Mainstream Weekly

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• They

  1 March 2020

  February 21 is the International Mother Tongue Day as declared by the United Nations in recognition of the martyrs of the language movement who fell to the Pakistani Police’s bullets on that day in 1952 in Dhaka while demanding that their mother tongue, Bangla, be made the official language of East Pakistan. Remembering the February 21 martyrs on the sixtyeighth anniversary of the language movement, we are carrying the following poem by a distinguished Bangladeshi intellectual. This was (…)

• Socialism rises like a Phoenix to haunt America

  1 March 2020, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The race for Democratic nomination in the upcoming US presidential election in November has electrified with the huge victory by Bernie Sanders in the Nevada primary on Saturday (November 22). The race has crossed a critical milestone. The primaries so far gave us a sampling of the trend in two regions of America—the American heartland (Iowa) and the Northeast (New Hampshire)—that Sanders is at the top of the heap of Democratic contenders.
  The racially diverse American West (Nevada) (…)

• J&K could have been a Model of Development for Rest of India

  1 March 2020

  by Sandeep Pandey and Rajendran Narayanan
  After being detained illegally at their respective residences for six months now the Public Safety Act has been invoked against Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and even Shah Faesal, in order to continue their detention. Omar Abdullah has been accused for his capacity to influence people to the extent that they came out to vote in large numbers even during the peak of militancy and poll boycotts, which has been so far considered an asset from the (…)

• The Murder of Imagination

  1 March 2020

  vt Arup Maharatna
  It is not a random coincidence that the title of an essay, namely, The End of Imagination, published in 1998 by the celebrated author Arundhati Roy is almost the same as that of the present article. There exists a conscious, albeit subtle, difference of connotation between these two otherwise close titles. Although an end of imagination is the final upshot envisaged in both the titles, a wilful active agency role (behind this lamentable outcome) is connoted flamboyantly (…)

• Science, Technology and Skills

  1 March 2020

  by Suparna Sanyal Mukherjee
  Education and advancement of educational status are both sides of the same coin, while skills play a vital role for development of science and technology. Scientific advancement and technological connotation always substantiate through the skills.
  Science is an accumulation of systematic knowledge which can propagate through systematic and scientific knowledge orientation, logical argument and systematic theory. These are the hidden content of the terms before (…)

• Timely Account of a Heinous Genocide

  1 March 2020

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Mohammad Chingiz Khan
  First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks by Habiburahman with Sophie Ansel translated by Andrea Reece; pp. 1 to 246; New Delhi: Penguin Viking; 2019; Rs. 499.
  The erudite biographical memoir of one of the victims of state-sponsored oppression, Habiburahman’s First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks (with Sophie Ansel)—translated by Andrea Reece and published by Penguin Viking, New Delhi—is a narrative of the unbea-rable, insufferable and (…)

• Judge Not Lest Ye be Judged

  1 March 2020, by Badri Raina

  “Judge not lest ye be judged,” They said to the judge. “Or, if judge you will, Then judge at your own peril.”
  The judge was young and dreamy Eyed, wedded to fairness. So he judged with upright mind And feeling heart, wondering Why the complicit could not find The law writ large to book the butchers Responsible for the carnage. The judge forgot that laws are Suited to faces, and do not necessarily Apply in high places.
  Thus, at the midnight hour, he Received his comeuppance From Caesar, (…)

• Perspective from Shaheen Bagh

  28 February 2020, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  As we go to press today, the situation at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh remains extremely fluid. The country’s Apex Court had sent interlocutors to Shaheen Bagh to discuss with the protesters there and get their consent to allow traffic movement to distant places that had been blocked for 69 days, that is, since the Shaheen Bagh protest against the Citizens Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) had begun. In fact this morning itself one of the roads supposed to have (…)

• Please, Sir, I Want Some More: Freeloader tells Kejriwal

  28 February 2020

  by L.K. Sharma
  Dear Shri Arvind Kejriwal,
  This habitual freeloader was thrilled by your letter that came before the historic Delhi elections. Apologies for this delayed response. My open letter earlier would have been misused by the Modi Party that was determined to defeat you. I wanted you to win so that I can enjoy the promised free pilgrimages. One does not live by free water and electricity alone but needs spiritual salvation too.
  Now that the most vicious-ever war has been lost (…)

• Reading AAP’s Victory

  28 February 2020

  by Arup Kumar Sen
  The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had a landslide victory in the Delhi Assembly elections held on February 8, 2020, winning 62 of 70 seats. The BJP improved its seat-tally marginally from three in 2015 to eight and its vote-share went up from 32.2 per cent in 2015 to 38.49 per cent. The AAP’s vote-share came down marginally from 54.3 per cent to 53.6 per cent. The Congress drew a blank with its vote-share reduced from 9.7 per cent in 2015 to 4.4 per cent. (The Economic Times, (…)