Programme Details

Speaker: Prof. Sachidananda Mohanty, Member, University Grants Commission and former Vice-Chancellor, Central University, Odisha

Chair: Dr. Karan Singh

Opening Remarks: Shri K.N. Shrivastava, Director, IIC

Sri Aurobindo’s reputation as a poet, patriot, revolutionary, mystic, exponent of integral yoga and the future evolution of Man, has eclipsed for long, his socio-cultural and intellectual vision. His pivotal role in the intellectual history of ideas, more fundamentally, his contributions to the making of the Indian nation, and his relevance to modern India, have not been sufficiently recognized in the academic world and public culture.

Citing instances from his multivolume work, this talk will argue that Sri Aurobindo’s thought vision is central to understanding the crisis of the contemporary world

Punjabi Centuries: Tracing Histories of Punjab

Edited by Anshu Malhotra (Orient Blackswan: 2024)

Discussants: Dr. Yogesh Snehi, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Studies, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi; Dr. Kanika Singh, Director, Centre for Writing and Communication, Ashoka University, Sonepat; Dr. Arti Minocha, Associate Professor, Dept. of English, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi; and Prof. Anshu Malhotra, Dept. of Global Studies and Kundan Kaur Kapany Chair for Sikh & Punjab Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, and author of the book

Moderator: Dr. Aparna Balachandran, Associate Professor, Dept. of History, University of Delhi
 

Echoes of Faith: Tales of Explorations, Nature and Divinity

By Novel Lavasa and Ashok Lavasa (Rupa Publications India: 2024)

Discussants: Ms Shovana Narayan, well-known Kathak artist, guru and author; Shri Ajeet Bajaj, adventurer and Managing Director, Snow Leopard Adventures Pvt. Ltd.; Shri Suhas Borker, Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTV) and Trustee, IIC; Smt Novel Lavasa, co-author of the book; and Shri Ashok Lavasa, co-author of the book

Chair: Shri Shyam Saran, President, IIC

Moderator: Shri Saurabh Dwivedi, Founding Editor, The Lallantop

Speaker: Gaitri Issar Kumar, Former High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, (2020-2022) 

Panelists: Ronen Sen, Former Ambassador of India to the USA (2004-2009) and High Commissioner to the UK (2002-2004); and   Raj Chengappa, Group Editorial Director, India Today group. 

Chair: Shri Shyam Saran, President, IIC

Displaced: Refugees, Trauma, and Integration within Nations

By Shaifali Sandhya (OUP, USA: 2024)

Discussants: Amb. Navtej Sarna, Author, Historian & Former Ambassador to USA; and Dr. Shaifali Sandhya, Psychologist & Author of the book

Moderator: Amir Singh Pasrich, President Oxford & Cambridge Society of India 

Indu (36 min; 2024; Hindi with English translations)

With the poetry of Indu Jain (Indu Jain ki Kavita ke saath)
A film by Sameera Jain who will introduce the film

Screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker

The film is a homage to the beauty, depth and spirit of Indu Jain’s poetry. Her work seamlessly navigates the personal and political, words moving to keep pace with her energy, permeated with an innate sense of freedom. Indu Jain’s poetry is immersive, mesmerizing, sensuous. The film reflects this essence in an experiential, experimental way.

Indu Jain (1935-2008) was a strong presence on the Hindi literary scene, and wrote for close to fifty years. She had to her credit more than ten volumes of poetry and seven of prose, Her work has been widely anthologized and translated in Japan, Czechoslovakia and Pakistan