Readers outside of India can donate here to support Mainstream Weeklyhttps://tinyurl.com/2rsy4ss6++++++ In this issue DOCUMENTS BOOKS IMAGE & SOUND Editor’s Picks: Books of Note: * (Cover page artwork credits: Franciska Clausen, Cercle et carre 1929) https://mainstreamweekly.net/article16172.html ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
First posted November 29, 2019 NB: This is a magnificient contribution to Indian historiography. Rahul Sagar and his collaborators deserve the thanks of the Indian public and indeed of all those interested in an honest exploration of the past. DS Starting in the early nineteenth century, ambitious Indians began flocking to newly-founded schools and colleges offering instruction… Read More Ideas of India Archive
Anthony Grafton The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries by Andrew Hui The Librarian’s Atlas: The Shape of Knowledge in Early Modern Spain by Seth Kimmel Libraries were all the rage in Renaissance Europe, and no wonder. Theatres of knowledge, grandly decorated and proudly displayed, they hosted dramas of many kinds. Learned men used them for lively conversation on such… Read More No Cheese Please
Heinrich Heine, arguably one of the most famous of German authors, had prophetically announced that wherever they burn books, they will one day burn humans. Pramod K. Nayar German cultural production, as is well known, in the decades leading to Nazidom set about creating a ‘national’ culture by destroying Jewish, communist, humanist and other artwork,… Read More Burning Books and The Nazification of Literature
PRESS RELEASEFor Immediate Release: Ambedkar Jayanti Marks a Milestone: Release of Draft Policy for Strengthening Public Libraries in India by the Free Libraries Network5 PM, 13 April 2024, Press Club, New Delhi. [Delhi, April 3, 2024]: Commemorating the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar, the FreeLibraries Network announces the release of a landmark draft policy… Read More Free Libraries Network: Draft Policy for Strengthening Public Libraries in India
REBECCA GORDON Of course, the all-American penchant for banning books didn’t begin in the Trump era. Just ask almost anyone who lived through the Red Scare days of the 1950s (not to speak of the first Red Scare of 1917-1920). But the last few years have seen a remarkable acceleration of attempts to keep certain… Read More American Public Libraries under Threat: Banning what Matters
CHS library at JNU won’t be shifted, say professors CHS library at JNU won’t be shifted, say professors
Fabio Fernandes It’s around 200 CE, in Ephesus, an Aegean city of Greek roots, now a major hub of the Roman Empire. Meandering down marble-paved Curetes Street, a dweller is lost in the bustle of the town, procuring produce and wares in shops tucked beneath the colonnades, attending the public baths – even a conveniently… Read More The great libraries of Rome
Arkansas Republican State Representative Stephen Meeks’ wife Jennifer Meeks is receiving backlash after setting out to replace free neighborhood books with Bibles, Newsweek reports. Faulkner County Coalition for Social Justice (FCCSJ) recently called out the congressman’s wife via Facebook, saying “she has been busy posting about the little free libraries across Faulkner County and the ‘group of leftist[s],… Read More Arkansas GOP rep’s wife shredded for ‘swapping’ library books with Bibles
NB: Meanwhile the JNU History Centre collection, one of the most valuable in the country, is being dismantled by the authorities to make room for a new centre of Tamil studies. I am sure lovers of Tamil language and culture do not wish for the university’s history collection to be removed. This is nothing but… Read More Sri Lanka, thirty one years after: Burning of the Jaffna Public Library, May 1981
After the truth-shower 