CANCELLED
 

INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

 

Zinc Production in Ancient India

Speaker: Dr. J.S. Kharakwal, Acting Director, Sahitya Sansthan (Institute of Rajasthan Studies), JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Udaipur

 

 

 

 

Reading from In a Land Far from Home -- a translation of Syed Mujtaba Ali's 'Desh Bideshe' 

 

Followed by 

A Conversation between Prof Tanika Sarkar with the translator, Shri Nazes Afroz

An intrepid traveller and a true cosmopolitan, the legendary Bengali writer Syed Mujtaba Ali from Sylhet (in erstwhile East Bengal and now Bangladesh) spent a year and a half teaching in Kabul from 1927. Drawing from his experience, he later wrote Deshe Bideshe, which was published in 1948. His account gives a first-hand insight into events at a crucial point in Afghanistan’s modern history, when the reformist King Amanullah tried to steer his country towards modernity by encouraging education for girls and giving them the choice of removing the burqa. Through a humorous narrative and a most fascinating cast of characters, Mujtaba Ali turns Deshe Bideshe into more than a memoir or a travel book  

Nazes has worked as a journalist for more than 34 years, 15 of which for the BBC World Service, covering news, features and current affairs spanning South, Central and West Asia. Currently he is based in Delhi, writing in English and Bengali and doing photography 

 

Nazes is also a keen photographer for decades. He held his first photography exhibition, ‘From Kabul to Kolkata/Of Memories, Belonging and Identity’, with Moska Najib, in four cities across South Asia – Kabul, Delhi, Dhaka and Kolkata – in early 2015. The Alliance Francaise, Delhi hosted a solo exhibition with Nazes’ photos from his trips to Afghanistan  since 2002 – ‘Behind the Veil/The Other Afghanistan’ – as part of the 3rd Delhi Photo Festival in October 2015 

 

An exhibition of photographs by Chitvan Gill

 

Opening on Thursday, 10 March 2016 at 18:30

 

Buland Masjid and the bowl of land, the putrefying remains of a landfill, that abuts it, are on first sight a world of slums and squalor. Yet what one encounters is Almadovarian excess: life, laughter and madness spill out into the maze of streets and gallis. There is tragedy here, and there is triumph

 

Shri Arjun Asrani, former Indian Ambassador to Japan; Prof. H.S. Prabhakar, Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Shri Anand K. Sahay, The Asian Age will discuss Half a Century: My Connections with Japan: A Memoir by Aftab Seth (Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 2015)

 

Chair: Shri Shiv Shankar Mukherji

 

Speaker: PADMA SHRI Dr. Raman kapur, Chairman, Department of Medical Acupuncture , Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi

 

 

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

 

 

 The talk will be followed by an interactive session with treatment using “ear seeds”.

 

 

Historical Relationship of Bollywood Music and Indonesian Dangdut (a form of popular Indonesian music)

Presentation by Andrew Weintraub, Associate Professor of Music, University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in ethnomusicology and popular music. Author of Power Plays: Awayng Golek Puppet Theater of West Java (Ohio University Press, 2004) and the coeditor of Music and Cultural Rights (University of Illinois Press, 2009)

 

Chair: Shubha Chaudhuri, Associate Director General ( Academic ) Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology, American Institute of Indian Studies

 

 A keen critic of culture in modern Indonesia, Andrew N. Weintraub shows how a genre of Indonesian music called dangdut evolved from a debased form of urban popular music to a prominent role in Indonesian cultural politics and the commercial music industry 

 

 

 

 

Illustrated lecture by Shri Amardeep Singh, former Head of Revenue & Pricing Management, American Express (Asia Pacific Region), Singapore

 

Introduction: Dr. J.S. Juneja

 

Chair: Shri Kuldip Nayar, noted  journalist

 

The lecture is based on his book of the same title which captures the distinctive Sikh contribution to the spiritual, social, cultural and architectural history of present-day Pakistan, over which a curtain was drawn at Partition in 1947. The author embarked on a journey of discovery that covered 37 cities across Pakistan

 

Tribute by the Chief Guest Shri L.K. Advani who will share memories of his association with the late Shri Vasant Sathe

 

Followed by

Concert: Hindustani Vocal 

By Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar, well-known exponent of Jaipur Gharana who will present a concert of Haveli Bhakti Sangeet and Thumri