ARTEAST FESTIVAL 2019: 14 TO 16 MARCH 2019

 

INTER/SECTIONS FROM 14:30 TO 17:00 IN SEMINAR ROOMS I TO III, KAMALADEVI COMPLEX 

On Time, History and the River

Rivers connect people, civilisations, the past to the present, but they also divide places from one another. The Brahmaputra that originates as Tsangpo in Tibet manages to transcend these divisions and dichotomies. It has an enormous breadth and variety that sails into various channels of expression giving rise to a diverse body of literature ranging from music to ecology, material memory to mythology  

 

Panelists: Arupjyoti Saikia, Professor in History & Suryya Kumar Bhuyan Endowment Chair on Assam History, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati; Mahesh Rangarajan, Professor of Environmental Studies and History, Ashoka University; Joydeep Gupta, South Asia Director, The Third Pole Project; and Claude Arpi, French-born author, journalist, historian and Tibetologist

 

Moderated by Uma Dasgupta, former Research Professor, Social Science Division, Indian Statistical Institute who has also  taught at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan

 

AT 18:30 IN C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM

Visions of Paradise in the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra Gorge

Illustrated presentation by Ian Baker, Himalayan and Buddhist scholar and author of seven books on Tibetan cultural history, environment, art, and medicine including The Heart of the World: A Journey in Tibet’s Lost Paradise (Penguin Random House, 2006)

 

The Tsangpo–Brahmaputra Gorge is recognised as the Earth’s deepest chasm. For generations, Eastern and Western explorers sought the coordinates of a hidden paradise that was prophesied in Tibetan scriptures to lie in the depths of the gorge, concealed by the fabled 'Falls of the Brahmaputra’. Beyul Pemako, the ‘Hidden-Land Arrayed like Lotuses’, became an obsession that inspired imaginations across the planet and established enduring legends. The waterfall remained an unresolved geographical mystery until November 1998 when Ian Baker reached the base of the falls in the depths of the Tsangpo–Brahmaputra Gorge