Generations of organisers and dissidents have kept the Iranian struggle alive Sahar Delijani Source: EQUATOR A protest in Tehran against mandatory veiling, 1979 / Courtesy Hengameh Golestan and Archaeology of the Final Decade 1. A few hours after I was born, my mother and I were taken back to prison. It was September 1983, four… Read More Hope Against Hope
By implementing 27 per cent reservation for the OBCs in government jobs, V.P. Singh tangibly helped the intended beneficiaries. Mr Modi’s move was defeated before it could create even a single beneficiary. V.P. Singh lost power despite Mandal but changed the political terrain of India for good. Mr Modi’s gambit has changed nothing structurally Bharat… Read More Was Women’s Quota Modi’s Failed Mandal Moment?
Opposition accuses Narendra Modi government of using quotas as cover for redrawing electoral map Hannah Ellis-Petersen The Indian government has failed to pass a bill to increase female representation in parliament after being accused of using the plan as a guise to redraw the country’s electoral map. It was the first time in 12 years… Read More India fails to pass bill to boost women’s representation after delimitation row
NB: India’s current ruling establishment does not even have the courage to say, “we will not let you speak becuase we do not like your ideas.” They resort instead to phrasemongering about ‘technical reasons’. Indian democracy is being strangled before our eyes. DS The Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University in Mumbai has cancelled its 16th Neera… Read More SNDT University cancels lecture by feminist historian Uma Chakravarti
Anti-regime pictures Hundreds of gunshot eye injuries found in one Iranian hospital amid brutal crackdown on protests Maryam Namazie A new nationwide wave of protest has spread across Iran since 28 December 2025. Initially triggered by acute economic collapse (currency freefall, sharp price rises for basic necessities, and renewed scarcity), it has rapidly become a… Read More Neither turban nor crown, but Woman, Life, Freedom
Netra News obituary for the first female prime minister of Bangladesh She became only the second woman ever elected prime minister in a Muslim-majority country, leading a party that liked to cast itself as the centre-right antidote to the Awami League’s secular nationalism. By the time her Bangladesh Nationalist Party returned to power in 2001,… Read More Begum Khaleda Zia, the walking contradiction
++++++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
Just last month, Summers staged a demonstration against an installation by Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, The Harvard Crimson reported, calling the installation “the moral equivalent of racism.” Now it’s Summers’s morals that are being questioned. NB: This man is a racist and a criminal. By Nell Gluckman November 21, 2025 The sinkhole that may subsume Summers wholly… Read More Is this the End for Larry Summers at Harvard?
Tina Brown Jeffrey Epstein is the slug who will not die. His trail of slime sticks to everyone who ever crossed his path. The copious accretions have even buried Trump’s futile efforts to browbeat MAGA Congress members to vote against the full release of the Epstein files. In a total backflip to avoid the humiliation… Read More Why Trump Doesn’t Stand a Chance of Killing the Epstein Story
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
After the truth-shower 