Mainstream Weekly

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• Nasir: Depicting Subjugation As An Amalgamation Of Class And Religious Identities | Kiran Desai

  14 August 2020, by Kiran Desai

  Viewed “Nasir”, a Tamil movie screened at MAMI on 7th June 2020 on Youtube. Yes, it’s brilliant film. The director Arun Karthick has opted a technique of simple linear narration purposefully that entails mainly two inferences that will be unfolded as this essay moves along. The movie is apparently depicting a quotidian life for one day of a main character who is a simple, common person. The screenplay has very few dialogues as the protagonist goes through motions of daily life in the (…)

• Sri Lanka: The Rajapaksa juggernaut mauls Opposition | Apratim Mukarji

  14 August 2020, by Apratim Mukarji

  One-hundred fifty out of a total of 225 seats in Sri Lanka’s new Parliament---elected on August 5---has turned out to be a dream win few political parties can achieve in a democracy. This is what the two Rajapaksas---President Gotabaya, the younger brother, and Mahinda, the eldest of the four and a former President twice elected to the highest office---achieved on the voting day when 71 per cent of the electorate turned up to exercise their franchise.
  The Opposition has virtually ceased to (…)

• Presidential Election In Belarus-Authoritarian Regime Persists | R.G.Gidadhubli

  14 August 2020

  Lukashenka has been an authoritarian president emerging from his position as the head of a State Farm and has not allowed any opposition to his leadership during the last 26 years. He has neither promoted nor allowed democratic political institutions to emerge in the country even as the main objective of all independent states after the breakup of the Soviet Union was to bring about transition from the former Communist System to political democracy

• A Genocide Is Taking Place In Brazil | Frei Betto

  14 August 2020

  Brasil Wire, July 20, 2020
  Frei Betto is a Brazilian writer, philosopher, liberation theologian, and Dominican friar. Involved in Brazil’s emancipatory struggles for decades, Betto was imprisoned for four years under the Military dictatorship for helping its victims escape abroad. More recently he has been heavily involved in the battle to eradicate hunger in his country. He has made a personal and urgent call to friends of Brazil around the world about what is taking place in the country (…)

• ’Like in the Cultural Revolution’: Hong Kong’s educators fear being purged | Verna Yu

  14 August 2020

  Teachers and professors face crackdown as authorities fight for the minds of an antagonistic young generation

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  Video: Out of the Shadows, A Colored Solidarity | Anjal Chande & Nico Slate at Smithsonian’s CrossLines

  14 August 2020

  "Out of the Shadows, A Colored Solidarity" is a dance work on transnational solidarity across global social movements.

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  Video: A Life of Dissent - The Life and Work of E. P. Thompson | TeleSUR English

  14 August 2020

  E. P. Thompson, a British historian, poet, novelist and activist, was a voice of dissent in the dogmatic political environment of 20th century Europe. As a member of the New Left, his work and activism sought to bridge the gap between Marxist theory and practice, and to heal the fracture of the Cold War divide

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  Video: Dr. Ilina Sen: "We should keep up the pressure to repeal sedition law." | Repeal Sedition

  14 August 2020

  Ilina Sen an activist, sociologist, and academic who worked for over thirty years with her husband, the pediatrician Binayak Sen, with people in Chhattisgarh’s tribal heartland. She worked with Shankar Guha Niyogi at the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, and fought against the imprisonment of Binayak Sen, who was charged in 2007 with sedition and criminal conspiracy under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967, charges which carry a penalty of lifetime imprisonment.

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  [rouge]Table of Contents - Mainstream’s Lockdown edition no. 20 | Aug 8, 2020[/rouge]

  7 August 2020

  Table of Contents - Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 34, New Delhi, August 8, 2020
  Letter to the Readers of Mainstream’s Lockdown Edition 20 (August 8) Towards Theocracy: the ignominious collapse of Secular Democracy in India | Badri Raina August 5, a Blot on our Secular Democracy | Sukumaran C.V. Abrogation of Article-370: A Monumental Blunder | Praveen Davar Contempt of Court | Barun Das Gupta Open letter to a Maoist friend: Is it time to hang up your boots? | Shubhranshu Choudhary Yes to (…)

• [rouge]Letter to the Readers of Mainstream’s Lockdown Edition 20 - August 8[/rouge]

  7 August 2020

  The remarks made by Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, on August 5, 2020 in the town on Ayodhya comparing the sectarian campaign of the Hindu right-wing to build the Ram Temple in Ayodhya with the anti-colonial movement for freedom in India are totally misplaced. In violation of secular norms, he acted more like an activist of the Hindutva ideology than as a Prime Minister of a secular country.
  In the early days after India’s independence, when the Somnath Temple was being built (…)