Mainstream Weekly

Eighteenth death anniversary of Nikhil Chakravartty

Chanchal Sarkar, Inder Malhotra, Prabhash Joshi — 2016-06-26T19:41:30Z

June 27 this year marks the eighteenth death anniversary of Mainstream‘s founder Nikhil Chakravartty, known to readers of this journal as N.C. On this occasion while remembering him we are reproducing tributes to N.C. by three stalwarts of Indian journalism—Inder Malhotra (who breathed his last only this month on June 11, 2016), Chanchal Sarkar and Prabhash Joshi (both of whom predeceased Inder Malhotra). Thereafter we are reproducing a few of N.C.'s writings.
Memories of a (…)

- 2016

Memories of a Many-splendoured Man

Inder Malhotra — 2014-06-28T17:47:23Z

It was with some trepidation that I first met Nikhil. I was then just past 21 and working for the tottering United Press of India (UPI) on whose ashes is built today's UNI. But within a few minutes in his company I realised that I needn't have worried. Unlike other very senior members of the profession, some of whom had dismissed me summarily, in one case without even looking at me, he was all attention and surprisingly generous with his time. He listened to me patiently and gave me the (…)

- 2014

1962 War: Leaders Failed India

Inder Malhotra — 2012-10-31T15:29:15Z

Since the traumatic story of the brief but brutal border war with China is too well known, having been written in minutest details, and indeed is being retold extensively in the run-up to its 50th anniversary, there is no point repeating it here. Suffice it to say that whoever lived through it, as I did, hasn't forgotten it half a century later. As Jawaharlal Nehru's official biographer S. Gopal said succinctly: “Things went so wrong that had they not happened it would have been difficult to (…)

- 2012

Memories of a Many-splendoured Man

Inder Malhotra — 2009-07-02T11:09:27Z

Remembering N.C. [gris]On June 27 this year falls Nikhil Chakravartty's eleventh death anniversary. On this occasion we reproduce the following tributes to his abiding memory—the first two were published in Mainstream (July 11, 1998) and the remaining two in Mainstream (August 1, 1998) following N.C.'s demise on June 27, 1998.gris]
It was with some trepidation that I first met Nikhil. I was then just past 21 and working for the tottering United Press of India (UPI) on whose ashes is (…)

- June 2009

Significance of March 10, 1959 for Tibet

Inder Malhotra — 2009-03-15T16:14:29Z

It is now fifty years since the famous Tibetan revolt that forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India where he was readily given political asylum as a result of which Tibet became a far greater strain than before on the already uneasy India-China relations. Three years later followed the traumatic war in the high Himalayas. Even today, Beijing's paranoid complaints persist despite India's acceptance of Tibet being an “autonomous” region of China and a complete ban on any political activity on (…)

- March 2009