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

Is AMR a Growing Public Health Concern?

Speakers: Dr. Sangeeta Sharma, Professor, Neuropsychopharmacology, Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences (IHBAS); Dr. Vijay Pal Singh, veterinarian, CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology and Assistant Professor, Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR); and Dr. Rupak Singla, National Institute of TB and Respiratory Diseases (NITRD)

Moderator: Ravi Agarwal, Founder Director, Toxics Link

AMR is identified as one of the biggest health threats of the present time. It is a global issue of concern rendering common and life-threatening infections increasingly untreatable. India has one of the largest burdens of drug resistant pathogens worldwide, including the highest burden of multidrug resistant tuberculosis. The panel will discuss the pressing concerns of AMR, its repercussions on human health and the environment and also the solutions that can help mitigate the problem

(Collaboration: Toxics Link)

Objects and Histories

Illustrated  lecture by Prof. Sudeshna Guha, Professor, Dept. of History and Archaeology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence

Chair: Surajit Sarkar

Sudeshna Guha will be speaking on her recent book A History of India Through 75 Objects (Hachette India: 2022). Through a selection of things from prehistory to modern-day India, the book demonstrates the importance of mapping the changing meanings and valuations of things over time for seeking historical and archaeological enquiries. It conveys the inordinate power of object worlds for interrogating projects of history-and heritage-making and brings to focus objects’ experiential and social effects, It, thereby, creates regard for the many histories we may expect of a particular phenomenon, encourages appreciation of history’s complexity, and guides readers to see what history is always making

Archaeological Reconnaissance of Megalithic Sites in PIP (Pulichintala Irrigation Project) Submergence Area, Telangana

By Dr Nandini Bhattacharya Sahu, Director, ASI 
 
Megalithic sites were excavated by the ASI's Excavation Branch in Nagpur in the year 2008-2009. Apart from the excavations, intensive survey was undertaken here to discover, identify and document Megalithic monuments. During this exercise  many hitherto unknown types of Megalithic monuments were brought to light

Speakers: Patricia Mukhim, Editor, The Shillong Times; Sanjoy Hazarika, Commentator who works on the North East and its neighbourhood, author of three books on the North East; Pradip Phanjoubam, Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics; Dr. Memthianngai Guite, Associate Professor, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Shri S. N. Sahu, Columnist, Commentator and former Press Secretary to President K. R. Narayanan

Moderator: Suhas Borker, Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTV) and Trustee, IIC

This conversation marks the 33rd anniversary of the presidential assent to the Prasar Bharti Act 1990 and is the 30th discussion in the annual series

(Collaboration: Jan Prasar) 

The present edition of Creative Theory Colloquium seeks forth to explore the myriad aspects of pluralist, relational world that impacts the being and becoming in the cosmos, as parts of co-growing, collaborative space. In the process, the specific panels enquire into various themes including knowledge traditions and practices, space, gender, feminism, rights, democracy, power, vulnerability, precarity, religion, consciousness, democracy, resistance, and security.

Programme Schedule

Inaugural address at 16:30 

At 17:00
Unveiling Paradigm Shift: Towards Transformative Social Science in Contemporary Times

(Collaboration: Foundation for Creative Social Research, International Herbert Marcuse Society, USA, and The Raza Foundation) 
 

Speakers: Najaf Haider, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU); Aparna Balachandran, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Delhi University; Harish Wankhede, Assistant Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU; Akanksha Kumar, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Janaki Devi Memorial College, Delhi University; and Divya Cherian  Assistant  Professor, Department of History, Princeton University

Moderator: Suhas Borker, Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTV) & Trustee, IIC 

The programme shall commence with the release of Divya Cherian's book Merchants of Virtue - Hindus, Muslims and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia - Recipient of the 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences

What did it mean to be Hindu in pre-colonial India in the centuries immediately prior to British conquest? What do histories of Hindu identity have to do with histories of caste? These questions have taken on increasing relevance in contemporary India and in the Indian diaspora, with the assertions of the anti-caste movement being countered through references to historical scholarship that has demonstrated the ways in which colonialism remade caste. Centering the pre-colonial pasts of caste provides a new perspective into how categories of “Hindu,” “Muslim,” and “Untouchable” animated life, law, and local politics in India on the eve of colonial modernity. In turn, these insights are significant for the quest for social justice today.
 

Ethnomedicine and Tribal Healing Practices in India: Challenges and Possibilities of Recognition and Integration

Edited by Sunita Reddy, Nemthianngai Guite and Bamdev Subedi (Springer: 2023)

Speakers: Dr. Anandaraman Sharma PV, Professor and Head, Department of Panchakarma, All India Institute of Ayurveda, New Delhi ; Dr. Ritu Priya, Professor, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU

Chair: Dr. Shailja Chandra, Former Secretary, GoI & Former Chief Secretary Delhi & Public Policy Analyst
 

On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory

By Thomas Hertog (Bantam: 2023)

Discussants: Dr. Sanil Unnikrishnan, Dean, International Relations & Assistant Professor, Dept. of Physics, St. Stephen’s College; Dr. Alphy Geever, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Philosophy, St. Stephen’s College

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