Panelists: Cmdre C. Uday Bhaskar, leading expert security and strategic affairs and Director, Society for Policy Studies; Amb. Navtej Singh Sarna, former Indian Ambassador to Israel; and Ms Sagari Chhabra, multiple award-winning author & filmmaker,playwright, poet and Director, Hamaara Itihas Archives

Chair: Amb. K.P. Fabian, Professor, Symbiosis University, Pune and Indian Society of International Law, New Delhi

The grim toll of the war that started on 7 October 2023, has crossed 10,600 as on 4 November 2023. Women and children account for more than two-thirds of the dead in Gaza. Deprived of potable water, food, medicines, and other essentials, with hospitals, schools, and places of worship getting bombed, the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza need urgent help that can be given only if Israel stops bombing. The panel will holistically examine this complex issue – what is India’s policy and what are the implications thereof? Is there any way the state of war between Israel and the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories can be replaced by an agreed peace?

Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South 

Speaker: Nivedita Menon, Professor, Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is the author of several books including Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law (2004); and Seeing like a Feminist (2012). This talk is based on her new book, Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South (Permanent Black; 2023). Nivedita Menon is a regular commentator on contemporary issues on the collective blog kafila.online (of which she is one of the founders), and active in democratic politics in India 

Chair: Tanika Sarkar, historian of modern India and Visiting Professor of History, Ashoka University

In the performance of a magic trick, misdirection draws attention away from where the trick is happening to another place which appears more fascinating. The talk addresses the grid of meanings secularism produces, which effects such a misdirection. Certain features become hyper visible (religion, women) while others are obscured (caste, capitalism, the non-individuated, non-rational self). The perspective is from the global South and India, and reconceptualises secularism more generally.

Cancelled

Curator: Prof. Himanshu Prabha Ray

Early Buddhist Art at Sanchi: Power and Piety in Uruvela Narrative Cycle

Illustrated lecture by Prof. Seema Bawa who specializes in the History of South Asian Art and Culture, Department of History, University of Delhi. Books written by her include Gods, Men and Women: Gender and Sexuality in Early Indian Art and Religion and Art of the Chamba Valley, A.D. 700-1300. The areas of research focus on Indian Art, Ancient Indian Art and Iconography; Western Himalayan Art and Religion and Modern and Contemporary Indian Art. She was a recipient of DAAD Fellowship at the University of Bonn

This presentation focuses on the physical and imagined landscapes and locale within the visual narratives in early Buddhist art at Sanchi. The Uruvela or Uruvilva cycle, depicted on the pillar of the Eastern gateway at Sanchi Stupa 1, illustrates the interaction between the Kasyapa brothers and the aniconic presence indicating the Buddha. The fact that this is also a story that is based on the contestation between the established ideology of yajna and the emergence of Buddha as a proselytizing force makes nuanced reading of this visual even more interesting. 

Speakers: Dr. Harish S. Wankhede, Assistant Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Smt Renu Mittal, Senior journalist; and Shri Tiruchi N. Siva, MP, Rajya Sabha, Leader of DMK in Rajya Sabha

Moderator: Suhas Borker, Mediaperson and Trustee, IIC

This is the 18th edition of the annual discussion instituted in 2006. The discussion also marks the 31st anniversary of the ‘Working Group on Alternative Strategies’
 

(Collaboration: Working Group on Alternative Strategies)

World Upside Down: India Recalibrates its Geopolitics

By Sujan R.Chinoy (HarperCollins India: 2023)

Discussants: Prof. C. Raja Mohan, Senior Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute, Delhi; Amb. Sujan R.Chinoy, Director General, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and author of the book

Moderator: Shri K.N. Shrivastava, Director, IIC
 

A People’s Library: Celebrating The Connemara Public Library 

An exhibition of texts, reproductions of archival photographs, facsimiles of rare books, digitised copies of illuminated manuscripts and other digital reproductions from the collection of The Connemara Public Library, Chennai

Inauguration of the exhibition by Shri Govind Mohan, Secretary, Min. of Culture, GOI on 27 October 2023 at 4 pm

(Collaboration: The Connemara Public Library, Chennai)

Speakers:  Prof. C. Raja Mohan, Senior Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute; Prof. Ummu Salma Bava, Professor, Centre for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Dr. Omair Anas, Assistant Professor, Ankara Yildrim Beyazit University, and Research Director, Centre for India-West Asia Dialogue, New Delhi

Moderator: Dr. Muddassir Quamar, Associate Professor, Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

The unveiling of the India-Middle East-Europe multimodel transport and energy corridor at the sidelines of the G20 summit is a significant milestone. In India’s recent quest for greater connectivity with the Middle East and Europe, the panel will look at the geopolitical implications of the planned corridor and the challenges ahead in implementing this ambitious project

(Collaboration: Asia Society Policy Institute, Delhi)
 

The Crisis in India-Canada Relations

Panelists: Prof. Aprajita Kashyap, Assistant Professor, Centre for Canadian, US & Latin American Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Amb. K.P. Fabian, Professor, Indian Society of International Law, New Delhi; and Symbiosis University, Pune

 Chair: Mr. Come Carpentier de Gourdon, Convener, Editorial Board of the World Affairs Journal, author of From India to Infinity

The panel will discuss the geopolitical implications of this crisis, it's impact on bilateral relations, and on the Indian diaspora ( 3% of population) in Canada

Speaker: Professor Dr. Judith Becker, Chair, Early Modern and Modern History of Christianity, Faculty of Theology, Humboldt University, Berlin

Chair: Dr. Swapna Liddle

When German-speaking missionaries came to India in 1834, they travelled with backpacks full of presumptions and inherited values that they intended to transfer to Indian people. Very quickly, they had to learn that life and people in India were quite different from what they had assumed. The talk asks how their values and imaginations were altered due to this experience. Furthermore, the representations of the values changed when the missionaries ascribed certain values to Indians and depicted converts as "model Christians". The talk will describe this history while asking how best to write a history of Christian missions.   

(Collaboration: The History Collective)

Curator: Prof. Himanshu Prabha Ray

Housing the Heritage: The Calcutta High Court and Wills from early Colonial Bengal
Illustrated lecture by Dr. Ruchika Sharma, Assistant Professor, Mata Sundri College, University of Delhi

Chair: Prof. Partho Datta, School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University

The Calcutta High Court stands tall in the Fort William area of the city of Kolkata. It has the distinction of being the first High Court and one of the three Chartered High Courts to be set up in India, along with the High Courts of Bombay and Madras. The Calcutta High Court houses legal documents, particularly Wills and Probates from late 18th century onwards. The talk will look at two kinds of heritage – the building of the High Court itself; and it will elaborate upon the earliest Wills, giving a glimpse of the mixed-race British household and domesticity of early Colonial Bengal