BIC TALKS

For more than a decade, from the villages of Uttar Pradesh to the night clubs of Delhi, Shrayana Bhattacharya followed the economic and personal lives of a diverse group of Indian women. Divided by class and community, these women are united in their quest for economic independence, love, fun and actor Shah Rukh Khan. The result is the dazzling book of non-fiction— Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: I...

In his book Leadership Shastra , Pradeep Chakravarthy asks the question - What if history could be made to work for us in very real ways? And he answers it in a substantial research backed manner. He studies the lives of well-known historical figures like Shivaji, Babur, Ahilyabai Holkar, Sankaradeva and many others with a view to understanding their motivations, actions and legacies. The book exa...

Former Doubles No.1, Sania Mirza became an instant sensation when she won the Wimbledon Championships girls' doubles title at the age of sixteen. From 2003 until her retirement from the singles circuit in 2012, she was ranked by the Women's Tennis Association as India's top player, both in singles and doubles. A six-time Grand Slam champion, she notched up an incredible forty-one consecutive wins...

The Scrolls & Leaves podcast is a labour of love for Mary Rose and Gayathri as they meander through little known tales from history, science and cultures and look for alternative ways of knowing and contextualising our present. Season 1 of Scrolls & Leaves titled Trade Winds came out in October 2021. It's set in the Indian Ocean world and the narrative over seven episodes weave interviews with his...

With an increasing number of urban, city dwellers finding their way back to agriculture, there's a small but definite movement towards natural, organic, alternative methods of sustainable farming. While the stress has been on constant productivity to make economic sense, we are now becoming aware of how much damage the land, food culture and native knowledge systems have experienced. As they wait...

Historically the country's annual budget exercise has been a major event and spectacle in the annual economic calendar. There was a time when the post budget analysis by people like Nani Palkiwala used to draw audiences in droves. Off late with the dropping of the railway budget, and the introduction of the GST, the annual budget is increasingly becoming just another important day in the announcem...

In this conversation with Vaibhav Vats, Dr. Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History at St. Anthony's College, University of Oxford,  provides a glimpse into the range and spectrum of his research and writing - touching on history of Indian diaspora and identity drawn from personal history, enquiring into Gandhi and decoding his continually evolving understanding of sacrifice, violence and non-vi...

Centring the narrative around a lively, erudite and thoroughly enjoyable history of one family from Malwa in Central India which held substantial land and various administrative offices in the Mughal empire and negotiated over several generations with three regimes - the Mughals, the Marathas and the British, Dr Chatterjee assembles a living, breathing world through her book, Negotiating Mughal La...

On 28 May 1940, in the early days of the Second World War, Major Akbar Khan marched at the head of 299 soldiers along a beach in northern France. They were the only Indians in the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk.  What journey had brought these men to Europe? What became of them and their comrades captured by the Germans? In this episode of BIC Talks, author and historian Ghee Bowman talks...

In recent times, with the proliferation of Over the Top Entertainment platforms and increased access to content from all over the world in various languages, If there's has been a clear and visible front runner in popularity, fandoms, fan fiction and all round good old hysteria - it's all things K! South Korean Pop music, Korean Soap Operas, Live action and animated Films, food and Culture are tak...

In mid December, 2021, Dramaturg, Writer, Director & Cultural Critic Rustom Bharucha facilitated a week-long workshop for a cohort of 12 participants on Dramaturgy at Bangalore International Centre with inputs from several artists and practitioners, including philosopher and educator, Sundar Sarukkai. We caught up with the two at the height of churning during the workshop for a tête-à-tête on what...

This episode of BIC Talks features Srikrishna Ramamoorthy in conversation with founder and chairman of Marico, Harsh Mariwala. While there's a small chance his name may not ring a bell, most of us would have encountered the iconic blue and white Parachute coconut oil bottle at some point in life - one of several FMCG brands from the Marico stable. Harsh has played a key role in converting a tradit...

What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In her book Strangers Drowning , Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. In this provocative conversation writer Samanth Su...

Perhaps no other issue today is as confronting as our warming earth. What we need are thousands - millions - of everyday conversations about the climate to enlarge the ranks of the concerned, engage the disengaged and persuade the cautious of the need for action. While companies and governments are hugely responsible for the mess we're in, can individuals effect real, significant, and lasting chan...

India has been one of the biggest contributors towards global efforts at reconstructing Afghanistan. Over the last two decades, India's development partnership with Afghanistan has had four fundamental elements: a) humanitarian assistance; b) infrastructural projects; c) small and community-based development projects; and d) capacity-building programmes. (Source: Observer Research Foundation) In t...

Art historian, writer and educator Alice Procter embarks on everything that a historian in mainstream establishment shuns. She speaks about colonial loot, whiteness, historical trauma, myths of national identity besides excavating the colonial story of art in museums. Her unofficial and unauthorised Uncomfortable Art Tours initiative has been unpacking colonial narrative since 2017 across some of...

Who are the Indian Muslims? Are they a monolithic community practising a faith alien to India? Or are they a diverse people, geographically rooted in the cultural ethos of the land? Is there an 'Indian Islam'? In this episode of BIC Talks, author Ghazala Wahab in a conversation with historian Rajmohan Gandhi takes a clear-eyed look at every aspect of Islam in India today.  Weaving together persona...

Vachana Sahitya is a form of literature unique to the Sharanas of the 11th to 13th Century CE in Karnataka. Vachana means speech. The Sharanas chose to use everyday language of the time over the prevailing poetic structure and language to make it accessible to people of the streets as well as the learned connoisseurs. This sets it apart from the classical Sanskrit tradition of poetry. The Vachanas...

History is famously unkind and there are few who witness a changing world and can set the record straight. In this no-holds-barred conversation with lawyer Rahul Matthan, about his book, A Rude Life journalist Vir Sanghvi treats us to anecdotes, personalities and era altering events in his inimitable equanimous style. The conversation sprinkled with fascinating tidbits and a generous amount of chu...

When musicians of two proudly distinct though overlapping traditions encounter each other as two contemplative artists and thinking people of music, the conversation is no less than a refreshing jugalbandi of the highest order. In this episode of BIC Talks, Ustad Zakir Hussain and TM Krishna meet and converse for the first time. In a freewheeling tête-à-tête leaving their performative selves aside...

In this episode of BIC Talks, historian of science Jahnavi Phalkey speaks with eminent scientist  Raghunath Mashelkar about his journey in scientific-industrial research, his leadership style, the status of scientific-industrial research in India@75, and how might India think about bringing home a Nobel Prize in science after having waited for nearly a century! This episode is adapted from a BIC S...

The Brahmaputra born as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet transforms into the Dihang River in Arunachal Pradesh , and later morphs into Luit , Dilao in Assam, is a trans-boundary river flowing through Tibet , India, and Bangladesh - which contributes to the complexity of history, politics and lives in the region.  In this episode of BIC Talks, journalist Tora   Agarwala is in conversation with author of  t...

"The diffusion of constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government". The importance of constitutional morality for the effective functioning of Indian democracy was highlighted by Dr BR Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly Debates (Vol. 7, 4th November 1948). But what does constitutional morality mean?...

Rabindranth Tagore's profound meditations on life, nature, grace and brokenness in the Gitanjali won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Alternately a poet and a philosopher, his words remain a part of our intellectual and artistic landscape long after his death 80 years ago. This episode of BIC Talks features a conversation located in Priya Sarukkai Chabria's contemplative and courageous...

Ever wondered why there so few scientific discoveries, breakthroughs and inventions are attributed to women? A historically occurring problem of erasure and prevention of female presence in major areas of discourse is ever present. It is no different when it comes to the history of medicine. In this episode of BIC Talks Srikrishna Ramamoorthy speaks with author and journalist Kavitha Rao about her...