Recent Discoveries in Rock Art in Vidharba and Adjoining Areas
Speaker: Dr. Nandini Bhattacharya-Sahu, Superintending Archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India, Nagpur
Chair: Dr. M. Nambirajan, Director (Monuments), Archaeological Survey of India
 
Recent discovery of two hundred and forty seven decorated rock shelters in the Gawilgarh Hills, falling under the revenue jurisdiction of Betul district, Madhya Pradesh in the Satpura range on the border of Amravati district of Maharashtra, by a team comprising members from the Archaeological Survey of India, Nagpur emphasises  two aspects of rock art studies in India: firstly, the hitherto unknown alcove existing in the intensely researched Central Indian Plateau which remained unknown as late as the twenty first century to be uncovered and secondly, the profusion of hitherto lesser known aspect of Indian rock art namely, petroglyphs inside these rock shelters.
 

 

Directed by Amit Mahanti & Ruchika Negi who will introduce the film

 

Screening will be followed by a discussion

 

How do you tell a story whose words are a song, a stone, an image, a symbol? A story that is woven into a shawl, woven through time itself? Tsungkotepsu is a shawl worn by men of the Ao-Naga community of Nagaland. Traditionally it signified the achievements of warriors who had won enemy heads in war. Even though the headhunting days are long gone, the shawl is central to Ao-Naga imagination. The film offers an interpretation of history, a way of understanding the shifts that this shawl-making tradition has experienced

 

 

CANCELLED


Vice Admiral (retd.) Premvir Das, former Commander-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command; and Shri Rakesh Sood, Columnist and writer will discuss The Turn of the Tortoise: The Challenge and Promise of India’s Future by T.N. Ninan (Gurgaon: Penguin, 2015)

 

Chair: Dr. Shankar Acharya, Economist and Professor, ICRIER

 

By Roja Kannan from Chennai, disciple of Late Shri Adyar K. Lakshman and  Smt Kalanidhi Narayanan

 

Speaker: Professor Sangeeta Thapliyal, Centre for Inner Asian Studies,  School of International Studies, JNU

 

Chair: Shri Deb Mukharji

 

The Himalayan region, in the cusp of South Asia, Central Asia and China, has provided transit for cultures, trade and movement of people from India northwards to trans-Himalayas, Tibet, China, Central Asia and from their southwards to India. The diverse geographical terrain ranging from plateaus, high mountains, valleys and lower Himalayan ranges, represent diverse ecology, resources and societies. It is a cultural melange assimilating Hinduism and Buddhism along with indigenous cultures, languages, dialects, and ethnicity.From the 18th century emphasis was on strategic importance of the Himalayas with definitional shifts on frontiers and buffer to safeguard Indian subcontinent from onslaughts through north. 

 

The lecture would try to understand growing relations and competition between India and China and its influences in the Himalayan region. The conflictual border issue is being negotiated through the border talks. The bilateral economic relations are progressing but competition for the Himalayas exist. What kind of relations will emerge? How would competition and cooperation co-exist? How are the Himalayan countries, Nepal and Bhutan, re-evaluating their policies?

 

10.00/1:15 and 18:30

Wood cutter and Heavenly Maiden

 A woodcutter's longing for a fairy

 

Mister Moon and Miss Sun

A mother confronts a tiger for saving her children

 

The Faithful Daughter Sim Cheung 

Story of a daughter's sacrifice for her blind father 

 

Narrated by Sohail Shaikh, Subhash Rawat, Neeraj Kumari & Sandeep Rawat in Korean style; in Sattriya dance by Ishu; enacted in Bohuroopi style by Sanjay Joshi; Imran Khan in Nautanki style; contemporary narration by Dhwani Vij and  Deepali Gupta 

 

In each time slot, three storytellers will narrate all the stories; while the stories remain the same, they will be narrated in different styles 

 

 

 

Subodh Gupta in conversation with Smt Gayatri Sinha and  Shri Sarnath Banerjee

 

 

To commemorate Martyrs Day

 

A collection of Poetry Recitations  by Dr. Syeda Hameed, Dr. Rakshanda Jalil, Sukanya Bharatram, Lalita Daikoku and Indira Varma

Vocal by Rene Singh, well-known artist

Drama by Springdale students

 

An illustrated talk by Professor Purushottama Bilimoria, senior research fellow with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, senior lecturer at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He is a Chancellor's Scholar and Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley; an honorary professor at the Deakin University and senior fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia

Chair: Prof. Rahul Govind

 

The presentation explores recent thinking on the 'hard emotions', in particular, grief, sorrow and mourning, and links the challenging inner and social condition to the calling of Dharma (righteous law, normatively worthy action).  Drawing from some comparative work (academic and personal) in the study of grief, mourning and empathy, the talk will discuss the treatment of this tragic pathos in classical Indic literature and modern-day psychotherapy.  Drawing on the moving series of paintings (especially of women in various shadows of grief by Rabindranath Tagore),  the talk will demonstrate that even though secularised, these emotions continue to serve as the sites of imagination at much deeper personal and inter-personal levels. As such these bhava-s (that don't always play out in corresponding rasas-s) are not antithetical to a dharmic quest despite their haunting presence even when 'the four walls collapse around one in the intensity of dukha'

 

Speaker: Professor T.V. Paul, Professor of International Relations, McGill University, Canada

 

Chair:Prof. Alka Acharya