Mainstream Weekly

How ideologies harm freedom | Sukumaran C.V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2026-05-01T03:16:21Z

When I recently finished reading Leor Zmigrod's book: The Ideological Brain: How Rigid Beliefs Harm our Minds & Bodies and Why it Matters, the book helped me to see the harms I have incurred myself due to my blind adherence to an ideology. I have already realised the damages ideologies do both to the society and the individuals who hold the ideologies, and discarded all kinds of ideologies long ago. But it is Smigrod's book that helped me to see the pernicious damages the ideologies do (…)

- 2026

Vibrant India | Sukumaran C.V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2024-06-07T22:04:21Z

The people of India taught Mr. Modi and team that they need better living conditions instead of temples and statues and Modi's meaningless rhetoric. The most comic part of the entire election campaign was Mr. Modi himself uttering "Modi's Guaranty" to the people gathered to hear him. He wanted to have 400 seats and the people gave him hardly 300 and showed that Nehruvian secular India is still strong enough to ward off religious/divisive politics.
In his Tryst with Destiny speech delivered (…)

- 2024

Murder in the campus | Sukumaran C.V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2024-04-12T03:48:17Z

A resident student of the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University was found dead in the hostel (dormitory) room on Feb.18, 2024. Those who "found" him dead (including the Dean and the hostel warden) say he was found hanging in the bathroom and they tried to "save" him by rushing to hospital. But the post-mortem report says that the "ligature material was neither present in situ nor brought by the police." And the report concludes by stating that "he had sustained multiple blunt (…)

- 2024

Hey Ram | Sukumaran C.V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2024-03-09T04:37:24Z

When He was summoned to live in the new abode, Lord Ram felt being out of place; He felt He is an odd one out among gods. The gods in India have age-old homes, Which provide antique ambience In which they dwell comfortably. The new temple into which the Lord Was summoned to dwell makes Him Giddy as He is made anachronic.
He feels loneliness in the modern abode, And talks Himself as follows: "There was a man who used to chant Hey Ram; he chanted Hey Ram Even when he was shot to death. He (…)

- 2024

Of prisons and torture | Sukumaran C.V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2024-02-17T04:01:10Z

White Torture: Interviews with Iranian Women Prisoners by Narges Mohammadi
2023
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When and how have prisons and torture originated among humans? What is the purpose of prisons in the so called civilized nations including ours? Prisons and torture mean nothing else but human right violations and both of them are there with us from time immemorial. Of course, the born-criminals and anti-social elements have to be imprisoned for the safety of the people who live peacefully. But the (…)

- 2024

Democratic fascism | Sukumaran C. V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2024-02-03T03:43:30Z

Democracy has developed into an inclusive ideology by seperating faith/religion from the state. The founders of Indian democracy—Gandhi, Nehru and Azad—took special care not to be part of religious rituals and ceremonies in order to respect the diversity of the nation and not to hurt the nation's unity in diversity. The state-sponsered pran pratishta ritual in Ayodhya seems to end the seperation of faith and state hurting the unity in diversity. To see the PM of democratic India in the (…)

- 2024

Remembering the Titans of secular India | Sukumaran CV

Sukumaran C.V. — 2023-11-11T02:37:00Z

November 11 is the birthday of Maulana Azad, the first Education Minister of Independent India. It is National Education Day and every year the National Education Day goes unnoticed. November 14, Nehru's birthday used not to go unnoticed till India was not ruled by religious politics which can be rightly called communal politics.
[Jawaharlal] Nehru and [Maulana Abul Kalam] Azad are the Titans of Indian freedom struggle and independent India because of their strong commitment to secular (…)

- 2023

How disastrous yellow journalism is | Sukumaran C.V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2022-08-19T18:43:53Z

From the very beginning of the ISRO spy case in October 1994, I considered it as rubbish. But when I read recently Nambi Narayanan's autobiography Ready to Fire: How India and I Survived the ISRO Spy Case which details the trajectory of both the space experiments of India and the scientist's traumatic experience of being arrested, terming him as spy, and tortured by the Kerala Police and the IB officials, who knew nothing about rocketry, I was aghast to see the stupidity and criminality of (…)

- 2022

Democracy in peril | Sukumaran C.V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2022-07-01T21:54:08Z

by Sukumaran C.V.
Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand are the editors of the monthly magazine Communalism Combat. The March-April 2002 issue of the monthly was titled as "Genocide: Gujarat 2002". The Editors' Note of that issue of the CC says:
"The torching of bogey S-6 of the Ahmedabad-bound Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27, in which 58 passengers, including 26 women and 12 children, were burnt to death, is an unpardonable act. The perpetrators of this grossly inhuman (…)

- 2022

Kerala: Male bias in the judiciary led to acquittal of Bishop Franko Mulakkal | Sukumaran C.V.

Sukumaran C.V. — 2022-01-28T20:45:08Z

The Sessions Court verdict that acquitted Bishop Franko Mulakkal who was accused of raping a nun, by casting aspersions on the character of the nun, unequivocally proves the masculine bias of the judiciary.
The revolt of Nora, the protagonist of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen's masterpiece play A Doll's House, was a thunderbolt to the male-centric social and moral ethos of Europe. In the notes made for the play in 1878, Ibsen says: “a woman cannot be herself in the society of the (…)

- 2022