Curated by Rajiv Mehrotra

Still Tibet (USA)
(52 min; 2025; English)
Director: Miguel Angel Cano Santizo

Filmmaker Miguel Cano embarks on a journey through one of the most remote ethnically Tibetan areas of China’s Sichuan Province. Using a mix of hitchhiking, motor biking, and hiking, he reaches parts of the region typically untouched by tourists. Through stunning cinematography, Cano explores this sacred land, meeting those fighting to preserve their spiritual and national identity, while revealing a vulnerable civilization that still retains an extraordinary mystical essence

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

Creations in harmony with nature
 

An exhibition of work using natural dyes, leaf imprints and fibre art
By Pooja Jayan

Preview on 11 February 2025 at 18:30 hrs

Hindustani Violin Recital
By Johar Ali from Delhi, disciple of Ustad Gohar Ali Khan    

At 19:00
Kathak Recital

By Deepti Gupta from Delhi, disciple of Pandit Rajendra Gangani
 

Ramayana in World Art and Thought
Edited by Shovana Narayan (Shubhi Publications, 2024)

Chief Guest: Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, former Union Minister
Chair: Dr. Karan Singh, statesman, philosopher and thinker 

Discussants: Dr. Yatindra Mishra, poet, cinema and music scholar; and Dr. Shovana Narayan, well-known Kathak artist/Guru and author of the book

Illustrated lecture by Dr. Stephen Huyler, well-known cultural anthropologist and art historian who has spent the past fifty-one years traveling the length and breadth of India conducting field research in almost every district.

Dr. Huyler’s areas of expertise are rural Indian arts and crafts, Hindu devotional rituals, and Indian women’s identity and art. He has served as a guest curator for thirty separate exhibitions of Indian art in museums in the United States, Britain and India, among other countries

Introduction: Minhazz Majumdar, author, Curator and Art Activist
 

Musaliar King: Decolonial Historiography of Malabar’s Resistance
By Abbas Panakkal (Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt Ltd, 2024)

Discussants: Mr. E.T. Muhammed Basheerka, social worker and Member of Parliament, Kerala; Dr. Syed Iqbal Hasnain, educationist and climate expert: and Dr. Abbas Panakkal, historian and author of the book

Chair: Amb. K.P. Fabian, Professor, Symbiosis University, Pune
 

Vichitra Veena Recital
By Gianni Ricchizzi

Followed by
Dhrupad Recital
By Ustad F. Wasifuddin Dagar
With Pt. Mohan Shyam Sharma on the pakhawaj

(Collaboration: Dagar Brothers Memorial Trust)

What the West should Learn from India: Insights from a German Diplomat
By Walter J. Lindner (Juggernaut, 2024)

Discussants: Mr. Jawed Ashraf, former Indian Ambassador of India to France and Monaco; Amb. Ronen Sen, former Indian Ambassador to the USA; Amb. Meera Shankar, former Indian Ambassador to Germany and USA; and Mr Walter Lindner, former Ambassador of Germany to India

Moderator: Dr. Constantino Xavier, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy and Security Studies, Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP)

The Symposium will reflect on the past and future of design education for textile artisans in India. The symposium brings together an inspiring array of voices – artisan-design graduates, educators, mentors, and experts, alongside Judy Frater, the founder of India’s pioneering design education programme for artisans and  the Founder Director Emerita of Somaiya Kala Vidya, an institute of education for artisans

Moderator: Dr. Ritu Sethi, Craft Revival Trust

(Collaboration: Craft Revival Trust)
 

Curated by Prof. Himanshu Prabha Ray

The thief who stole my heart: Sacred Bronzes from Chola India
Illustrated lecture by Prof. Vidya Dehejia, Barbara Stoler Miller Professor Emerita of Indian Art, Columbia University, New York, and author of a range of books on the history of Indian art that connect the literary and visual arts in meaningful ways. Her recent publications include The Thief who Stole My Heart: The Material Life of Sacred Bronzes from Chola India, 855-1280 (2021); India: A Story through 100 Objects (2021); The Unfinished. Indian Stone Carvers at Work (2016) among others. Prof. Dehejia served as Chief Curator & Deputy Director, Freer & Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian in Washington DC, and as Acting Director in 2001-2002

Chair: Prof. Parul Dave Mukherji, Professor, School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
 

The talk commences with an introduction to the sacred bronzes created by a master sculptor around the year 1000, and suggests that his inspiration may have been child-saint Sambandar’s opening hymn that hails Lord Shiva as “the thief who stole my heart.” Prof. Dehejia explores this sensuous imagery before moving to ask questions of this material that have not been asked before. Where did the Cholas acquire the copper required to cast the many temple bronzes that are solid heavy pieces of metal? What were the circumstances that permitted the creation of hundreds of temples and vast numbers of sacred bronzes despite the constant warfare that the Chola monarchs were engaged in?