Mainstream Weekly

On Somnath Chatterji

G.S. Bhargava — 2008-10-17T15:52:19Z

COMMUNICATION
Permit me the following comment on the Lok Sabha Speaker, Shri Somnath Chatterji's contention that since he had conducted himself in a non-partisan manner as the Speaker, he was not bound by the whip of his ‘erstwhile' party, the CPI-M, to resign. . First, it has neither been the convention nor the practice for Lok Sabha Speakers formally to announce their dissociation from their party on assumption of Speakership. Under the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy in (…)

- October 11, 2008

Caricaturing Cricket

G.S. Bhargava — 2008-06-25T06:29:46Z

India's most popular outdoor game of cricket is being subjected to a veritable upheaval since April 15 without adequate public awareness of it .On the other hand, the young and old are lapping up the tamasha as ‘cheap' entertainment. The sparsely clad, cheerleaders imported from the US are a mere fig leaf for the Twenty/20 format of the halcyon days of the ‘gentleman's game'. Recall the Jam Saheb of Navanagar whose felicity with the willow in the early 19th century was celebrated by A.G. (…)

- June 21, 2008

Nepal: Herald of a New Dawn

G.S. Bhargava — 2008-06-08T14:20:45Z

An established democracy like India, even if tainted lately by the holy family, should be happy at the imminent abolition of monarchy in Nepal. We should rejoice at our neighbour to the north joining the comity of republican democracies. It does not matter if the former Himalayan kingdom had been looking askance, for decades, at the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy with adult franchise. Three years after Indian independence, Nehru played host, tentatively and fleetingly, to (…)

- June 07, 2008

China in Tibet

G.S. Bhargava — 2008-04-07T08:48:38Z

Why is China in jitters over the unrest in Tibet marking the 49th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's forced escape from Lhasa? The Buddhist spiritual leader had to flee his homeland as much to save his life as to preserve the autonomy of his hoary land of birth. The idea behind the Dalai Lama's escape to India, following hostilities, in which an estimated two thousand Tibetans perished, was that India would stand by Tibet. But the starry-eyed leadership of Nehru succumbed to China's designs (…)

- April 5, 2008

The Centenarian Alvas

G.S. Bhargava — 2007-12-25T22:10:40Z

The Alvas—Joachim and Violet—were a unique couple. They are the first husband and wife team, I had come across, who were both gifted journalists. Nearly forty years later, we have T.N. and Sevanti Ninan, both colleagues in the Hindustan Times in the 1970s. Like the Ninans, the Alvas too were from different linguistic communities. Joachim was a Mangalorean, while Violet a Gujarati. Sevanti is a Bengali speaking daughter of an Andhra cadre IAS officer settled in Hyderabad, while TN is from (…)

- December 22, 2007 - Annual Number 2007

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Many-splendoured Figure

G.S. Bhargava — 2007-10-16T12:44:36Z

Very few, if at all, of the present generation Indians would have even heard of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, who was a pioneer among women participants in the Indian freedom movement. Braving a succession of domestic disasters—loss of parents, widowhood in her teens, disappoint-ment in remarriage-Kamaladevi was in the vanguard of the country's freedom struggle as a socialist and thereafter as a key figure in the co-operative movement and in promoting the arts.
Fourth and youngest daughter of (…)

- October 13, 2007

A Profile in Experience

G.S. Bhargava — 2007-04-24T19:28:00Z

In the run up to the 1996 general election when P.V.Narasimha Rao was trying for a second term as the Prime Minister, the prestigious Saturday Discussion Group at the India International Centre invited Pranab Mukerjee to speak on the Congress party's election manifesto. Besides being the Foreign Minister he was also heading the party's Election Campaign Committee. Answering a question on the party's prospects, he began to recall in his characteristic political science pundit style that the (…)

- November 25, 2006