Pandemics and Literature: Regional and Global Perspectives
by Kamlesh Mohan and Saurav Kumar Rai 
 

The Chameli Devi Jain Award 2026

For Outstanding Woman Media Person of the Year, the Vishwa Nath-Delhi Press Award for Fearless Journalism and the Kamla Mankekar Award for Journalism on Gender will also be presented

Followed by BG Verghese Memorial Lecture on 'Freedom of the Purse and the AI of the Affluent'
To be delivered by P Sainath, Journalist and Founder-Editor of People's Archive of Rural India, will deliver the 12th BG

(Collaboration: The Media Foundation)
 

VASANT UTSAV: A FESTIVAL OF FOLK ARTS – 19 AND 20 MARCH 2026

A two-day festival of folk music,dance and art, celebrating contemporary narratives in traditional folk art. The festival includes performances, exhibition and demonstration.  

On 19 and 20 March 2026 from 11:00 to 17:30

Phulkari Embroidery Demonstration and Exhibition

An exhibition by the women artisans from Nabha, Punjab will exhibit traditional Phulkari embroidered textiles and conduct live-demonstrations and workshops. The Nabha Foundation launched the ‘Nabha Phulkari,’ the Foundation supports over 300 women artisans through the Nabha Phulkari Mahila Industrial Cooperative Society Limited.

The artist will continue to demonstrate and sing on the second day of the festival also.

On 19 March 2026 at 18:00 in the Fountain Lawns

Basant in the Land of Five Rivers: Dance and Songs from Punjab

By the artists of Universal Art and Culture Welfare Society, Mohali, who shall be performing Jundua, Gidha, Bhangra ; Folk singing by Garry Gill and Sukhbeer Pal Kaur.

On 20 March 2026 at 18:00 in the Fountain Lawns

Rhythms of Chhattisgarh: Folk Dances of the Heartland

By the artists of Indira Kala Sangit Vishwavidyalaya, Khairagarh performing Gedi Dance, Karma Dance, Sarhul Dance and many more from the region.

(Collaboration: NCZCC, Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India)

Eternal Sky
(108 minutes;2022; English)
Directed by Debra Kellner

HOW DID TIME BEGIN?
Did the big bang happen, or did something else occur?
Humanity has searched for the answer to this question since time immemorial.
‍Six years in the making, the movie Eternal Sky was filmed over three continents. It follows science's most ambitious quest: how did time begin? Set in the remote Andes in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the documentary reveals an intimate story behind one of science's most competitive races by merging ancient wisdom and modern science. Eternal Sky follows in the footsteps of some of the world's leading astrophysicists as they seek to unravel the origins of time, space, and matter. The film follows the lives of several Atacameno elders who take the viewer on a soulful vision of the cosmos. The coexistence between scientists and the local Atacameno culture is a confrontation between the mystical and the existential.

(Collaboration: Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama)
 

Guardians of the Republic: Essays on the Constitution, Justice, and the Future of Indian Democracy
by Ashwani Kumar (Om Books International, 2025)

Discussants: Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Member, Lok Sabha; Yogendra Yadav, Author, Activist and Public Intellectual; Prof. Neera Chandhoke, Former Professor of Political Science, University of Delhi; Dr. Ashwani Kumar, Senior Advocate Supreme Court, Former Union Minister for Law and Justice 

From Amazon to Ganga: A celestial journey
(90 minutes; 2025; English)
Directed and written by Sehdev Kumar
 

This film is a deeply personal meditation on the nature and expression of the spiritual quest, envisioned as a celestial journey. Drawing upon the filmmaker’s life it reflects experiences and inspired by the visions of Sri Aurobindo, Kabir, and Albert Einstein. An evocative interplay of light and water, the film contemplates creation as a cosmic womb, exploring how elemental forces weave together a longing for renewal and new birth.
Sehdev Kumar, Professor Emeritus of Bioethics and Environmental Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director of the film.
 

Sandwiched between China and the US: South Korea's Quest of Transcending Diplomacy
 

Speaker: Prof. Moon Chung-in, James Laney Distinguished Professor, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea.  Krause Distinguished Fellow, School of Policy and Global Strategy, University of California, San Diego, and co-Convener of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN)

Moderator: Prof. Alka Acharya, Director, Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS)

The talk will deliberate on the convoluted dynamics and the new narratives in East Asia, in the context of present-day needs, from a mainly South Korean perspective. The lecture would seek to examine the unilateral and self-centred policies of the US under Trump 2.0., which are, to all extents and purposes, creating very damaging economic and political conditions for the world. It appears that the US is no longer playing the role of a hegemonic stabilizer, but contending with China to be the most powerful country. East Asia’s cognitive dissonance of the US has become severely aggravated under Trump 2.0.

This is the 3rd Gargi and Vidya Prakash Dutt Memorial Lecture 2026

(Collaboration: Institute of Chinese Studies)
 

Architecture & Environment
 

Speaker: Kazuyo Sejima, Founder of SANAA and Professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Visiting professor at Japan Women’s University and Osaka University of Arts, an Emeritus Professor at Yokohama National University, and Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum. Her notable works include House in Plum Grove, the Inujima Art House Project, and the Japan Women’s University Mejiro Campus. She directed the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2010) and is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Venice Biennale Golden Lion Award, the Praemium Imperiale, and the Royal Gold Medal, among other honours.

Moderator: Prof. KT Ravindran, architect and former Head of Urban Design at School of Planning and Architecture (SPA).

About 40 years ago, Kazuyo Sejima began exploring how architecture might create a more seamless relationship between interior and exterior space. Her central question was: What kind of architecture can truly connect people with their surrounding environment? Over the decades, she has come to believe that achieving this connection enables us—those living in the present—to shape new landscapes while honouring the ones that already exist.

(Collaboration: International House of Japan; Shahani Associates; and Japan Foundation, New Delhi)
 

Recalibrating Partition

Discussants: Yogesh Snehi, Associate Professor of History, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. He is the author of Spatializing Popular Sufi Shrines in Punjab: Dreams, Memories, Territoriality; Debjani Sengupta, Professor at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She is the author of The Partition of Bengal: Fragile Borders and New Identities (2016); Anindita Ghoshal, Associate Professor of History at Diamond Harbour Women’s University, Kolkata. She is the author of Refugee, Borders, and Identities: Rights and Habitat in East and Northeast India (2021)

Moderator: Dr Shashank Shekhar Sinha, an independent author, historian and Publishing Director, South Asia, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group

This panel discussion brings together new perspectives from Punjab, Bengal and Northeast India to rethink Partition through themes like borderlands, locality, displacement, rehabilitation, belonging and lived experiences. Focusing on marginalised and other communities, and empathy amidst violence, it interrogates questions of citizenship, caste, gender and ethnicity—showing how 1947 continues to shape contemporary South Asia.

(Collaboration: @Crossroads)

SAMHiTA-Bharat ki Soch Public Lecture Series

Diurnal Medicine: The Rajballabhiya Drabyaguna and the Making of a Regional Medical Tradition in Bengal, 18th to 20th Centuries
 

Speaker: Dr. Projit Bihari Mukharji, Professor of History, Ashoka University, recipient of the Pfizer Award, Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from National Science Foundation of the USA, and the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is the author of Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print, and Daktari Medicine (2009); and Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66 (2022).

Chair: Dr. Burton Cleetus, Centre for Historical Studies, JNU

The Sanskrit Dravyaguna genre, which developed from earlier Nighantu texts, catalogued medically significant substances (dravya) along with their uses. Focusing on Bengal, the lecture traces the transition from a widely used Dravyaguna attributed to the 11th-century physician Chakrapanidatta to an 18th-century work ascribed to Raja Rajballabh, a Baidya courtier in the court of Bengal’s post Mughal Nawabs. By tracking the evolution of this text, particularly through the early print editions, the lecture revisits the dynamics of the transition from manuscript to print in the context of medical knowledge.

Second lecture of the series on “Health, Wellness and Nutrition”, organised by IIC- International Research Division and Bharat ki Soch Foundation