Mainstream Weekly

Whither India: The Way Up or the Way Down?

P K Chatterjee — 2010-11-10T15:14:27Z

[(TRIBUTE
Prabhat Kumar Chatterjee, eminent senior Supreme Court advocate, who passed away at his New Delhi residence in the morning of October 28, 2010, was born on October 10, 1922. His father, the late Rai Bahadur A.D. Chatterjee, was a member of the judicial service in Bihar. He completed his graduation from the Government College, Bhagalpur, and went on to do his Law from the Patna Law College. Subsequently he began his law practice in the Patna High Court before coming to Delhi and (…)

- 2010

Shame! Shame!

P K Chatterjee — 2010-09-20T07:31:22Z

In a parliamentary democracy, the most important institution through which the supremacy of the people is expressed and enforced is Parliament. The Members of Parliament are there only in representative capacity as trustees of the people. Gandhiji said:
…..If they do not become trustees of their own accord, force of circumstances will compel the reform, unless they court utter disaster.
He further said “…Public opinion will do what violence can never do.” What Gandhiji said is probably (…)

- 2010

Whither India: The Way Up or the Way Down?

P K Chatterjee — 2009-08-31T17:12:00Z

The Indian National Congress is back in power at the Centre. The small regional parties have practically disappeared from the scene. The Trinamul Congress party is a regional party and a shadow of the Congress itself. This government can safely be assumed to last for the next five years. The Congress has won much larger number of seats than all other parties and is the largest single party in the Lok Sabha. This government can safely be called a Congress Government, because the constraints (…)

- August 2009

Who Lives if the Nation Dies?

P K Chatterjee — 2008-10-25T01:20:55Z

This Constitution of India must be scrapped. It is designed to maintain status quo ante and substantially it is only an adaptation of the Government of India Act, 1935. It has failed to give any impetus to national integration; on the contrary, it has divided the people, it has encour-aged corruption instead of rooting it out. It has helped criminalisation of the administrative and political system of the country. It has dismally failed to establish real parliamentary democracy. It has (…)

- October 18, 2008

On Rabindranath's Prasna and Nandigram Events

P K Chatterjee — 2007-12-25T22:08:06Z

COMMUNICATION
Your quotation of Tagore's famous poem in lieu of the editorial in the November 17, 2007 issue of Mainstream is very appropriate. If my memory is not failing me, the poet composed this poem out of his agonised heart on the dastardly action of the British Government in firing on the unarmed prisoners in Hijli Central Jail. Hijli Jail was notorious in those days for the torture and oppression perpetrated on the political prisoners to extract information and confession from (…)

- December 22, 2007 - Annual Number 2007

Transparancy versus Contempt of Court

P K Chatterjee — 2007-12-03T16:17:31Z

There is no controversy as to the necessity for the summary power given to the High Courts and the Supreme Court of India to punish civil contempt, that is, deliberate disobedience of the order or deliberate obstruction to the proceedings of the courts. It is the power to punish summarily for criminal contempt of scandalising of courts or judges, that has given rise to controversy. Should it be allowed to continue at all or should it be statutorily defined and restricted so that freedom of (…)

- December 1, 2007

Democratic Colonialism

P K Chatterjee — 2007-05-19T09:35:19Z

If any political analyst looks askance as to what kind of a government can democratic colonialism be, he has only to study the Indian Constitution and its working. Its Preamble recites some basic slogans of republican democracy, its Part-III confers all kinds of fundamental rights to the citizens, its Part-IV gives highly laudable but unenforceable directives for state policies, and there the democracy part ends. The rest of the Constitution, in all essential particulars, is a reproduction (…)

- May 19, 2007