pushing them to the edge of existencebrun]
  Meghdoot Lodge. One of the best hotels in Malda city in those days, almost bang on the highway.
  “Eita khoob bhalo,” (This is a nice hotel) Polu said, towering over the diminutive (…)

• Snooping / War over our past / Sahir | Humra Quraishi

  23 July 2021, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS 21 July 2021
  I have been focusing on the fact that the Coronavirus is just one aspect to our dismal existence. Today many more unsettling realities are intruding into our lives, making our everyday survival extremely, extremely difficult. Now comes up another hitting reality. We are under watch. We are no longer azaad. Nah, we are not. As there exist intrusions by the various sarkari characters and the machinery under their direct control. Everything, big and small, in our (…)

• 

  A tale of love, truth and victimhood | Prasenjit Chowdhury

  23 July 2021

  BOOK REVIEW by Prasenjit Chowdhury __0__
  One Love, and the Many Lives of Osip B
  by C. P. Surendran
  Niyogi Books, New Delhi
  www.niyogibooksindia.com/
  Email: niyogibooks[at]gmail.com
  IMPRINT: OLIVE TURTLE June - July 2021, 372 pages
  ISBN-13: 978-93-91125-12-7
  Rs. 695
  # Fiction
  __0__
  ‘This is my moment of truth. Kashmir’s too. Shaheed Osip Bala Krishnan. I shall redeem honour by throwing myself in the way of bullets fired by the Indian army. Someone will take a (…)

• 

  The Rwanda Myth | Tom Zoellner (LARB)

  23 July 2021

  Review by Tom Zoellner
  April 3, 2021
  __0__
  Do Not Disturb:
  The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad
  by Michela Wrong
  New York: Public Affairs Books
  March 2021, 512 pages
  Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9781610398428
  London: Fourth Estate (30 March 2021)
  Paperback, ‎ 512 pages
  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0008294437
  ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0008294434
  __0__
  IN THE VIEW OF MOST historians, the original sin of Rwanda came from the colonial policy of making artificial ethnic (…)

• 2020 Tokyo Games: Why allow men to compete with women? | Linda Blade

  23 July 2021

  by Linda Blade
  May 4, 2021
  Dear Olympic Games Officials and people of Japan:
  The modern Olympic Games was envisioned as a festival where sports competition would remain a merit-based domain where excellence could be celebrated on a level playing field without bias towards social rank or cultural heritage.
  Unfortunately, in 2015, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided that the human rights of some athletes supersede the rights of others.
  Without consulting broadly or (…)

• A Call for Solidarity with the People of Haiti, 7/16/21

  23 July 2021

  The media and governments are saying that Haiti finds itself at the center of another crisis, this time for the assassination of the ex-president Jovenel Moïse on July 7. In fact, Haiti has been in crisis since Moïse’s inauguration in February, 2017.
  The truth is that Moïse was the victim of the chaos and organized crime to which he himself opened the door. Since the commencement of his presidency, he began to systematically dismantle democratic institutions, instead giving more latitude (…)

• South Africa is turning on itself | Buthelezi and Satgar

  23 July 2021

  by Awande Buthelezi and Vishwas Satgar *
  Jacob Zuma is like Michael Jackson in Thriller, a master of the great disaster. He has played his endgame: you bring me down, I bring it all down.
  The mass looting over the past few days is not a sign of revolution in our streets and on television. Instead, this is the coming to life of South Africa’s most scary nightmare: a society turning on itself in an orgy of large scale public violence.
  More than 25 years of ANC misrule placed us on this (…)

• 

  Richard Lewontin - Pioneer of molecular evolution who campaigned against biological racism

  23 July 2021

  by Michael R. Dietrich *
  July 13, 2021
  Richard Lewontin was a groundbreaking geneticist, best known for bringing molecular tools into evolutionary biology and for his advocacy against the use of science to rationalize structural inequity. Lewontin and his collaborators revealed how natural selection acts to shape variation, exploring its effect on genes, groups and individuals. Moving between mathematical and statistical analysis, fieldwork and laboratory experiment, they set the course (…)

• The Winged Horse | Badri Raina

  23 July 2021, by Badri Raina

  July 22, 2021
  Pegasus, the winged horse,
  Sprang from Medusa’s blood,
  When Perseus, the virtuous,
  Detached the wicked Gorgon’s head.
  Next it flew to the firmament,
  And became a constellation bright,
  Loved of Zeus, the all-mighty,
  For spreading sweetness and light.
  Think what in our fallen times
  Has become of Pegasus;
  Turned into a poisoned beep,
  He is made to spy on us.

• Come Pegasus, Come Pegasus! | Suhas Borker

  23 July 2021, by Suhas Borker

  Come, Come, Pegasus,
  snoop away, snoop away, into the dark
  till we trace your master(s)
  in remorseless hot pursuit to tick and mark
  find you we shall up to the up-up
  find you we shall down to the down-down
  naked truth won’t let you hide for long
  and soon you shall be sold for a song
  Come, Come, Pegasus,
  snoop away, snoop away, into the dark
  wing carefully lest guardian dogs bark
  you were in the Inner Temple Arms
  you were in Gandhi’s and Nehru’s spurs
  not in spyware tools and (…)