Celebration of the Power of Non-Violent Action & the Life of Martin Luther King Jr (15 January 1929 – 4 April 1968)

 

Commemoration Service 

Songs by Choirs of Schools from Delhi NCR

 

Interactive Session

 " We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed ". 

“A time comes when silence is betrayal.”  

–  Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

A short film on Martin Luther King's Life shall be screened 

 

Moderators: Shri Suhas Borker ,Working Group on Alternative Strategies; and Shri Ramesh Sharma , Gandhi Peace Foundation

 

Students from Schools of Delhi NCR to participate 

 

This programme is part of the Taking Children to Gandhi series that brings children closer to the enduring legacy of Gandhi’s non-violent struggle for equity, justice, pluralism and sustainable development.

 

A Language on the Move: Gujarati as an Internal Agency for Formations and Transformations of Identity of an Indian Regional Culture

 

Speaker :Dr. Sitanshu Yashaschandra, eminent Gujarati poet, playwright, translator and academic; recipient of  the Sahitya Akademi  Award (1987) for his significant opus, Jatayu, and the Padma Shri (2006) 

 

Chair: Shri Soli J. Sorabjee, President, IIC

 

There are many ways in which one could try to understand the structurality and dynamics of India of our times. One way is to focus on one of its regions and to look at its local genesis and regional identity. The ‘linguistic re-organization of the States’ in India led to the formation of new States which were defined by the language that the majority of each region declared as its own. This lecture examines the ontological and epistemological status of one such language, Gujarati, in its actual and enriching context and in its historical relationships with other languages of India, which was somewhat clouded over in the heat of the formation days 

 

 

Dr. Kavita A Sharma, President, South Asian University; Ambassador Ms Lesego Ethel Motsumi, Ambassador of Botswana to India; and Dr. Nina Dey Gupta, Senior Associate Professor  formerly at the  University of Delhi will discuss, Freedom and Empowerment: The Ethiopian Women’s Struggle by Gennet  Zewide  (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 2014) 

 

Chair: Prof. Rajen Harshe, Dept of International Relations, South Asian University   

By Pt. Shubhendra Rao, senior artist and disciple of Pt. Ravi Shankar

 

Accompanied by Shailendra Mishra on tabla

 

Concert organised in memory of the late Amar Mishra

 

Conservation of Monuments in Uttarakhand

Speaker: Dr. Syed Jamal Hasan, Director, Explorations, Archaeological Survey of India

 

Chair: Dr. R.C. Agrawal

Moderator: Shri Ashok Vajpayee

 

 

Pran Nevile pays tribute to the eminent lyricists and poets for their outstanding contribution to Indian popular music followed by a concert by Simrat Chhabra 

 

 

Speaker: Dr. Anthony Seeger is a distinguished Professor of Ethnomusicology, Emeritus, at UCLA and Director Emeritus of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings at the Smithsonian Institution, where he is currently a Research Associate 

 

Chair: Dr. Shubha Chaudhuri

 

 Dr. Seeger will describe the role of music in communications between humans, animals, and spirits in the Brazilian Amazon and discuss the challenges those idea pose for the emerging field of eco-musicology.  His presentation is based on decades of research in Brazil and will be illustrated with photographs and videos.

 

Light of the World – Nur Jahan in Legend and History

Speaker: Dr. Ruby Lal, Dept. of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Emory University, Atlanta USA

 

Chair: Ms Namita Gokhale (tbc)

 

The written and visual sources for Nur Jahan’s sovereignty, life and times, are opulent. Foremost among the Persian records is the memoir of her husband – Emperor, the Jahangirnama, in which she merges in unprecedented terms: sensitive consort, skilled politician, aesthetic woman. This lecture brings together the ‘facts’ of the historical record with the legends of the public imagination in order to capture Nur’s life in a more rounded fashion