Quest for Alternative Politics: First 100 days of Swaraj Abhiyan
Independence Day is the annual occasion of remembering the ideals and events of our freedom struggle. It gives the opportunity of assessing the successes and failures in realising the vision of Swaraj...
View ArticleOn Independence Day
On August 15, we celebrate the Independence Day. On that day, in 1947, Prime Minister Nehru proclaimed a tryst with destiny, “a moment which comes but rarely in history when we step from the old into...
View ArticleNew Struggle for Freedom
From N.C.'s WritingsFifteen years to go before the onset of the Twentyfirst Century and thirtyeight years since the Tricolour was hoisted on the ramparts of the Red Fort in 1947, this year's...
View ArticleOn Death Penalty
The following piece was written against the backdrop of Yakub Memon's execution.The question is often asked if we have a right to take life when we cannot give it. The right question to be asked in...
View ArticleIndia — 2015
More than the menace of a MonsoonCloud now stalks the land.Unrelenting stabs of imbecile assertionMaul the body politic as newbornTitans roll their sleeves andBare their fangs against A republic whose...
View ArticleThe Most Urgent Task Today
EditorialAs we approach our sixtyninth Independence Day, to be observed in five days time, the situation in the domestic sphere has turned from bad to worse.The last fifteen months have been witness to...
View ArticleNepal's New Constitution and Contending Voices
by Sangeeta ThapliyalNepal created history by writing a new Constitution through an elected Constituent Assembly. The Constitution was promulgated on September 20 in the Constituent Assembly hall which...
View ArticleExploring Women's Spaces
book reviewby Noor ZaheerIndian Women: Contemporary Essays, editors: Devaki Jain and C.P. Sujaya; Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broad-casting, Government of India; 2015; pages:...
View ArticleMedia and Children
by Dipa DixitIndia is home to 17 per cent of the world's children, and has the world's largest child population. Despite this, India's children are often neglected and their rights ignored. Of the 430...
View ArticleForgotten Heroes
I have not been able to understand why Pakistan is reluctant to recognise heroes who went to the gallows during the national struggle for independence. Bhagat Singh is one of them. Eightyfour years ago...
View ArticleUtkalmani Gopabandhu Das: A Compassionate Rebel and a Modern Man
by S.N. SahuUtkalmani Gopabandhu Das was one of the extraordinary personalities of modern India. He was born in Odisha on October 9, 1877 seven years after the birth of Mahatma Gandhi and breathed his...
View ArticleToday‘s Imperative / Moradabad: What Really Happened
From N.C.'s WritingsIn the wake of the horrendous incident in Bisada village at Dadri, we reproduce here N.C.'s editorial in Mainstream Annual 1980 highlighting the happenings in Moradabad in August...
View ArticleThe Lynchings
A quickly assembled loud speaker atop a make-shift temple first blared the rumour that, allegedly, a cow had been slaughtered in the village and that Hindus must gather apace. Simultaneously, that...
View ArticleAir warriors and Dadri - Bisada
The lynching at Dadri-Bisada pushes the scorched earth into the throes of communal conflagration. Farmer Mohammad Akhlaq is dead and son Danish is battling for life. But the perpetrators' diabolical...
View ArticleA Note on Dadri
When I read of the killing, in Bisada village of Dadri, of a Muslim man by Hindus who suspected him of keeping beef in his house, I was taken back to the Gujarat massacre of 2002. That wound is fresh:...
View ArticleAssault on Secularism
POLITICAL NOTEBOOKCongress leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh has said, in the wake of the lynching of Mohammmed Akhlaq at Bisada village of Dadri in UP for allegedly...
View ArticleCPI Congratulates New Nepal PM
The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued the following statement to the press on October 12, 2015 congratulating the new Nepal Prime Minister, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli:“The...
View ArticleThe who, what and where of Dadri
by Chapal MehraOn September 28, a murderous mob got together to kill a man ostensibly for having kept some beef in his refrigerator. They seriously injured his young son and misbehaved with the women...
View ArticleUnmasking Hindutva, Modi and Majoritarian Offensive
BOOK REVIEWby Reena CherianIndia Since 2002 by Mukul Dube (Foreword by Professor D.N. Jha); AlterNotes Press, New Delhi; 2015; pages: xii + 198; Price: Rs 380.India Since 2002 is a collection of...
View ArticleAll the Turpentines in the World Cannot Remove Kulkarni's Stain
Seldom does adrenaline flow so instinctively the moment one begins reading the morning newspapers in the Indian Capital, but today is one such day. I am not entitled to claim friendship with Sudheendra...
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