Mainstream Weekly

Remembering Bindeshwar Pathak | Devaki Jain

Devaki Jain — 2023-08-18T21:49:29Z

We, that is my colleagues in the small women's study center that was born in the 70s,- and I had a surprise one evening when a tall gentleman dressed in a dhoti and kurta walked into our office He had heard that we were identifying voluntary agencies or non-governmental centers which had been effective. He told us he was deeply engaged in the emancipation of the scavengers, one of Gandhi's ideals, and he had found his own way of doing that .-Mainly to improve the Latrines/ Lavatories/ the (…)

- 2023

Iris Murdoch Prize-the reborn Booker Prize | Devaki Jain

Devaki Jain — 2023-04-15T00:19:43Z

A brilliant move of the Booker Prize-wallas to rename the Booker Prize with Iris Murdoch's name. Many of us who had the privilege and the joy to be her students at Oxford believe that this renaming would bring a huge new audience and fans for this great thinker, as well as very different criteria for choosing the winner.
For those of us who were her tutorial students at St. Anne's College in Oxford, in the late 50s and early 60s, being taught by Iris was exceptional. She was the moral (…)

- 2023

Review by Devaki Jain of Amartya Sen's Home in the world - A memoir

Devaki Jain — 2021-08-07T12:56:08Z

BOOK REVIEW
by Devaki Jain
__0__
Home in the World: A Memoir
by Amartya Sen
Imprint; Allen Lane
Penguin Random House
July, 2021
480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1846144868
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846144868
available via Amazon
__0__
In Home in the World, Amartya Sen, a dear friend and contemporary, has achieved the impossible. We are with him in Shantiniketan savouring its unique ambience. Tagore is there, and encourages our brave Amartya to improve his competence in Sanskrit. At (…)

- 2021

The Quiet Revolution

Devaki Jain — 2020-03-24T08:57:37Z

In the midst of darkness, light exists—is a saying attributed to many great minds including Mahatma Gandhi. In the midst of so much hate, violent actions and speeches, feminists' voices and actions rise like the lotus from the swamp. Muslim women have been sitting in various neighborhoods across India, peaceful, com-posed—the perfect Satyagrahis. No noise comes from there but once spoken to, they explain why they insist on calling attention, not only to the injustice but the ignorance behind (…)

- 2020

Governor of Another Kind

Devaki Jain — 2020-01-27T10:22:16Z

TRIBUTE
Shri. T.N. Chaturvedi, was a Governor of another kind. I had a personal experience of witnessing how he conducted the business of a Governor. It was exemplary. He kept a distance from both bureaucracy and civil society but was always there as an arbiter of justice.
I had three close encounters with him as a citizen of Bangalore during his governorship. The first revealed both his magnanimity and his consciousness of what can be called national events, national initiatives. In (…)

- 2020

#Metoo Urban Naxal

Devaki Jain — 2018-11-12T17:52:52Z

A convention was held in Bangalore on September 5, 2018 as a tribute to Gauri Lankesh who, as per the ongoing investigation, was targeted and shot dead by members of the Right-wing Sanathan Sanstha on that evening a year ago.
Girish Karnad, one of the principal initiators of the gathering of about a thousand persons, invited me as one of the five persons who had filed a petition in the Supreme Court, protesting the arbitrary arrests of Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Arun (…)

- 2018

Is Cleanliness Gandhi's Greatest Contribution to Nation-Building?

Devaki Jain — 2018-10-07T13:52:28Z

It has been distressing for me to notice how the entire space for celebrating Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary by the Government of India has been focusing on toilets: public defecation-free India. In the process of shifting public attention, finances and administrative energy into building toilets (I will not go into the flaws, the failures, the continuation of manual scavenging etc.), and therefore ‘Swachh Bharat' as the clarion call at this time, Gandhi's contribution to poverty (…)

- 2018

Injuring Mother Narmada

Devaki Jain — 2017-09-23T20:15:24Z

The rhetoric says that the dream of dear Mother Narmada, of flowing from Madhya Pradesh into Gujarat and irrigating lakhs of hectares, has now been fulfilled with the raising of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to 136 metres and its opening. What a reflection of the distortion of history and the deprivation of the legitimate worshippers of Mother Narmada!
On either side of the great river Narmada, which flows downwards, are hills or, in other words, Narmada flows in a valley and on both sides there (…)

- 2017

Azaadi — Freedom from the Empire

Devaki Jain — 2016-08-28T10:52:10Z

Remembrance of Things Past
August 15 reinvokes reflections of India's freedom struggle and its aftermath which are customarily carried by newspapers and journals. Apart from the mention of independence and pictures of Gandhiji with a spinning wheel or his traditional walking stick what the freedom struggle meant to the generation that was actually on the battle-ground is often bypassed.
I married into a freedom fighter's family. My father-in-law, Phool Chand Jain, was one of those (…)

- 2016

Remembering Ramaswami Iyer

Devaki Jain — 2015-09-20T19:08:34Z

TRIBUTE
I first met Ramaswami Iyer as the husband of Suhasini Iyer—Suhasini was deeply admired and loved by a Cambridge graduate called Foy Nissen who later was in charge of the British Council Library in Mumbai. He insisted that we meet her and of course, typical of Suhasini, we were cherished and fed and our bonding began.
But the real intertwining between my family and the Ramaswami Iyers began when my husband, L.C. Jain, belonged to a special committee set up by the Planning (…)

- 2015