Inauguration of the Festival

By Shri Shyam Saran, President, IIC 

Followed by
 

Sampoorna – ‘I travel from Temple to Stage’
Conceptualised, choreographed and designed by Sharmila Biswas

Presented by Sharmila Biswas and artists of Odissi Vision and Movement Centre, Kolkata - Rohini Banerjee; Krishnendu Saha; Koushik Das; Dipjoy Sarkar; Biswajit Mondal; Kunal Pradhan; Raaginni Hindocha; and Shangsaptaka Dey

The choreography traces the evolution of Odissi dance from the traditional practitioners, its revival as part of India’s nationalist movement, to become one of the finest  classical dance forms today

Scenes from Santiniketan & Benodbehari’s Handscrolls 

The earliest and longest handscroll ever painted by Benodebehari Mukherjee, depicting the 1920s landscape of Santiniketan. The exhibition also includes reproductions of other handscrolls and existing fragments from the collection of Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan and one from the collection of Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Curated by Prof. R. Siva Kumar

Inauguration by Smt Ira Chaudhuri, eminent artist on 19th October 2024 at 11:30 am

As part of the exhibition, there will be a talk on 20 October at 6:30 pm in the Art Gallery, Kamaladevi Complex 

Landscape and the Artist’s Self: Benodebehari and the Santiniketan Countryside

Illustrated lecture by Prof. R. Siva Kumar, well-known art historian and curator

Chair: Dr. Brinda Bose

(Collaboration: Gallery Rasa)
 

Khadi: The Fabric of Freedom, The Language of Fashion

The exhibition traces Khadi’s transformative journey across time from a tool of resistance to becoming a symbol of conscious living and modern fashion. An immersive experience, weaving together the historical, cultural, and contemporary narratives of Khadi. On display are digitized copies of rare archival photographs; khadi timelines; loom installation; different types of charkhas along with spinning demonstrations; and contemporary designs and the work of Centre of Excellence for Khadi

Conceptualised and curated by Centre of Excellence for Khadi, NIFT, Delhi; set-up by Ministry of MSME at NIFT, Ministry of Textile;  with Sunaina Suneja, textile revivalist, deeply engaged with khadi and the charkha 

Inauguration by Shri Manoj Kumar, Chairman, Khadi and Village Industries Commission and Shri K.N. Shrivastava, Director, IIC on 18 October at 5 pm 

(Collaboration: Centre of Excellence for Khadi)
 

The Future of the Past: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

An exhibition on the history and cultural records maintained and preserved by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune. On display are reproductions of archival photographs, facsimiles of rare books, digitised copies of illuminated manuscripts, texts, publications and other digital reproductions from the collection of the Institute
 
Inauguration by Shri N.N. Vohra, Life Trustee, IIC on 18 October at 4 pm

(Collaboration: Bhandrakar Oriental Research Institute, Pune)
 

Colourful Cosmopolitanism: Art and Music in the History of Indian Anti-Colonial Nationalism 

Keynote Address by Prof. Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Department of History, Harvard University

Chair: Shri Shyam Saran, President, IIC 

Manuscripts and the Movement of Ideas across Asia

An exhibition of select manuscripts from SAMHiTA: South Asian Manuscripts Histories and Textual Archives and other digital libraries that show how texts from India travelled to Central, West and East Asia, starting with the 2,000-year-old birch-bark scrolls of Mahayana Buddhism that were discovered in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Translations and illustrated manuscripts reveal the creative interchange between languages, between disciplines like lexicography and poetry, and between painter and scribe

Inauguration by Shri Shyam Saran, President, IIC on 17 October 2024 at 4 pm

(Organised by the IIC-International Research Division)
 

Do Courts grant women their inheritance claims?

Speaker: Prof. Bina Agarwal with Shruthi Naik
Chair: Alok Prasanna Kumar, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Bengaluru

Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK. She is also affiliated to and is ex-Director of the Institute of Economic Growth

Bridging economics and law, Agarwal will highlight how despite inheritance law reform, a wide gender gap persists in property transfers by families. Given this, do women use courts to claim their rights? Who opposes them? What kind of property is disputed? What do judgements reveal in terms of outcomes and language? This pioneering research co-authored with Shruthi Naik of Vidhi probes online data on High court judgements over 2005-2020 to address these questions. 

Register at: https://forms.gle/BjhCsbXVWXVVpx2t6

(Organised in collaboration with Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Bengaluru)

Bound by Grammar: Loan Words, Linguistic Borders, and Vernacular Poetry in the Līlātilakam

Speaker: Dr. Sivan Goren-Arzony, Lecturer, Asian Studies Department, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Chair: Dr Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, IIC-International Research Division

The talk will explore the 14th century Līlātilakam, discussing the grammar and poetics of Manipravāḷam from Kerala. The speaker will focus on the ‘theory of semblance’ it offers, advocating the autonomous nature of Kerala’s bhāṣā.

Dr. Sivan Goren-Arzony is a lecturer in the Asian Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University. She specializes in premodern South Asian poetry, particularly Kerala’s Manipravāḷam tradition. She holds a PhD in Comparative Religion from Hebrew University and was a Harvard Society of Fellows member.

Fourteenth in a series of lectures organised by IIC-International Research Division with the support of the Ministry of External Affairs
 
 

Illustrated lecture by Madan Meena, artist and researcher working with the rural, nomadic and tribal communities in Rajasthan and Gujarat to document their lives in a bid to preserve their cultural roots and identities. His doctoral work was on “Art of the Meena Tribe”, which focused on the traditions of his own ancestral community. He is at present Honorary Director, Adivasi Academy, Gujarat 

The Tejaji Gatha or the ballad of Tejaji, describes the heroic life of Tejaj, the snake deity. Though the snake deity was born in western Rajasthan he is celebrated and sung across Rajasthan to Madhya Pradesh. Madan Meena will focus on mapping the variations of the ballad with samples of recordings in about 12 languages from Kharnal (Nagaur) in western Rajasthan where Tejaji was born, to villages in Jhalawar and Baran districts bordering Madhya Pradesh and to Jaipur and Dausa in the north


(Collaboration: Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology, American Institute of Indian Studies)