Table of Contents, Mainstream, Aug 15, 2026

In this issue

• Targeting Muslim Protesters as Anti-Nationals | Arup Kumar Sen
• Jantar Mantar Notes —Togetherness during protests forging a bond | Radhakanta Barik
• District In-Charge Ministers & the Contradictions of Decentralization in Kerala | Jos Chathukulam & A. M. Jose
• Hasdeo Arand & the Continuing Marginalization of India’s Adivasis | Anirban Mukherjee
• The struggle between the Fourth International and the bureaucratic caste | Sindhunil Barman Roy
• The Weaponisation of Supply Chains: Lessons for India | Anusreeta Dutta
• When Jyoti Basu Addressed an RSS-Backed Forum | Sufal Bepari
• Film Review: Sutlej —scattered notes | Chaman Lal
• Tamils seek Europe’s Help as War Crime Haunts Sri Lanka | M.R. Narayan Swamy
• Diagnoses of the Dance | Emanuel Eisenberg (1934)

DOCUMENTS:

• Unity Statement of RCPI and Radical Socialist (9 - 10 Aug 2026)
• CPI statement on the passing of MP Parmeswaran

BOOKS

• PM Bhargava the scientist with a spine — Excerpts from his biography
• Learning from the past of India’s forests | Dinesh C Sharma
• God’s shadow over Mizoram peace | M.R. Narayan Swamy
• Arun Shourie Tears Apart ‘Veer’ Savarkar and his Myths | MR Narayan Swamy

IMAGE & SOUND:

• Plumber Farooq’s bicycle at Mrs Mangaliks’ garden in Lucknow (July 2026) | Photo by Pooja Thakur
• Video: Where are we on Women’s Inheritance? | Beena Aggarwal
• Video: Prof. Prabhu Mohapatra speaks on Dr. Umar Khalid’s Book "Fractured Communities"
• Music: Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovski - Casse-noisette, 1892

Editor’s Picks:

• Doval’s remarks on freedom betray Tilak’s legacy as India’s exemplary protestor
• The RSS man at the centre of Ram temple trust’s controversial run in Ayodhya
• Pakistan’s Kashmir Problem
• Afghanistan: Taliban Assault on Rights Deepens 5 Years on
• In search of Charles Ambrose Lorenz
• ‘Mightily like insurrection’: Revisiting Trinidad’s first Emancipation Day
• German syndicalists in revolutionary Spain
• Engels to Marx, 4th August 1856 ‘tropical heat which has brought everything to a standstill’
• The August Coup by Robert Service review – the drink-soaked collapse of the Soviet Union
• On the Economic Crisis of Capitalism
• Historical State Formation within and beyond Europe

Books of Note:

• ‘Subarnarekha: Ritwik Ghatak’s Partition Quartet Volume 4’ translated by Shampa Banerjee and edited by Ira Bhaskar! (Tulika )
• Border abolitionism: Migrants’ containment and the genealogies of struggles and rescue by Martina Tazzioli (Manchester University Press)
• Congress of Contradictions: The Tenth Party Congress, March 1921
  Edited by Clayton Black and Alexis Pogorelskin (Haymarket Books, 1 December 2026)
• Marxism and Historiography: Contesting Theory and Remaking History in Twentieth-Century Italy by Paolo Favilli (Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2022)

* (Cover page artwork credits: Ad Reinhardt — ‘Untitled’, 1950)