Nikhil Chakravartty’s 101st birth anniversary

On November 3 this year falls Nikhil Chakravartty’s 101st birth anniversary. On this occasion we are reproducing three of his writings. The first one is one of his earliest articles, published under the peudonym ‘Vanguard’ in The Calcutta Municipal Gazette (September 13, 1941) during World War II. The second article appeared as the Editor’s Notebook in Mainstream at the height of the Emergency. We are also reproducing tributes to his abiding memory by V.R. Krishna Iyer, Madhu Dandavate and Muchkund Dubey following N.C.’s demise (on June 27, 1998); these were published in this journal in July 1998. —Editor

From N.C.’s Writings

Cameos

vanguard

It was a wet September evening in 1936. We were driving back home after an interview with Tagore, then staying in a suburb of Calcutta. [. . .]

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article2740.html

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Do We Need Nehru Today?

— N.C.

Twelve years ago Jawaharlal Nehru died is harness on May 27. Inevitably, much has changed in these twelve years among his people and in the humanity at large. He was not the man who would have preferred the status quo to change; and if the landscape and the skyline of his country have changed—at places beyond recognition—Nehru, had he been alive, would have tried to understand them, accelerate the process of change.

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article3905.html

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Remembering October-November 1984

From N.C.’s Writings

Early next week, on October 31, the country would be observing the tenth death anniversary of Indira Gandhi who had been cruelly shot down on this very day by her own security guards right inside her residence.

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article4138.html