Mainstream Weekly

Violence In Mewat-Tauru, A Flashpoint

D.R. Chaudhry — 2014-11-02T10:32:47Z

This article was sent quite sometime ago, but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
A simple road accident in the Tauru town of the Mewat district on June 8, 2014, so common all over India, resulting in one casualty, triggered communal violence disturbing the communal harmony Mewat is known for. Even during partition and demolition of the Babri Masjid, Mewat remained an island of harmony. To understand this paradox a team of the Haryana Insaaf Society comprising Prof D.R. (…)

- 2014

Super Radicals and Anna Hazare

D.R. Chaudhry — 2011-10-25T13:36:02Z

This refers to an article “The Neoliberal Revolution” by Anand Teltumbde (Mainstream, September 17, 2011) in which he has lampooned the Hazare movement against corruption as a well-crafted stratagem in counter-revolution. The article gives the impression that the Indian revolution was on march and about to knock at the portals of Red Fort when a naïve and befuddled Gandhian put a halt to it and thus played a treacherous role for the toiling masses of India. The Anna team's movement against (…)

- 2011

Babas, Power Elites and the Reality Show

D.R. Chaudhry — 2011-07-03T09:21:45Z

History repeats itself, first as a farce and then as a tragedy, thus observed a perceptive thinker. The farcical end of Baba Ramdev's fast, facilitated by a galaxy of babas, ram bhakats, sris, sris etc., preceded by Anna Hazare's fast against corruption, confirms this. Baba Ramdev built a sprawling empire by commodifying the age-old Indian systems of yoga and ayurveda. The spectacular success of the Baba's venture whipped his political ambitions.
Since the BJP's campaign against (…)

- 2011

Human Rights—Rhetoric and Reality

D.R. Chaudhry — 2010-06-14T05:42:48Z

Human rights are those rights and freedoms by acquiring which one achieves one's potential in various fields. Since the dawn of human civilisation, human beings have been striving for human rights. Undoubtedly, there has been a marked progress since the time of slavery when human beings were no better than chattel, yet a lot is yet to be achieved in this field.
In pre-modern cultures, the concept of human rights did exist but it suffered from serious limitations. Aristotle, the Greek (…)

- 2010