Divine play (lila) in West and East. Reflections upon the Theory of Creation

Speaker: Prof. Douglas Hedley, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge

 

INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

 

The Iconography of Pashupata Cult in Cambodia

Illustrated lecture by Shivani Kapoor, independent researcher; her area of focus is the art history of pre-Angkorian Cambodia and teaches on a Post Graduate Certificate Course on Southeast Asian Art and Architecture at Jnanapravaha, Mumbai

Chair: Dr. Himanshu Prabha Ray
 

The lecture looks at the representation of ascetic figures in Khmer iconography in order to understand their religious antecedents. Although Cambodian epigraphy attests to the presence of ascetics of the Pasupata sect in the Khmer domain, situating them against the backdrop of the Saivite kingdoms that existed in Southeast Asia from roughly the 6th to the 13th century, it is difficult to find iconographic evidence to substantiate their presence.

 

In order to understand the ascetic imagery which occurs in profusion in the period coinciding with the presence of the Pasupata tradition in Cambodia, the speaker examines the development of the iconography of Lakulisa (act. 2nd century), acknowledged as the founder of this religious tradition, in the Indic sphere and its probable influence on the iconography of the ascetic figures in Cambodian sculptures and reliefs, with specific attention to the badly eroded image of one such ascetic figure at the temple complex of Sambor Prei Kuk (N-11, northern group of temples) 

 

Multilingualism as a Stimulus to Islamic Literary Theory
 

Speaker: Prof. Rebecca Ruth Gould, Professor, Islamic World and Comparative Literature, College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham, and Director, ‘Global Literary Theory: Caucasus Literatures Compared’

 

Discussants: Harish Trivedi; Chandra Mohan; and Anisur Rahman

Chair: Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, Chairperson, IIC-International Research Division

 

(Organised by IIC-International Research Division; and Comparative Literature Association of India)

 

Narayan Desai’s Gandhi Katha: 15 to 20 March 2019

Screening of 10 DVDs over 6 days

Executive Producer: Suhas Borker

 

Presentation of the set of 10 DVDs to Shri N. N. Vohra, President IIC 

 

Contemporizing Katha Form: Dr Varsha Das, Writer and Art Critic

 

Reinventing Katha as a Political Idiom: Dr. Ashis Nandy, Political Psychologist, Sociologist and Futurist

 

The screening commemorates 150 years of the birth anniversary of Mohanadas Karamchand Gandhi and 15 years of Gandhi Katha. The Gandhi Katha was started by Narayan Desai in 2004 as a reparative act of creating non-violence after the violence in Gujarat in 2002. Narayan Bhai took the Gandhi Katha across India and abroad till he passed away in 2015. The Gandhi Katha is an amazing opportunity to relive the incredible times of India's freedom struggle. Kathas have been an age old communication form in India. Narayan Bhai completely revolutionised this ancient art form by making it contemporary and relevant to our times. The DVDs capture Narayan Bhai's inimitable style  of  vibrant and earthy storytelling as he reads, enacts, recreates from his four-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi - Maru Jivan Ej Mari Vani (My Life is My Message) (2004), translated into English (Orient BlackSwan, 2009) interspersed with live bhajans sung by students of Sardar Patel School.

The 15 hours recording of this set of DVDs was done during the Gandhi Katha held at the Gandhi King Memorial Plaza - IIC in November 2010

 

Kindly please make a note of the dates, venues and timings for the screenings

Saturday, 16th March - Lecture Room I from 18.00 - 20.00  

Sunday, 17th March - Seminar Rooms I to III from 17.00 - 20.00

Monday, 18th March - Lecture Room I from 17.00 - 20.00 

Tuesday, 19th March - Lecture Room I from 17.00 - 20.00

Wednesday, 20th March - Seminar Rooms I to III from 17.00 - 20.00 

 

(Collaboration: Working Group on Alternative Strategies; and CFTV Public Service Communications)

 

ARTEAST FESTIVAL 2019: 14 TO 16 MARCH 2019

 

INTER/SECTIONS FROM 11:00 TO 13:30 IN SEMINAR ROOMS I TO III, KAMALADEVI COMPLEX

Brahmaputra – Explorer Odyssey

One of the most compelling questions that obsessed 19th century European explorers were sources of rivers. In India it was the Brahmaputra- though a lot of Tibet was mapped, a riddle had remained unsolved about the course of the river Tsangpo originating at 24000 feet running east for 1000 miles entering an impenetrable gorge and within a span of just 150 miles plunging 9000 feet to take a sharp turn and enter India. It took an illiterate tailor from Darjeeling with a  prodigious memory to eventually solve this riddle

 

Panelists: Parimal Bhattacharya, Associate Professor, Department of English, Maulana Azad College, Kolkata, and a bilingual writer, most recently, of Dodopakhider Gaan (Ababhash, 2019) and No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight: Memories of a Hill Town (Speaking Tiger, 2017); Samrat Choudhury, also known as Samrat X, author and journalist; and Harish Kapadia, distinguished Himalayan Mountaineer, author and long-time editor of Himalayan Journal

 

Moderated by Kishalay Bhattacharjee 

 

FROM 15:00 TO 15:45 IN SEMINAR ROOMS I TO III, KAMALADEVI COMPLEX

On the Brahmaputra Tea Trail 

In 1823 the first Assam tea was sent to England for public sale that led to the Brahmaputra Valley becoming the Empire’s favourite garden. The tea that Europe woke up to sailed down the Brahmaputra. The story of tea is not just the romance of the wild bush but how it significantly contributed to Britain’s economy

 

Dhurbajit Chaliha, a tea planter from Assam journeys down the river’s tea story and shows how to brew leaves for the perfect cup

 

FROM 16:00 TO 18:00 IN SEMINAR ROOMS I TO III, KAMALADEVI COMPLEX

Imagining a New Commons: Ganga and Brahmaputra

Is there a river-imagination? If so, then the Brahmaputra-imagination unfolds a creative universe that challenges the imagination of the Ganga- the symbol and idea of India, the ‘mainstream’, the ‘holy’, ‘Hindu’ or even perhaps the notion of ‘salvation’. The imagination of Brahmaputra is a cosmos, a shared space, and a constitution. It spans many civilisations and defies the idea of the “holy” with its experience of the sacred. It links the local, national and transnational. The Brahmaputra with its many names is an invitation to perpetrate a new thinking, a new imagination while renewing classical modes of thought. It captures the so-called Indian syncretism in a new way, moving beyond the Ganga-Jamuni tradition. Both Ganga and Brahmaputra flow from the same mountain ranges and merge downstream to meet the sea. It is one and at the same time different

 

Panelists: Shiv Vishvanathan, Social Scientist, Professor at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat and Director, Centre for the Study of Knowledge Systems, O.P Jindal Global University ; Uma Dasgupta; Ian Baker; and Claude Arpi

 

Moderated by Sumana Roy, poet and author of How I Became a Tree (Aleph, 2017) and Missing (Aleph, 2018) who writes from Siliguri, a small town in sub-Himalayan Bengal

 

AT 18:30 IN C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM

Yes, The River Knows… 

Concert presented by Chaar Yaar  - Madan Gopal Singh (vocalist & poet); Deepak Castelino (guitar & banjo); Pritam Ghosal (sarod); and Amjad Khan (percussion)

 

The imagination of Brahmaputra and Ganga is a unique kind of syncretism. Chaar Yaar brings to ArtEast a fusion of different genres of music to celebrate this new conversation

 

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

 

ARTEAST FESTIVAL 2019: 14 TO 16 MARCH 2019

 

ArtEast is an initiative to raise pertinent questions through Inter/Sections in art, livelihood, social justice, climate change, communication, history – past and present, issues that have a far reaching impact on everyday life of people and of the nation. The festival includes talks/discussions, exhibitions, and performances

 

Curated by Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Associate Professor and Director, New Imaginations, O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat

 

Organised in collaboration with National Foundation for India; The Sasakawa Peace Foundation; and New Imaginations, Jindal School of Journalism and Communication

 

Exhibitions:

Brahmaputra – An Imagination

Photography; Art Installation; Poetry; Video Installation; and Music

 

Listening Post – Songs of the River

An audio immersion of river songs including Bhupen Hazarika’s conversations with the river

 

Anthropocene and the River

By Arati Kumar Rao, National Geographic explorer, photographer, writer and artist - charcoal and ink on paper conceptualizing the changing river, its biodiversity delving into the historical discovery of the Brahmaputra; and photographs on the river’s seasonal cycle, landscapes and people

 

A Sense of the Flow: Brahmaputra and Ganga

Installation by Ashima Sharma, amateur artist – using dreams, cartography and material memory, the artist imagines a cosmos that comprise the Brahmaputra-Ganga delta journeying from the mountain ranges to the sea

 

“Nadir Kul Nai, Kinar Nai”

By Parasher Baruah, cinematographer – a video and photography installation that feature the inhabitants of the chars of Assam through songs and explore their relationship with the river, their struggle for survival and the larger issue of migration and Identity

 

Seven Ages of a River: Tsangpo, Siang, Brahmaputra, Jamuna, Padma, Meghna…and?

Curated by Sumana Roy, poet and author

 

A selection of poems to seek a different dis-‘course’ exploring the six life-stages of the river which we recognize in different places of its journey as Tsangpo, Siang, Brahmaputra, Jamuna, Padma, and the Meghna

 

A Bend in the River

Video installation by Apal Singh, cinematographer and explorer – the “sky-river” is one of the most tumultuous river expeditions in the world. This labyrinthine adventure is captured through real time footage that takes the viewer through an impossible journey of the Brahmaputra and its sublime relationship with the fragile and the ever-changing human civilization

 

Inauguration on 14 March at 17:00

 

On view in the Art Gallery, Kamaladevi Complex, 14 to 23 March 2019

 

Brahmaputra: Red River Tales

An exhibition tracing the river from its source to the delta – the “great riddle” and early explorations, creation myths and legends through archives, photographs, books, maps and excerpts – Ian Baker; Harish Kapadia; Deb Mukharji; Parimal Bhattacharya; Jo Woolf; Arupjyoti Saikia; and Royal Scottish Geographical Society

 

On view in the Foyer outside C.D. Deshmukh Auditorium and Quadrangle Garden, 14 to 16 March 2019

 

AT 18:00 IN C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM

Inauguration

Opening remarks by Ms Jashodhara Dasgupta, Executive Director, NFI

 

1 sq. ft

Concept, Design & Choreography: Surjit Nongmeikapam, contemporary and traditional dancer from Manipur

 

Dance presented by Surjit Nongmeikapam, Waikhom Biken, Senjam Hemjit

 

1 sq. ft is based on the experiences of people who have been displaced by war, persecution or violence. In its present iteration, the work captures the effects of displacement of the human body, exploring how it may react to an unrelenting series of brutal changes. Nongmeikapam draws from the socio-political climate of his home state, Manipur, while attempting to approach displacement as a human, somatic, phenomenon

 

FILMS OF THE SPIRIT

Curated by Rajiv Mehrotra

 

Samskara (Funeral Rites/Kannada)

(100 min; 1970; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: Pattabhi Rama Reddy

 

With Girish Karnad, Snehlata Reddy, P. Lankesh

 

Recipient of the National Award for Best Feature Film, 18th National Film Awards 1971; Second Best Film Award, Best Supporting Actor, Best Story Writer & Best Cinematographer, Kanataka State Film Awards 1970–71; and Bronze Leopard, Locarno International Film Festival 1972

 

Samskara initiated the parallel cinema movement in Kannada. Initially banned by the Madras Government, the film is a bold and blistering attack on the caste system. It follows a religious dispute in a small village community about whether a rebellious meat, alcohol drinking Brahmin who dies suddenly has the right to a decent Brahmin funeral. The beauty of the film lies in its confrontation of tradition with modernity and rationality. The realization that the good Brahmin has about living a life without judgement, a life outside of caste, honesty and humanity as the only path to moksha

 

(Collaboration: Foundation for Universal Responsibility of H.H. The Dalai Lama; and National Film Archive of India, Pune)

 

BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP

 

On Leaders and Icons from Jinnah to Modi 

By Kuldip Nayar (New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2019)

 

Discussants: Shri H.K. Dua, former Editor-in-Chief, The Hindustan Times and former Member of the Rajya Sabha; Ms Sagari Chhabra, award-winning author, columnist and filmmaker; and Ms Radhika Ramaseshan, senior journalist, Consulting Editor, Business Standard

 

Chair: Shri Soli J. Sorabjee, Life Trustee, IIC

 

 

In Conversation
 

Dr. Ebba Koch, historian and editor of the forthcoming book, The Mughal Empire: From Jahangir to Shah Jahan in conversation with Kavita Singh and Jyotindra Jain 

 

The book is edited by Ebba Koch in collaboration with Ali Anooshahr 

 

(Collaboration: The Marg Foundation)