Mainstream Weekly

Vivekananda – The Secular Swami | Ashok Celly

Ashok Celly — 2020-11-13T20:52:03Z

When Vivekananda arrived on the Indian scene, the British rule was in its heyday and the Indians were in a state of utter despair. Even the average Englishman in India considered himself lord and master of the world and treated Indians like dirt. Awed and intimidated by the foreign rulers, the Indian masses seemed to have lost all self-eastern and felt condemned to a life of everlasting servitude.
Vivekananda a young man of great sensitivity and extra-ordinary energy felt he must do (…)

- 2020

India Beckons Congress | Ashok Celly

Ashok Celly — 2020-09-04T18:38:54Z

Let me say this straight away that India badly needs the Congress party with all its faults. A Congress-mukt Bharat is not in our interest. For Congress is the only opposition party with an all-India presence even in its present, debilitated state. Congress is very much present in the north (M.P., Rajasthan, Punjab and Chattisgarh); in the south, it wields considerable influence in Karnataka and Kerala; its presence in the west Maharashtra and Gujarat – is something to be reckoned with (…)

- 2020

Gandhi - Tagore Debate

Ashok Celly — 2020-04-04T14:23:29Z

Gandhi launched his Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921-22 when Tagore was touring the West pleading for cooperation between East and West so that peace and harmony may prevail in the world. When the news of Gandhi's Non-Cooperation Movement reached him, he was greatly perturbed. He got the feeling that it was a negative force in Indian politics born of hatred of the West and was meant to cut off India from the West which would be a great cultural disaster. In Tagore's words, "No in passive (…)

- 2020

Ramakrishna, the Quintessential Hindu

Ashok Celly — 2018-12-02T10:41:47Z

Ramakrishna was a quintessential Hindu. He believed in and lived by the Vedantic credo that God lives in all human beings—men and women, Brahmins and Shudras, princes and beggars. Nothing demonstrates his faith better than his concern for and love of the pariah and the ‘fallen' women—the most despised segments of the Hindu society.
His favourite disciple, Swami Vivekananda, gives a very moving account of Ramakrishna performing menial services in the house of a pariah. The pariah would not (…)

- 2018

Ashoka — The Great Marvel of History

Ashok Celly — 2018-08-07T21:13:53Z

Ashoka is probably the greatest marvel of Indian history. For what can be more marvellous than the transformation of a cruel, bloodthirsty prince, who would stop at nothing including the killing of his brothers to capture the throne, into an enlightened and compassionate emperor? Yet this is what happened post-Kalinga. Surely, Buddhism, which was still a living force, must have been an important factor in his transformation but that does not take away anything from his greatness.
And what (…)

- 2018

Guru Arjan Dev — The Great Visionary

Ashok Celly — 2017-12-02T19:11:31Z

Guru Arjan Dev (1563-1606)—the fifth Sikh guru—was a great visionary and one of India's greatest heroes. The grandeur and catholicity of his vision is best seen in the compilation and editing of the Adi Granth which later, in its expanded form, came to be known as the Guru Granth Sahib. The Adi Granth contains not only the devotional compositions of the Sikh gurus starting with Guru Nanak but also that of bhakti poets like Kabir, Namdev, Raidas, Mirabai etc. and also Sufi poets like Baba (…)

- 2017

Gau-rakshaks or Nar-bhakshaks

Ashok Celly — 2017-09-02T08:31:15Z

Last two or three years have witnessed an extremely disburbing development in Indian politics, that is, the emergence of extra-constitu-tional centres of power in the form of Gau-rakshaks. These so-called protectors of cows don't hesitate to take the law in their hands and go about bullying, ‘punishing', even killing people on the barest suspicion that they are bee-featers. They have thus made a mockery of the rule of law. Only once in 70 years of independence was such a phenomenon (…)

- 2017

Adivasis in the Indian Republic

Ashok Celly — 2016-10-30T10:57:05Z

Perhaps the greatest sin that independent India's ruling class committed was that it relent-lessly engaged in the most brutal exploitation of India's original inhabitants commonly known as the Adivasis. It has done to the Adivasis what the White Americans did to the Red Indians (original inhabitants again). It robbed them of their land and national resources and destroyed their cultural identity. All in the name of development. What Shri Jaipal Singh, the eminent Adivasi leader, said way (…)

- 2016

Lohia's Quarrel with Nehru

Ashok Celly — 2015-02-16T18:23:30Z

Not many people know that Lohia was an ardent admirer of Nehru in his youth. In fact, Nehru was one of the two leaders he simply adored—the other being Mahatma Gandhi. So when disillusionment set in, his criticism of Nehru acquired a bitterness, an extremist edge. It was like the reaction of a jilted lover. His hero had let him down. Nehru for Lohia became the God that failed.
As Lohia saw it, the idealist in Nehru had been superseded by the practical politician as India drew close to its (…)

- 2015

Violence in American Society

Ashok Celly — 2013-04-22T12:07:34Z

In his book, The End of the American Century, David S. Mason draws the reader's attention to some shcoking facts of American life. “The United States is the most violent country in the industrialised world. According to reports by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in 2004 there were 1,367,009 violent crimes in this country. Of these more than 16,000 were homicides. In that year, there was one violent crime every twentythree seconds and one murder every thirtythree minutes. Much of (…)

- 2013