NB: A blurb for a book of philosophical essays asks if ours is the era of ‘faint-hearted’ philosophy, because we were/are not ‘able to bear the greatness, the immensity of the claims made by the human spirit.’ The ongoing ideological assault on the mind and the very soul of humanity point to the widespread failures… Read More Natalia Ginzburg: Our Monstrous Ideas
Iranian security forces have “violently arrested” Nobel Peace Prize winner and women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi, her foundation has said. The Narges Foundation said Ms Mohammadi, 53, was detained in the eastern city of Mashhad, along with other activists. The Nobel Committee said it was “deeply concerned by today’s brutal arrest of Narges Mohammadi” and… Read More Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi arrested in Iran
Dr Rebecca Reich examines politics, culture and reality in the Soviet Union “Dissenters in the USSR responded by making literary use of psychiatric discourse to both validate themselves and challenge the authority of the state. “The impact of their essays, transcripts, poems and works of fiction may have seemed limited within the isolation and silence… Read More State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature, and Dissent After Stalin
Date ; 07/12/2025 Dear Friends! Khudai Khidmatgar announces 7th Ankit Junaid social harmony award for the year 2025 . In the year of September 2018, Khudai Khidmatgar launched the Social Harmony Award and fellowship in memory of Hafiz Junaid and Ankit Saxena. Junaid was Killed brutally in a train two days before… Read More Asrar and Arjun have been selected for the 7th Ankit-Junaid Harmony Award 2025
++++++Readers outside of India can donate hereto support Mainstream Weeklyhttps://tinyurl.com/2rsy4ss6++++++ In this issue DOCUMENTS: BOOKS IMAGE & SOUND Editor’s Picks: Books of Note
NB: There seems to be Sino-Indian unity on torturing the innocent. DS Arrested in 2013 on India’s Himalayan border after fleeing Beijing’s ‘genocide’ against Muslims in Xinjiang, the siblings have been imprisoned indefinitely ever since then On the evening of 12 June 2013, according to court documents, three “Chinese intruders” were arrested by the Indian… Read More How three Uyghur brothers fled China – to spend 12 years in an Indian prison
In the atomic age, the traditional political distinction between “friends” and “enemies” utterly failed, not because we all became “friends” but because the very notion of “enemy” is now meaningless. The only real enemy threatening us is atomic annihilation; the only real totalitarianism is the atomic condition, which transforms the whole planet into a borderless… Read More The Concrete Possibility of Total Nihilism: Günther Anders and the Atomic Bomb
Peace cannot be engineered on the basis of coercion. It requires justice, and justice is precisely what has been denied to Palestinians for generations – Rashid Khalidi In a region where peace has been promised and broken more times than history can count, optimism is a luxury few can afford. The latest proposal put forward… Read More Trump’s Gaza Plan Is Built on Sand: Why This Proposal Cannot Deliver Peace
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Amnesty International has said Israel is “still committing genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite the ceasefire agreed last month.The fragile, US-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October, after two years of war. “The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion… Read More Israel still committing genocide in Gaza, Amnesty International says / Israeli forces shoot Palestinians dead after surrender
NB: Anyone with the faintest idea of what is happening to Indian education will understand the importance of this book by this esteemed and highly accomplished scholar. The policies of our rulers can be described as nothing less than assault on education. Government enthusiasts could ask themselves why every year, hundreds of thousands of Indian… Read More Scholar GN Devy asks whether India risks becoming an anti-knowledge nation
After the truth-shower 