Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Centenary Homage to the Victims of Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

  28 July 2019, by A K Biswas

  Jallianwala Bagh massacre was committed on April 13, 1919 when people had gathered to celebrate the Baisakhi at Amritsar, Punjab. This article pays homage to the innocent and peaceful men, women and children who unsuspectedly fell victims to senseless firings of the colonial authorities. They were martyrs of the Indian freedom struggle.
  That the colonial rulers had awarded as compensation a sum of Rs 22,66,732 for the savagery inflicted upon an assembly of men, women and children—Sikh, (…)

• The Stupidity of Repeating Failed Strategies - Playing games doomed to be a zero sum game

  27 July 2019

  by Amin Sofi
  Never to learn lessons from a long list of mistakes it already stands accused of having committed in Kashmir, the Government of India is at it again, repeating those worn-out tactics which have singularly failed to achieve even a semblance of peace and normalcy in Kashmir. Whether it involves looking at the K-issue exclusively from a security perspective that is entirely of our neighbour’s making, a law and order problem exacerbated by a lack of development on the ground with (…)

• Decoding BJPs Landslide Victory in Haryana

  27 July 2019

  by Ranbir Singh
  The BJP, which had obtained 34.18 per cent votes and won seven out of 10 seats from Haryana in the 2014 parliamentary elections, has been able to get 57.93 per cent votes and win all the 10 seats in the 2019 parliamentary elections. This quantum jump of the party both in terms of the vote-share and the seats won may be understood if we keep in view the following factors:
  In the first instance, it has to be primarily attributed to the charisma of Modi’s personality created (…)

• Crocodile Tears about Data Availability: A Tragic Story Never Told

  27 July 2019

  by Atanu Sengupta and Sanjoy De
  Recently there has been much hue and cry regarding the publication of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data. It has been a signed documentation of 108 eminent economists and social scientists that lay bare the supposed intention of the present Central Government in playing a hide-and-seek game with important information that the nation demands. The document was substantiated by similar withholding of important information in the field of (…)

• Where is the State to Protect the Dispossessed and Downtrodden?

  27 July 2019

  by Gautam Sen
  One more gory instance of assault and depredation against the deprived and the dispossessed of India has come to light. This was a July 6, 2019 incident concerning a 35-year-old Scheduled Caste (SC) woman of poor means, being forcibly taken to a police station at Sardarshahar in Rajasthan‘s Churu district, raped while in detention in a police custody, brutally assaulted by the guardians of the law to the extent of having her nails plucked out, beaten in the presence of a (…)

• Religions and Politics of Manipulation in South Asia

  27 July 2019

  by Swami Agnivesh
  The predicament of minorities in every society has to be understood sensitively and wisely, especially by themselves. On the whole, this is not the case. Religious minorities tend to live ghettoised, in a parasitical sort of relationship with the putative mainstream. It needs to be reckoned here in passing that ‘mainstream’ itself is a problematic category, often artificially constructed through a political process, more pronounced in democracy than in any other type of (…)

• Insanity Enthroned

  27 July 2019, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  After forty years of the foundation of our independent republic, the Frankenstein has appeared again—the monster that is out to destroy democracy and plunge this nation into civil war that shall rend asunder thousands of towns and villages of this great country.
  The term, communalism, does not convey the gravity of the crisis that confronts us today—let it be bluntly stated that what we face today is the demon of Hindu-Muslim hatred. Over a large part of this land, (…)

• Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — China Emerging as Major Beneficiary

  27 July 2019

  by R.G. Gidadhubli
  The 19th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit (SCO) was held on June 14, 2019 in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan. The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Kyrgyz President Sooron-bai Jeenbekov, and the leaders of other SCO member-states—Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, and Pakistan—participated at the Summit. It was attended by the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The focus of the summit was to expand cooperation (…)

• A Report on Cow Protection Violence in India

  27 July 2019, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Writing on the social dynamics of communal violence in India, social anthropologist, Julia Eckert, observed: “The success of Hindu nationalist organisations...lies not simply in their nationalist credo but in the specific opportunities of action and participation that are inherent in their mode of operation and form of organization. They reset the terms of inclusion and exclusion not solely ideologically but also in a practical manner offering local possibilities of action.”1
  A recent (…)

• Status of Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers under the Indian Forest Rights Act 2006

  27 July 2019

  by Suparna Sanyal Mukherjee
  The rabble of India was habituating in and around the Indian woodlands since time immemorial, but they had no legal rights to their homes, lands or livelihood sustenance.
  The authorities of the Indian Government have had all the powers over the forests and forest dwellers.
  As a result both forest and forest dwellers were diminished and disappointed uninterrup-tedly. The Forest Rights Act 2006 recognised forest-dwellers’ rights and made conservation (…)