Mainstream Weekly

Santida: The Less Travelled Road

P.C. Joshi — 2014-11-09T19:42:22Z

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the on less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost, Selected Poems
My introduction to Santida had come about in an unforgettable way. It was a gift from Puranda (my namesake and Communist leader and very soon my brother-in-law) to Number 2 as he affectionately called me then. In May 1955 I was proceeding to join the Indian Statistical Institute at Calcutta as a Research Technician in its newly started Planning (…)

- 2014

The Nehru Legacy: A Self-critical Communist Evaluation

P.C. Joshi — 2013-01-03T15:39:39Z

There is the danger of paying fulsome tributes to Nehru and then drifiting with the current so far as Congressmen are concerned. And as for the Left, of being coldly formally correct and then sit aside on the sandy shore and curse the rest. Breast-beating and self-righteousness are India's age-old national political failings. There is a fairly wide consensus that the future of our country lies in making the Nehru legacy our living national legacy, more actively and consistently than it was (…)

- 2012

Welcome Home, Goa!

P.C. Joshi — 2011-12-27T19:11:13Z

[(The following lead piece was written by that outstanding Communist leader P.C. Joshi, the first General Secretary of the CPI, in the party's weekly organ, New Age, on December 24, 1961, five days after Goa's liberation from Portuguese colonialism. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of that momentous event, we are reproducing, with due acknowledgement, this piece alongwith a reportage on Goa's liberation by journalist-cum-academic Raza Ali, also published in New Age (January 7, (…)

- 2011

Remembering R.S. Sharma : Some Reflections

P.C. Joshi — 2011-09-13T18:26:08Z

TRIBUTE
In the passing away of R.S. Sharma the discipline of history has lost its leading, living representative of the older generation, of the same quality and stature as D.D. Kosambi and Sushobhan Sarkar.
D.D. Kosambi, however, was perhaps a lone scholar and researcher of exceptional calibre but confined mainly to a scholar's ivory tower. Only in his later years did he turn into a leading promoter of the world peace movement. Sushobhan Sarkar was primarily a teacher of history having (…)

- 2011

Symbol of a Heroic Age

P.C. Joshi — 2009-07-02T11:04:48Z

In the passing away of Nikhilda at the ripe age of eightyfour the country has lost the doyen of Indian journalism and a vigilant watchdog of national interest and democratic rights. And the common people have also lost a friend who was sensitive to their hardships and their striving for a better life.
The loss caused by his passing away is hard to fill. For in his own way he was the symbol, one of the few left, of a heroic age—the age of India's epochal fight against British (…)

- June 2009

Gandhi-Nehru Tradition and Indian Secularism

P.C. Joshi — 2007-11-25T19:30:51Z

(On November 14 falls the one hundred and eighteenth birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru. To mark the occasion, Mainstream reproduces in the following pages articles from distinguished contributors touching on different areas of immediate concern for the nation in the domestic and international spheres. —Editor)
“Nahi Manushat Shrestha Taran Hi Kinchit (There is none loftier than man!)” —Mahabharat “Sabar Upare Manush Satya Tahar Upare Nai (Man is above everyone. There is (…)

- November 17, 2007