Speakers: Sreemati Chakrabarti, former Professor, Dept. of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi; Chairperson and Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies; Ashok K. Kantha, former Ambassador to China; Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies; Distinguished Fellow, Vivekananada International Foundation, New Delhi; Ritu Agarwal, Associate Professor, Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Rityusha Mani Tiwary, Dept, of Political Science, Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi; Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi; Associate Editor, China Report: A Journal of East Asian Studies; Usha Chandran, Assistant Professor, Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi; and Anand P. Krishnan, Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University; Adjunct Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi

Chair: Manoranjan Mohanty, former Professor of Political Science and Director, Developing Countries Research Centre, University of Delhi; Distinguished Professor, Council for Social Development; Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi

(Collaboration: Institute of Chinese Studies)
 

Programme Details

Dedicated to Smt. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya

Organised in collaboration with Kathkatha Puppet Arts Trust and with the support of the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, the festival includes a seminar; shadow puppet festival; and screening of films

From 10:00 to 17:00 in Conference Room II
Out of Shadows: Discussions on the Plurality of Shadow Puppets
Keynote Address by Anurupa Roy, Indian puppeteer, puppet designer and director of puppet theatre

Presentations by Prof. Peter W. Marx, German theatre and performance studies scholar, Chairperson of Theatre and Media Studies, University of Cologne; Prof. Kaushik Bhaumik, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Airan Berg, international working theatre maker and artistic director, who specialises in large scale participatory and inclusive objects; he is the Artistic Director of Festival deer Regionen; Gunduraju, who belongs to a family of Togalu Gombeyaata, shadow puppeteers from Karnataka; Prof. Gouranga Charan Dash, Srirama Institute of Shadow Theatre; Ranjana Pandey, Editor and Publisher of Sutradhar and President, UNIMA India; and Dr. Atul Sinha, Assistant Professor  

AT 18:30 IN THE C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM
Film Before Film (Was geschah wirklich zwischen den Bildern/ Germany)
(83 min; 1986; German with English subtitles)
Director: Werner Nekes

An exhilarating and amusing encyclopedic look at the “prehistory” of cinema. Nekes charts the fascination with moving pictures which led to the birth of film, covering shadow plays, peep shows, flip books, flicks, magic lanterns, lithopanes, scrolls and numerous historical artifices
 

Panelists: Prof. Apoorvanand, Dept. of Hindi, University of Delhi; Prof. Ayesha Kidwai, Centre for Linguistics, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Dr. Karthick Narayanan, Linguist and researcher

Moderator: Prof. Anita Rampal, Convenor, IIC Sectoral Policy Group on Education
 

Unpolitically Correct: The Politics and Economics of Governance
By Satya Mohanty (Rupa Publications India: 2024)

Discussants: Prof. Ashutosh Varshney, political scientist, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences, and Professor of Political Science at Brown University, USA; Shri Nitin Desai, distinguished economist and former Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, UN; and Dr. Satya Mohanty, poet, playwright, novelist and writer, former Union Secretary of Education and Secretary General, National Human Rights Commission; and author of the book

Chair: Dr. Shashi Tharoor, MP

Trump’s America First Trade Policy: Implications and Options

Speaker: Prof. Abhijit Das, expert on international trade and former Head, Centre for WTO Studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade

Discussant: Shri Anup Wadhawan, former Union Commerce Secretary

Chair: Shri Siraj Hussain, former Union Secretary Agriculture, Govt. of India and Advisor, Food Processing, FICCI

Ukraine: Where is it headed?

Speaker: Dr. John Cherian, senior journalist

Chair: Amb. K.P. Fabian

Memory Keepers: Poems
By Payal Nagpal (Signer: 2024)

Discussants: Dr. Anand Prakash, poet and academic; Prof. Radha Chakravarty, poet, critic and translator, formerly Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, Ambedkar University; Prof. Payal Nagpal, Professor of English, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi and author of the book; and others

Chair: Dr. Taisha Abraham, author, theorist and critic

Cooling our Environment: An Architects Vision to Combat Global Warming
By Kalpana Sutaria (Atmosphere Press: 2024)

Discussants: Ms Anumitra Roychowdhury, Executive Director, Research and Advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment; Shri Ashok B. Lall, architect and former Member, Global Holcim Foundation; and Ms Kalpana Sutaria, activist, architect, and author of the book

Chair: Shri Suhas Borker, Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTC) and Trustee, IIC

Panelists: Astri Ghosh, who translates from Norwegian, Hindi and other languages into English; Krupa Ge, who translates from Tamil to English; Rita Kothari who translates from Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, Sindhi to English; and Ira Pande who translates from Hindi to English

Moderator: Rita Kothari

The discussion focuses on translation, and what happens when women translate women. The discussion brings together translators to speak about how and whether their gender impacts the process of translation, do they feel more drawn to the work of women, what is the ‘relationship’ between writer and translator when both occupy the same gender

(Collaboration: Zubaan; and Ashoka Centre for Translation)

Edited by Arundhati Virmani, Jean Boutier and Manohar Kumar (Routledge, New Delhi: 2025)

Short presentation on the book by the Editors of the book – Prof. Arundhati Virmani, EHESS, Norbert Elias Centre in Social Sciences, Marseille; Prof. Jean Boutier, Directeur d’Etudes, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille and former Director of the Norbert Elias Centre in Social Sciences (2002-2011); and Prof. Manohar Kumar, Assistant Professor, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (IIIT); and Shri Namit Arora

Panelists: Shri Manish Tewari, Member of Parliament; Prof. Rajiv Bhargava, noted political theorist, Honorary Fellow and Founder Director, Parekh Institute of Indian Thought, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies; Prof. Zoya Hasan, National Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research and Professor of Political Science and the Dean of School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Namit Arora, public historian and author, former IIT and Silicon valley engineer

Moderator: Ms Shweta Kothari, journalist

Discussion based on the proceedings of an IIC Seminar organised in collaboration with EHESS, Centre Norbert Elias, Marseille and Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi in January 2020