Speaker: Shri Anand Sethi, electronics engineer, International Development Finance professional, itinerant traveller, writer/author on history of technology and military history

 

Chair: Ambassador K.V. Rajan, Convenor, India Discussion Group

 

Chief Guest: Prof Lokesh Chandra, President, ICCR

 

A fascinating and unusual travelogue covering the most important sites in Sri Lanka mentioned in most of the over 320 versions of the Ramayana. The presentation does not take a view or opinion, either for or against, of the historical and geographical authenticity of what is stated in the Ramayana 

 

Directed by Subasri Krishnan who will introduce the film

 

Screening will be followed by a discussion

 

On 18th February 1983, from 9 am to 3 pm, more than 2000 Muslims were killed in the town of Nellie and its surrounding villages in Assam. People’s homes were burnt down and their fields destroyed. Most of those who died were old people, women and children. Till date the Nellie massacre remains on the margins of India’s public history, and is virtually wiped out from the nation’s collective memory. The film revisits the massacre three decades later to explore ideas of violence, memory and justice. The film tries to understand how physical spaces that have witnessed the violence continue to mark people’s relationship to history and memory; and attempts to raise larger questions around collective memory – of what we choose to remember and why we choose to forget 

 

An exhibition of photographs by Amita Virmani from Delhi

 

Preview on Tuesday, 2 February 2016 at 18:30

 

Internet – Are we “logged” on or “hooked” on ?
 

 

Moderator: Dr. S.K. Khandelwal

 

Internet has become an integral part of life in current times. It has been unequivocally accepted as one of the most exciting inventions of the last few centuries. The debate surrounding Internet includes the issues such as ease and freedom of its access; its regulation; its impact on youth and social fabric of the society in general, among others. The discussion shall focus on some of the diverse and highly relevant issues related to Internet in modern times - net neutrality; impact of Internet on the youth; and ‘internet addiction’

 

 

 

A festival of films presenting the best films made by children from 30 schools in Delhi

 

 

 

 

Welcome Remarks: IIC Director Air Marshal (Retd)  Naresh Verma

 

Introduction: Suhas Borker

 

Speakers:

Shri K. P. Fabian, former Ambassador and Visiting Professor, Indian Society of International Law;

Dr. Riad Kamel Abbas, Ambassador of the Syrian Arab Republic;

Shri V.P. Haran, former Indian Ambassador to Syria;

Dr. John Cherian, Foreign Editor, Frontline

 

Followed by discussion.

Excavations at Bhirrana: A Harappan Site in Haryana

Speaker: Dr. Prabash Sahu, Associate Professor , Department of Ancient History, Culture and Archaeology, RTM Nagpur University

 

Chair: Dr. S.K. Manjul, Director, Institute of Archaeology

 

Many Harappan sites are located on the banks of the now dried up Saraswati river. The excavations at Bhirrana in Fatehabad district of Haryana by the Excavation Branch – I, Nagpur, Archaeological Survey of India for three consecutive field seasons from 2003 to 2006 under the direction of L.S. Rao has brought to light the genesis and developmental stages of the true urban character of the Harappan civilisation beginning from a nascent rural set up in the form of the Hakra Wares Culture passing through the Early Harappan and Early Mature Harappan periods in an unbroken, vertically evolving sequence finally blooming into the First Urbanisation of the third millennium BCE