Lead presentation:  Shri S.M.S. Chadha, former Indian Ambassador to Argentina

 

Speakers: Professor S.P. Ganguly, Professor, JNU ; Mr. Pablo Cesar, director of an Indo-Argentinian film on Victoria Ocampo; and others

 

Chair: Dr. Karan Singh, MP

 

The brilliant and beautiful Victoria Ocampo passed away in January 1979.  In India, she is known solely through the prism of Tagore.  And there is much misunderstanding about the relationship.  This remarkable lady defied the skewed norms of the macho Argentine society of her time to become an eminent literary figure in the West.  In her late 80’s, she was finally admitted to Argentina’s Academy of letters, the first woman in Latin America to breach that barrier.  While in her 20’s she read and wrote about Gandhi and Tagore and in time became a major influence on the life of Tagore, inspiring much of his poetry in the last seventeen years of his life. This year marks her 125th birth anniversary