Mainstream Weekly

Why Resolving Manipur Has Become Difficult? |

Ajay K. Mehra — 2025-02-08T16:33:56Z

Manipur, one of the seven states in India

- 2025

NDA, India and The Coalition Conundrum | Ajay K. Mehra

Ajay K. Mehra — 2024-02-24T02:52:15Z

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has strongly pitched the coming the nineteenth general election in April-May 2024 in terms of a performing leadership (himself) and government and the Congress that has never done anything right since independence. He always criticizes, almost condemns, Nehru in the same breath to highlight his own image. Before that, he pocketed Bihar and Nitish Kumar to kill the perception of an opposition. Even as Rahul Gandhi enters Chhatisgarh on his Bharat Jodo Nyaya (…)

- 2024

Avoiding The Pitfalls in Coalescence As Congress Begins ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra' | Ajay K. Mehra

Ajay K. Mehra — 2024-01-19T12:16:25Z

As the heat for the 2024 poll battle builds up, with the Modi-led BJP taking a lead with its pre-planned inauguration of the semi-finished Ram temple, the Congress and the INDIA alliance still remains in quandaries. Will they resolve the pitfalls facing them in the short time at their hand to compete with vigour? Even as the Congress is pinning its hopes on the Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra which Rahul Gandhi began on 14 January 2024 from Manipur and will conclude in Mumbai after traversing (…)

- 2024

The Emergency Deserves Larger Reflections

Ajay K. Mehra — 2015-08-15T07:38:37Z

On the 40th anniversary of the Internal Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi on June 26, 1975, former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani's caution against its recurrence drowned the real issues in the resulting din. One set of reactions, viewing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his regime in the mirror of the 2002 riots and picking up trends and antiphons from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under a new leadership since the 2014 elections, interpreted it to mean undemocratic, if not (…)

- 2015

India's Statehood Cauldron: From Simmer to Boil

Ajay K. Mehra — 2013-08-18T06:03:34Z

When Dr Manmohan Singh ascends the ramparts of the iconic Red Fort on August 15, 2013 to unfurl the national flag on the 67th Independence Day of the country, he would be announcing the creation of the Telangana State, the twentyninth of the Indian Union in the 57 years of reorganising the internal map of India. The significance of the event does not merely lie in another bifurcation or creation of another State, its significance is in several emerging sub-texts of Indian politics since the (…)

- 2013

Protests and Prospects

Ajay K. Mehra — 2013-02-02T12:12:47Z

Even before Delhi and India got into the festive mood for the dawning of another New Year, 2013, the young girl who fell victim to the lust of six lascivious barbarous men, one of whom only in his teens, breathed her last in a Singapore Hospital, where she was sent for specialised treatment by the government. Not satisfied with fulfilling their lust, the six brutalised her body in such beastly manner that neither her willpower, that gave her the name ‘Nirbhaya' (fearless), nor all the (…)

- 2013

Contradictory Aspects of Jihad's Geopolitical Realities in South Asia

Ajay K. Mehra — 2012-06-08T15:21:59Z

BOOK REVIEW
Jihad on Two Fronts: South Asia's Unfolding Drama, by Dilip Hiro; HarperCollins Publishers India, NOIDA, UP; Rs 699.
This fourteen-chapter (plus an Introduction and an Epilogue) 471-page book by a veteran journalist-author, who has presented a number of analyses on world affairs as well as written some fictions in the past, seeks to analyse the politics, context(s) and process(es) of jihad in South Asia. ‘Jihad' is an Arabic word, meaning ‘effort'. In the Qur'an Sharif it (…)

- 2012

On Secularism and Space for Religion in Politics in South and South-East Asia

Ajay K. Mehra — 2012-03-13T17:56:50Z

BOOK REVIEW
The Politics of Religion in South and Southeast Asia, edited by Ishtiaq Ahmed; London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group; pp. 268.
“For me, politics bereft of religion are absolute dirt, ever to be shunned. Politics concerns nations and that which concerns the welfare of others must be one of the concerns of a man who is religiously inclined, in other words, a seeker after God and Truth... God and Truth are convertible terms and if anyone told me that God was (…)

- 2012

Supreme Court, Naxalism and Salwa Judam

Ajay K. Mehra — 2011-08-20T20:28:16Z

The debate over the PIL filed in 2007 by Nandini Sundar and others challenging the ‘creation' of Salwa Judum (SJ), variously translated from the Gondwani dialect as peace march or peace movement, as an armed tribal ‘vigilante group', has taken a new turn in several respects since the Supreme Court of India struck down the use of tribal youths as a supplementary counter-insurgency force on Tuesday, July 5, 2011. Aside from expectedly mixed reactions both in the media and the public, three (…)

- 2011

Kashmir Conundrum: A Simple Complexity

Ajay K. Mehra — 2010-10-14T01:49:06Z

BOOK REVIEW
Identity Politics in Jammu and Kashmir by Rekha Chowdhary (ed.); Vitasta Publishing, New Delhi; 2010; pp. 470; Rs 895.
“We have decided to work with and die for India…. We made our decision not in October last, but in 1944, when we resisted the advances of Mr Jinnah. Our refusal was categorical. Ever since the National Conference has attempted to keep the State clear of the pernicious two-nation theory while fighting the world's worst autocracy.”
—Sheikh Abdullah at a (…)

- 2010