Mainstream Weekly

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• Fatima Learned Sanskrit, Lizi Arabic | TJS George

  11 December 2020, by T J S George

  Facts defy some of our popular ideas. In the Sanskrit College of Kerala’s Tripunithura area, they had a senior lecturer in the Vedanta Department. Her name: Fatima Beevi. Tradition-bound minds were surprised, but Fatima saw nothing unusual in her taking up Upanishads as her research subject and finally getting her doctorate in Advaita Vedanta.
  Sister Lizi, an ordained nun from a convent in Kaladi, picked Arabic as her subject of specialisation. In her nun’s gown, she stood out among (…)

• Mask Over Mask | L K Sharma

  11 December 2020, by L K Sharma

  by L K Sharma
  I arrived, arrived at strange unknowns in order to get away from known knowns. To turn a new leaf, begin a new life as an exile.
  Arrived at a place, far away from familial familiarity to live without the fear of being found out by those like me.
  Arrived to create a gulf between past and present, between now and then, between me and them. . Arrived to experience transition, change, dislocation, alienation, and anxiety of an exile. To feel the pangs of (…)

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  On Electronic Transmission of Ballot Papers and Voting by overseas Indians/NRIs: CPI-M Letter to Election Commission regar

  11 December 2020

  On Electronic Transmission of Ballot Papers
  Date: December 4, 2020
  Letter to Election Commission by CPI(M) General Secretary send on December 4, 2020
  Shri Sunil Arora Chief Election Commissioner Election Commission of India Nirvachan Sadan New Delhi
  Dear Shri Arora ji,
  We are surprised and shocked to come across media reports that Election Commission has forwarded a legal framework for facilitating the voting of overseas Indians/NRIs to exercise their franchise in the upcoming (…)

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  Golwalkar had nothing to do with Science - Do Not Rename RGCB Campus: Letter to India’s Health Minister

  11 December 2020

  Binoy Viswam Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) 116, North Avenue New Delhi - 110 001 Mob: 96057667022 E-mail: binoyviswam55[at]gmail.com
  To
  Shri Harsh Vardhan ji, Union Health Minister Government of India, New Delhi.
  Respected Shri Harsh Vardhan ji,
  Date: 05.12.2020
  The Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) was inaugurated in 2002 with the aim to pioneer scientific research in molecular biology and biotechnology. The Centre has rapidly developed into the leading institute (…)

• Kerala Science Centre to be named after a pervert Racist and denigrator of Kerala Hindu women Golwalkar

  11 December 2020, by Shamsul Islam

  According to a statement (December 4, 2020) of the Science and Technology minister Harsh Vardhan a new campus with in the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala would be named “Shri Guruji Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar National Centre for Complex Disease in Cancer and Viral Infection”. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar was the second Supremo of the RSS (1940-1973) and the most prominent ideologue of the RSS whom our PM credits for grooming the latter into a political leader. (…)

• Post-socialism: Slovakia’s Threefold Transformation | Brigita Schmögnerová

  11 December 2020

  by Brigita Schmögnerová *
  22 October 2020
  The costly and long road to a modern state
  The revolutionary political changes in the Eastern Bloc at the beginning of the 1990s brought about a threefold transformation in the Republic of Slovakia: 1. From a totalitarian regime to a liberal democratic regime; 2. From a state within a federation to a nation-state; and 3. From a centrally-planned economy to a market economy. The Slovak Republic was not prepared for any of these changes. Yet in (…)

• Controversial Live Animal Charity Still Seeks Donations | Martha Rosenberg

  11 December 2020, by Martha Rosenberg

  by Martha Rosenberg *
  You can tell it is holiday season in the U.S. when Heifer International’s saccharine catalogue arrives in the mailbox. Heifer International (HI) is a Little Rock, Arkansas-based charity that "ends hunger and poverty" through sending live animals to poor people overseas. For a small amount of money, donors can send live goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, cattle, rabbits and even water buffaloes. The charity is known for its Unicef style photos of cute kids hugging their (…)

• Trees and forests: Megaprojects risk pushing forests past tipping point – report | Damian Carrington

  11 December 2020

  Huge road, energy and mining projects driving into heart of world’s remaining forests

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  Book Review: Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism | ACG

  11 December 2020

  Review by Anarchist Communist Group (ACG)
  November 23, 2020
  Darch, Colin. Nestor Makhno and rural anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-1921. Pluto Press.238 pages. £17.99
  I approached this book with some enthusiasm. A new book on the Makhnovist movement using sources previously unreferenced in the English language world. I was sorely disappointed. I should have read Darch’s doctoral thesis on Makhno, where his bias against Makhno and anarchism is immediately apparent. An example of that (…)

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  Video: Sona Jobarteh & Band - Kora Music from West Africa

  11 December 2020