This issue of Mainstream is dedicated to the memory of Karamat Ali, the most respected labour rights activist from Pakistan and a leading mover for peace in South Asia DOCUMENTS: BOOKS: IMAGE & SOUND: Editor’s Picks: http://mainstreamweekly.net/article14706.html
Nearly 80 years since the Allied invasion, the testimony of Charles Shay, a 99-year-old former US army medic, reminds us of the significance of that day Andrew Anthony American D-Day veteran Charles Shay stands on a dune overlooking Omaha beach in Normandy where he landed as a 19-year-old. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/The Observer Next month will see… Read More June 6, 1944. What the last veterans can teach us all as D-Day fades from memory
Few writers have possessed the short-story format as thoroughly as the Canadian author and Nobel laureate Alice Munro, who has died aged 92. Sarah A Smith Although her early years as a writer were clouded by the feeling, partly the result of pressure from her publishers, that she should concentrate on producing a novel, she never… Read More Alice Munro obituary
Commemorates the 78th Anniversary of the NAKBA of 1948, when over 7.5 lac Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages by violence and terror ************************ GAZA casualties, live statistics United Nations Documentation on the Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem The Crisis of Ideology The west’s complete contempt for the lives of Palestinians will… Read More Indo-Palestine Solidarity Network
First posted August 29, 2013 Robespierre Edited by Colin Haydon and William DoyleReviewed by Hilary Mantell In the two years following the taking of the Bastille, he pursued an impeccably liberal and far-sighted agenda. He spoke for manhood suffrage and against a property qualification for voters; against slavery; in support of civil rights for Jews; against capital punishment; and… Read More Hilary Mantell: Springtime for Robespierre
Shobhit Mahajan Hindustan Times, 14th April, 2024. In the Particle zoo of elementary particles which make up our universe, there is only one particle named after a person. Peter Higgs, after whom the eponymous Higgs boson is named, passed away recently at age 94 in Edinburgh. Almost exactly 60 years ago, Higgs proposed a mechanism… Read More The Atheist Scientist who discovered the ‘God Particle’
NB: Hari Sen was a close friend, a highly regarded colleague at Ramjas College History department – where he taught for nearly three decades – and a wonderful person. He was a committed teacher, devoted to his students and played a big role in making our department well-respected across the university. He had a mischievous… Read More R.I.P. Hari Sen (1955-2024). Beloved teacher and outstanding human being
In the early 1930s, the Indian-born physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-95), who was then studying at the University of Cambridge in the UK, proposed that not all stars become white dwarves at the end of their lifecycle. Instead, the brilliant young scientist argued, when stars were of a certain mass, they would form something denser than… Read More The Indian astronomer whose innovative work on black holes was mocked at Cambridge
To be radical requires a theory of how this world, for all its problems, contains and is fostering the beginning of another, very different world. Jedediah Britton-Purdy All sorts of people had come to the Welsh countryside to spend the day talking about the history of labor radicalism: miners, organizers, researchers, politicians. But the star… Read More Raymond Williams’s Resources for Hope
First posted June 02, 2017 NB: Comrade Satyapal Dang (1920-2013), a stalwart communist, was one of the tallest figures of modern India. At the height of the Khalistani movement he and his wife comrade Vimla stood fast in the CPI’s trade union office in Ekta Bhavan, Amritsar, despite the threats to their lives. They upheld secular values and… Read More Comrade Satyapal Dang: Lessons of Punjab have relevance for Kashmir
After the truth-shower 