Rethinking About Wickedness: From Nigamasarma to the Palestinian West Bank

Speaker: Prof. David Shulman, Indologist who is regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the languages of South India. His research embraces many fields, including the history of religion in South India, Indian poetics, Tamil Islam, Dravidian linguistics and Carnatic music

 

Moderator: Shuddhabrata Sengupta, artist and curator with the Raqs Media Collective, Delhi

 

The Lecture is presented in conjunction with The Ila Dalmia FICA Research Grant, a grant given in support of research in the field of modern and contemporary art with particular focus on Indian art. Both these platforms are supported by art historian Yashodhara Dalmia.

 

In the talk Prof Shulman will draw analogies between the literary Mahatmya texts about Pandharpur where we find the tale of Nigama?arma, a seemingly incorrigible rogue who turns out to be capable of becoming a human being. 

 

Beginning with this story, he will move on to his first-hand experiences of wickedness enacted by Israeli settlers, soldiers, and policemen in the occupied West Bank. Wickedness can involve acts of overt, sadistic cruelty, but more often it is a subtle movement in the self, one that involves what can only be called a choice. All of us face such decisions, seemingly minor but possibly heavy with consequence, every day. Unlike "evil," a term suggesting a somewhat abstract and impersonal force, wickedness comes from the whole person and bears the marks of her or his character

 

(Collaboration: The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art)