Music from the tribal North East of India

An illustrated lecture presented by Amb. Gautam Mukhopadhaya 
 
Amb. Gautam Mukhopadhaya is a former Indian Ambassador to Syria, Afghanistan and Myanmar. Unschooled in music, his taste in music as a listener evolved from old Hindi film and Western pop music, to progressive rock and jazz and later Hindustani classical and South Asian folk and devotional music in his early years, to include international or so-called 'world' music ranging from early European, Latin American, and increasingly in the course of his life and career, African, West Asian, South East and East Asian music, and contemporary world music. 
 

The Right to Dream: JP's life and legacy
 

Yogendra Yadav and Anand Kumar in conversation with Sujata Prasad and Ashutosh Bhardwaj.
This is the 21st Conversation in this Series

(Collaboration: Ahad Anhad)
 

Chandigarh – A World View
 

Speaker: Peter Sanders, an Australian architect, planner, and artist

Moderator: Rajesh Luthra, an architect and urban designer, Principal at Development Consortium, and Visiting Professor at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi.

Drawing on his first-hand experience of working in Chandigarh in the early 1960s, the talk examines the city’s global significance in modern architecture and urban planning, reflecting on Le Corbusier’s vision, Pierre Jeanneret’s role, and the broader implications of international architectural collaboration in post-Independence India.
 

Aaj Kavita 
 

Poetry readings by Pankaj Rag, Gaurav Pandey, Amrit Ranjan and Hemant Devalikar

(Collaboration: Raza foundation)
 

In Conversation

Ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhyay was India’s Ambassador to Syria (2006-08), Afghanistan (2010-13) and Myanmar (2013-16) with Thant Myint-U, award-winning historian, writer, conservationist and international public servant. An honorary fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and a recipient of a Padma Shri from the Government of India;

A thought-provoking chat with acclaimed historian Thant Myint-U and his book which traces his grandfather’s (U Thant, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations) integral yet forgotten roles in some of the twentieth century’s most critical crises. Drawing on newly declassified documents, he traces U Thant’s tireless efforts to bring peace to Vietnam, create a fairer international economy, safeguard the environment and avoid a third world war.

MUSIC APPRECIATION PROMOTION
Aesthetics of Film Music                                                                                                                                                     

 An illustrated presentation by Dr Mrudula Dadhe Joshi

The presentation will demonstrate various aesthetic elements observed in the making of Hindi Film Music. It will further examine the application of various gharanas used in Hindi film music.

Dr Mrudula Dadhe Joshi an expert in film music, singer, writer, and faculty member for Light Vocal Music at Mumbai University 

Memory, Migration and the Archive: The Transnational Afterlives of Family Photographs

Speaker: Özge Baykan Calafato, an academic, curator, and writer. A lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. She is the author of Making the Modern Turkish Citizen: Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era (I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2022).

Moderator: Prof. Sabeena Gadihoke, a scholar, documentary filmmaker, and photo historian, and a long-time faculty member at AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia.

How do photographs travel across borders, lives, and generations, and what forms of personal and collective memory do they invoke? This talk traces the intricate entanglements of transnational memory, migration histories, and photographic archives. 

BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP 
Seeds of Hate: Bangladesh's extremist surge
Edited by Shahriar Kabir and Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury (Grin Media, 2025)

Discussants: SH M J Akbar, Former MOS External Affairs, Author & Senior Journalist; Amb Pankaj Saran, Member NSAB, Former High Commissioner to Bangladesh & Ambassador to Russia & Deputy NSA; Dr. Anirban Ganguly, Chairman, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Research Foundation; Ms Smruti Patnaik, Research Fellow IDSA & Noted Bangladesh Expert; Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury, Editor of the book

BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP                                                         
The Vulgarity of caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India
by Shailaja Paik (Navayana, 2022)

Discussants: Shailaja Paik, professor at University at Cincinnati and MacArthur Genius of 2024 & Author of the book followed by a conversation with Prof Projit Mukharji, Prof. of History, Ashoka University and Prof Prathama Banerjee Historian, CSDS
 

Five Years On: Mapping the New Terrain of Indian Publishing
 

Keynote Speaker: Gaëlle Bohé, Director of Fontaine O Livres and President of the Académie Hors Concours, which awards the annual Prix Hors Concours to francophone authors from independent publishers.
Five years on, Indian publishing is still reshaping itself in response to the disruptions of the pandemic. This session takes a broad, stock-taking view of the industry, exploring how shifts of the past decade – political centralisation, market consolidation, and rapid technological change – have intensified in the post-pandemic period. From the growing power of conglomerates and global platforms to the pressures on independent publishers and the expanding role of AI, we examine the forces that are defining Indian publishing’s next phase and what they mean for the future of books in the country.
The keynote address will be followed by a Panel Discussion and Awards.
(Collaboration: Publishing Next)