SALMA: Inspiring Minds l The Many Tongues of Poetry
20 Oct 2013

SALMA: Inspiring Minds l The Many Tongues of Poetry

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It was heartening to see a full house in early evening in Delhi; people from all walks of life… From this event, we will definitely cherish and keep warmly in our memories the translators’ meet, with Anamika (Hindi), Roomy Naqvy (Gujarati), Rabiul Islam (Ahomiya), Himanjali Sankar (Bangla), Kaif Ali Taqvi (Urdu), along with Salma herself. Nivedita Kalarikkal, who did a sensitive Malayalam translation of Salma, unfortunately could not join us as she fell ill, but Satchin Joseph Koshy of LILA represented her. As the translators had to work on the basis of Rizio Yohannan Raj’s English translation, this was also a good chance for the translators to exchange notes, and observe the possibilities of translation among different Indian languages.

Richard Mahapatra: Reporting Globalisation from a Village Dateline
19 Oct 2013

Richard Mahapatra: Reporting Globalisation from a Village Dateline

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Richard Mahapatra’s lecture was a veritable mine of associative thinking on development; it was potentially explosive. He traced the changing modes of ‘globalisation reporting’ since the early nineties, when the media was torn between the temptation to give more space to the Miss World pageant, than, responsibly, to the starvation in Kalahandi. Richard argues that India’s second partition happened with the introduction of the Below Poverty Line ration card. Richard showed how many local stories have global plots, around the emergence of a new geography of the media, and patronage determining the nature and length of news stories. He mapped for us the hidden roads between the cluster beans in Rajasthan and the energy crisis in the US, deforestation in Africa and the rising middle class in India, our tribal economy and European recession, farmers’ suicides and the rise of WTO, the tribal struggle in Odhisha ad the stock market in the UK. Kaushik Dasgupta, Richard’s colleague at Down to Earth, served as chair.

Michael Fisher: Extending Indian History into Britain
29 Sep 2013

Michael Fisher: Extending Indian History into Britain

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Michael H Fisher’s lecture was an extraordinary tour de force. Of course, it was a much-awaited treat for those familiar with Prof. Fisher’s rigorous and thorough scholarship. The presentation took the audience on a spectacular journey through maps, rare photographs, paintings, books. It was exciting to travel with Fisher through the indoor lives and public images of men and women who visited or settled in England during that period: from seamen to Indian spouses, hired scholars to entrepreneurs, diplomats to students, servants to officials… His voice so vividly revealed how their diverse lives and what they wrote and published have affected the later courses of Indian and European histories. The evening was also ‘special’ for a certain kind of magnetism that brought two unlike poles together. Indeed, Prof. Jonathan Gil Harris, whose PRISM lecture ‘The First Firangis’ explored the notion of Indianness vis-a-vis foreignness in the context of the first settlers in India, served as Chair during the lecture. Getting Fisher and Gil Harris to share a desk helped LILA see itself as a space facilitating exchange of ideas and actors from different spaces.

Kanika Batra: Theatre and the Right to Food Staples in India
19 Sep 2013

Kanika Batra: Theatre and the Right to Food Staples in India

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Dr. Kanika Batra’s lecture on ‘Theatre and Right to Food Staples in India’ gave our series a definitive cultural turn. It lucidly merged the question of cultural representation into the sociological, mediational and economic concerns raised by the previous PRISM lectures about the inclusivity of our growth processes. Evoking the plays of Premchand, the productions of Jana Natya Manch in the 80’s, and the works of Arjun Appadurai and Jayati Ghosh, Dr Batra asked why theatre and other cultural sites no longer consider ‘hunger’ a relevant theme of our times. Have we surpassed our hunger pangs? Where has hunger disappeared? Or has there been a systematic attempt to expel the hungry from our nation? Dr. Purabi Panwar chaired the lecture, and the Q&A hour raisedt very important questions and observations.

Jayati Ghosh: Incorporation and Exclusion in the Indian Economy
16 Sep 2013

Jayati Ghosh: Incorporation and Exclusion in the Indian Economy

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Prof. Jayati Ghosh delivered the fourth lecture of the LILA PRISM Lecture Series. The packed house included a lot of students from city colleges, a heartening thing to see! Ghosh’s lucid, jargon-free presentation carried passion and energy even as she systematically dealt with the tragic effects of incorporating the weaker sections of the society on unequal terms. Her analysis of the Indian economy through the prisms of education, globalisation, gender, society and castewas eye-opening in many ways. Dr. Kanika Batra chaired the session.

Paula Richman: Learning From Performance
16 Sep 2013

Paula Richman: Learning From Performance

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Paula Richman discussed the Ramayana stories as represented in the South Indian traditions of Kattaikoothu, Nangiar Koothu, and Yakshagana. Prof Richman’s scintillating presentation was matched by Prof. Rustom Bharucha‘s insightful intervention as Chair. This event offered us a fine illustration of a LILA Lecture programme: the speaker is introduced in terms of her core strengths, the lecture is presented in the context of her work in its continuity, and in relevant terms as a LILA event.

Rich Rice: New Media Translocal Communication
16 Sep 2013

Rich Rice: New Media Translocal Communication

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Dr Rich Rice made a remarkable distinction between ‘connecting‘ and ‘networking‘. He stressed the need to find a way to develop intercultural competence in our times, in order to communicate more effectively. LILA finds Dr. Rice’s deliberations very seminal, on how new media may facilitate translocal communications in a country as complex as India. Prof. Sumanyu Satpathy served as Chair during the lecture, and facilitated a very lively interaction. The Q &A gave rise to an interesting discussion on ‘sameness‘ and ‘difference‘ in our multicultural context.

Jonathan Gil Harris: The First Firangis
15 Sep 2013

Jonathan Gil Harris: The First Firangis

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Jonathan Gil Harris’ lecture extended the discourse on the meaning of inclusiveness in the Indian context. By asking ‘what does it mean to be called a ‘firangi’ in our pluralistic space?’, Jonathan Gil Harris led us to reflect on the construction of nation, identities, and on terms such as ‘self’ and the ‘other’, ‘authentic’ and ‘foreign’. How can we responsibly place this discourse within the modern Indian state to effect the necessary transformation? How will we avoid indulgence and excesses in taking this forward in these fragmenting times?

Madhavi Menon: We Have Always Been Lesbians
14 Sep 2013

Madhavi Menon: We Have Always Been Lesbians

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In this first LILA PRISM lecture, ‘We Have Always Been Lesbians’  by Madhavi Menon, we tried to understand and critique our processes of constructing identities and categories in relation to sexualities. The immediate body-mind experience of an individual acquires cultural, socio-political and legal implications in our times. Then, we must ask ourselves what we really mean when we say ‘we’.