Over a decade ago, a young IAS officer deployed in Bastar told this reporter that as much as they wanted Bastar to be freed from the Naxals, their ouster from the jungle would immediately lead to it being taken over by mining companies. Ashutosh Bhardwaj As the Maoist insurgency reaches its fag end with the… Read More As Naxalism Fades, Adivasi Futures Still Stand on Precarious Ground
In this issue DOCUMENTS BOOKS IMAGE & SOUND Editor’s Picks: Coverpage artwork credits: Drawing from photo of Saint Exupery station in Lyon from Nov 2025 by Harsh Kapoor) https://mainstreamweekly.net/article16390.html
Far from hospitals, nomadic Gujjar women routinely go into labour – and die – on their herder communities’ long seasonal treks Arsalan Bukhari Dawn had just broken across the trail through the Pir Panjal mountains when Fatima Deader felt the first labour pains. She and her family had almost reached the midway point of their… Read More Born in the forest: the women giving birth alone in the Kashmiri mountains
The Red Fort attack has punctured the Modi government’s claims of national security dominance, of instituting peace and progress after the revocation of Article 370 and counter-terrorism preparedness Bharat Bhushan It took the Union government 48 hours to describe the Red Fort bomb attack as ‘terrorism’. For two days, the Narendra Modi government was dancing… Read More Red Fort terror attack pokes holes in India’s security narrative
Where the postcolonial Left meets the Hindu Right NB: This is an interesting overview, although I cannot agree with some of the author’s arguments. For instance, I think it is true that Hindutva marks an attempt to recast Sanatan Dharma as an Abrahamic-style faith; the main objective being homogeneity and subjugation of an entire population… Read More India’s Conservative Revolution
Since 2014, this has been the RSS–BJP’s consistent strategy: criminalize dissent, discredit activists, and rewrite constitutional morality. They know that a large-scale civil war is impossible in a subcontinent as vast and diverse as India. What they fear are small, localized movements, like Ladakh’s, that cannot be militarily conquered, but only silenced with force. The assault… Read More The Unmaking of Ladakh: RSS, Corporate Power, and the War on India’s Plural Soul
NB: Either you’ve never heard of these events and happenings – or, even if you have, they are not spoken about much. The younger generation, the ones who will live through more of this century than I will, may find these matters to be necessary knowledge. I will add to this list from time to… Read More Things the mainstream don’t talk about
In 1976, it was the Muslims of the walled city deemed ‘in the way’ of Delhi’s progress and in 2025, it will be the urban poor — the migrants of Madrasi Camp and Bhoomiheen Payel Das The recent demolition of two working-class colonies — Madrasi Camp, a six-decade-old settlement, and Bhoomiheen Camp, a three-decade-old one… Read More Bulldozer politics: Turkman Gate under Sanjay Gandhi to Jangpura, via Adityanath’s UP
While landlord Shubham Singh, has been arrested over Prasad’s death, the victim’s family rued that the police had named only one accused instead of four and charged him only with culpable homicide and not murder Piyush Srivastava A Dalit farm labourer was beaten to death by a rich landowner and his associates for demanding his… Read More Dalit farm labourer ‘lynched’ in Amethi for seeking unpaid wages of about Rs 2,500
After the truth-shower 