BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP

Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage 
By Parul Bhandari (Springer, New Delhi: 2020)

DISCUSSANTS: Prof. Janaki Abraham, Associate Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi; Prof. Katherine Twamley, Associate Professor of Sociology, University College London; Ms Raphael Susewind, Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Development, King’s College London; and Dr. Parul Bhandari, Associate Professor, Sociology, Jindal Global Business School, O.P. Jindal Global University, and Visiting Faculty, Ashoka University 

CHAIR: Prof. Patricia Uberoi, eminent sociologist, Chairperson and Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies 

IIC/WISCOMP DIALOGUES

SPEAKERS: Anita Ghai, Professor and Dean, School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University; Mahesh Pannicker, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi; Seema Baquer, LLB, India & BCL, Oxford;  Karuna Rajeev, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi; and Meenakshi Gopinath, Director, Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP)
 
FACILITATOR: Seema Kakran, Deputy Director, WISCOMP
 
The gap between Niti and Nyaya is large for several marginalized groups in India. For one group of individuals this gap is particularly daunting – persons with disability. The invisiblization of persons with disabilities in the public discourse or alternatively merely tokenistic representation is routine. This, despite national laws and international covenants that mandate full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in socio-economic and political processes.
 
The forthcoming IIC/WISCOMP Dialogue, Gender and Disability seeks to unravel the multiple layers of discrimination and prejudice that conspire to perpetrate individual and structural violence against persons with disabilities in the public and the private spheres.  
 
Recognizing that a sense of ‘agency’ is pivotal to transformation, this dialogue seeks to provide an opportunity to learn from the struggles and triumphs of activists, researchers and institutional leaders who work to create conditions for differently-abled people to lead a life of dignity and choice. The dialogue, it is hoped, will raise questions of individual, societal and state responsibility in securing the rights of people with disability, especially women.
 
(Collaboration: WISCOMP)

[119 min; 1941; b/w; English]
Director: John Ford

With Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee

Multiple award winner including Oscar Award for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction, Academy Awards, USA 1942; NYFCC Award for Best Director, New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1941; recipient of the National Film Registry, National Film Preservation Board, USA 1990; among others

An adaptation of Richard Llewellyn's 1939 novel, one of the most beautifully-shot films of the 1940s. The film represents one of the highest achievements of John Ford's career-long fascination with the ebb and flow of life in a small community and the family as a small-scale extension of that community. The story of the Morgans, a hard-working Welsh mining family living in the heart of the South Wales Valleys during the 19th century. The story chronicles life in the South Wales coalfields, the loss of that way of life and its effect on the family.

Click here to watch this film.
 

Rafeeq Ellias is a multiple award-winning photographer and filmmaker, whose films explore and engage with India’s smallest minority communities. Sensitively portraying the richly textured lives of communities living on the margins, the films present an India where multiple identities meet and flourish.

The Ninety First Symphony: The Musical Journey of Homi Dastoor

(Click here to watch this film)

[20:01 min; 2016; English]
Direction & Cinematography: Rafeeq Ellias

Recipient of the Jury Award, 5th Kolkata Shorts International Film Festival 2016

The Ninety First Symphony introduces audiences to Homi Dastoor, a man who loved Western classical music with a passion and spent a lifetime exploring its treasures and sharing it with the world. At the age of 90 in 2014, Dastoor published a remarkable book, richly illustrated with rare archival images, based on his enduring love affair with music. The foreword to the book was written by maestro Zubin Mehta who was one among the legions who had known and loved him. Dastoor who passed on two years ago remains an important inspiration for both his love and knowledge of Western music and his incredible spirit and attitude towards life.

What Man Joe: Portrait of a Funeral Musician

(Click here to watch this film)

[36:29 min; 2018; English and with subtitles]
Direction & Cinematography: Rafeeq Ellias

Recipient of the Jury Award, National Documentary ShortFilm Festival, Thrissur 2019 

Joe Vessaoaker is a man who lives and breathes the trumpet every minute of his waking life. A life-long teacher and musician, he represents a dying tradition of funeral music in the East Indian community of Christians in Bombay. Joe, who lives in the vibrant, multi-talented 'musical' neighbourhood, is as extraordinary as he is simple and ordinary, coming from a traditional fishing family whose every member played a musical instrument with panache.
 

A 2010 Discovery Channel mini science documentary series with Stephen Hawking. The world's most famous living scientist explores the greatest mysteries of the cosmos. In three landmark installments he reveals the wonders of the universe as never seen before. Definitive, provocative, surprising, and beautiful, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking is a fascinating look through the mind's eye of one of the finest brains on the planet.

EPISODE 1: Aliens [41:50 min] 
In "Are We Alone?" Hawking considers one of the most important mysteries facing humankind — the possibility of alien, intelligent life. He leads viewers a journey from the moons of Jupiter to a galaxy maybe not so far, far away.

[90 min; 2010; English]
A film by Werner Herzog

Multiple award winner including LAFCA Award for Best Documentary/Non-Fiction Film, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 2011; NYFCC Award for Best Non-Fiction Film, New York Film Critics Circle Awards 2011; VFCC Award, Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2012; among others

Well-known filmmaker Werner Herzog and a small crew are given a rare chance to film inside France's Chauvet Cave, where the walls are covered with the world's oldest surviving paintings. To preserve the art, visitors are permitted to enter the site for only two weeks a year. Examining the 30,000-year-old drawings, Herzog discusses how the artwork represents humanity's earliest dreams with scientists and art scholars conducting research at Chauvet.

Click here to watch this film.

ODISSI RECITAL (Click here to view the recital)
By Manisha Manaswini, disciple of the late Guru Gangadhar and Smt Aruna Mohanty

The artist will present Rageshree Pallavi set to Raga Rageshree and Tala ek tali; dance composed by Guru Gangadhar Pradhan. And Nayika dance composed by Guru Gangadhar Pradhan and Smt Aruna Mohanty.

KATHAK RECITAL (Click here to view the recital)
Presented by Asavari Pawar and Kalaashish repertory 

Video recording of two recitals for IIC online programmes.

WEBINAR on 

Democracy and Public Policy in the Post Covid 19 World: Choices and Outcomes
Edited by Rumki Basu

ABOUT THE BOOK

Democracy and Public Policy in the Post Covid 19 World: Choices and Outcomes published by Routledge, was planned and written in 2020 against the backdrop of the pandemic, and highlights different sectors of policy making and implementation in India. The edited book with 14 chapters reexamines the normative and the empirical world of policy making in the world's largest and one of the most complex democracies. It critically looks at the available theoretical frameworks, models and approaches used in the policy making process and studies their contemporary relevance, and balances theoretical approaches with concrete case studies.

CHAIR: Shri V. Srinivas, Additional Secretary to Government of India, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances and  Director General of National Centre for Good Governance

PANELISTS: Prof. Sushma Yadav, Vice- Chancellor of B.P.S.M University, Haryana; Prof. Ramabrahmam Ivaturi, Vice-Chancellor, Central University of Odisha, Koraput; Prof. Rumki Basu, Professor of Public Administration and Director, Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies in Jamia Millia Islamia & Editor of the Book.

Click here to register for this webinar.

The Discovery of Architecture – A Contemporary Treatise on Ancient Values and Indigenous Reality
A conversation with Prof. Narendra Dengle, Architect, Educator and Writer; Former Design Chair, KRVIA Mumbai, and Academic Chair, Goa College of Architecture and PVPCOA, Pune; and Prof. Savyasaachi, Anthropologist, Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia
 
Moderator: Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, Conservation Architect, Author and Visiting Faculty at S.P.A. Delhi
  
First in a bi-monthly series, structured around dialogues that endeavour to present and discuss the role of architecture in contributing positively to society and to culture. The series will focus on examples relevant to our context, and in doing so, bring to the fore issues that are universal in the creation of meaningful architecture. Conceptualised by Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, the series, through interactions with practitioners and scholars, intends to engage with a wide variety of people – professionals and lay-persons alike.
 
This webinar is dedicated to the memory of Professor M.N. Ashish Ganju, Founding Director of TVB School of Habitat Studies; co-author The Discovery of Architecture – A Contemporary Treatise on Ancient Values and Indigenous Reality