BIC TALKS

Historian Shekhar Pathak; ecologist, and author Ullas Karanth and historian and author Mahesh Rangarajan converge in this episode of BIC Talks to explore the path towards a sustainable and environmentally friendly world. With their extensive knowledge in environmental history, wildlife conservation, and cultural perspectives, they engage in a dialogue encompassing crucial topics such as environmen...

Renowned author and Sahitya Akademi awardee Damodar Mauzo engages in a conversation with author and playwright Vivek Shanbhag discuss Mauzo's collection of 14 stories titled "Teresa's Man and Other Stories from Goa." These tales provide a profound glimpse into the world of Goan-Konkani literature, a realm shaped by both remarkable achievements and challenges. Konkani, considered the "oldest of mod...

What is a language and how do they make us who we are? Is an eternal question philosophers have grappled with over eras. Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon that stretches across the range of what is human. Over t...

In northern India, an eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband, and then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a transgender person – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more 'modern' of the two. To her family's consternation,...

Bhūta Kōlā, also referred to as Daiva kōlā or Nēmā, is a shamanistic ritual dance performance prevalent among the communities of Tulu Nadu and parts of Kasargod in northern Kerala, India. The dance is highly stylized and performed as part of 'Bhootaradhana' or worship of the local deities worshipped by the Tulu speaking population. It has had it's influence on Yakshagana folk theatre. Būta kōlā is...

Dancer, actor and public intellectual Mallika Sarabhai writes a memorable account about how she stumbled her way to health, fitness and sanity. In this episode of BIC Talks, Mallika speaks to author and journalist Ramjee Chandran about her book In Free Fall is all about coming to terms with oneself and ones body and find the lifestyle that works for you. And how to make mistakes, pick yourself up...

The Pashtuns are perhaps the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own. They inhabit a continuous stretch of land from the Hindu Kush to the Indus, across Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan used the Pashtun-dominated areas in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) as a launching pad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and later during the US-led War...

Over 150 years ago, in 1870, a public park was inaugurated in Bangalore. Designed by British engineer Richard Sankey, it spread over 100 acres and encompassed features typical to the city—granite outcrops, lush greenery, wide avenues and government buildings. Originally named Meade's Park, it has been known to generations of Bangaloreans as Cubbon Park—sanctuary, lung space, thoroughfare, battlefi...

Pradeep Magazine's memoir is a story of lived, real experiences, of joy, sorrow, fear, loss and hope, and about how an uprooted identity shapes one's attitude towards society and the nation. From the Kashmir of the 1950s to terror-stricken Punjab, from the Mandir-Masjid divide and the impact of Mandal politics to the tragic consequences of the Kashmir situation-Magazine paints a fascinating portra...

So who really spearheaded India's Freedom Struggle? Millions of ordinary people-farmers, labourers, homemakers, forest produce gatherers, artisans and others-stood up to the British. People who never went on to be ministers, governors, presidents, or hold other high public office. They had this in common: their opposition to Empire was uncompromising. In The Last Heroes , these footsoldiers of Ind...

Since 1962 World Theatre Day has been celebrated by International Theatre Institute Centres, ITI Cooperating Members, theatre professionals, theatre organizations, theatre universities and theatre lovers all over the world on the 27th of March. This day is a celebration for those who can see the value and importance of the art form "theatre", and acts as a wake-up-call for governments, politicians...

With the coming of age of independent cinema and stories portraying lives across the spectrum in India, the focus has shifted from the protagonist to the writers and makers. In this episode of BIC Talks, filmmaker Alankrita Srivastava speaks to radio presenter and film critic Stutee Ghosh about the business of filmaking while being a woman. This session was originally part of the Bangalore Literat...

The reading down of Section 377 by the Supreme Court in 2018 has led to a fundamental shift in the rights of India's LGBTQ citizens and necessitated policy changes across the board—not least in the conservative world of Indian business. In his path-breaking and genre-defying book, Parmesh Shahani—Vice President at Godrej Industries Ltd—draws from his decade-long journey in the corporate world as a...

Forrest Gander, a writer and translator with degrees in geology and literature, was born in the Mojave Desert. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Whiting and United Artists foundations. Gander has most recently published Twice Alive: An Ecology of Intimacies (with an essay by N. Manu Chakravarthy). Gander, who taught at Harvard and Brown University, transla...

Until recently, classical music around the world has loved to project itself as being beyond the grasp of the masses. Carnatic music has been no exception to this self-created aura of inscrutability. Mangala Karthik, a Carnatic musician and teacher and co-founder of Anandi Centre of Music believes it is the duty of every teacher and learner to cut through the jargon and spread the joy of this magn...

Samanth Subramanian is a senior writer for Quartz, covering the future of capitalism, and a contributing writer for the Guardian Long Read. He is also the author of three books: " Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast ," " This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War ," and his latest, " A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane ." His  w...

Urban Design is a discipline that forms a bridge between architecture and urban planning. Architecture examines three-dimensional form, culture, aesthetics and experience, but does not examine the urban scale, focusing primarily on individual land parcels. Urban Planning examines wider questions of the city, but tends to cast a two-dimensional gaze of policy abstractions. Urban Design seeks to com...

India's colonial experience was a complex phenomenon, which often took different shapes in different places, through layers of caste, religious identity, and much else. In this episode of BIC Talks, Manu S Pillai will explore how India's princely states and their rulers negotiated their political identities and ideas of kingship, both while facing pressures from the British Raj, as well as while r...

osy Joseph is an award winning journalist based in New Delhi and was the National Security Editor of The Hindu newspaper until 2018. Josy's stories have fostered greater public debate and have contributed to significant policy and systemic changes. His reporting has resulted in several high-profile officials being forced out of office, triggering the arrest of many others as well as federal crimin...

This talk by lawyer Gautam Bhatia considers the Indian Constitution as a terrain of contestation between different visions of power. It will ask how the Constitution creates power, who wields power – and upon whom – and how power is constrained. Using the example of federalism, it argues that even as the Constitution is contested terrain, its history has been marked by a centralising drift: an inc...

Over the last decade the world has seen the politicisation of interstate relations, a rekindling of great power rivalries, pushback against globalisation, and an increasingly ineffective global order in terms of dealing with major challenges such as pandemics, economic slowdowns, and wars. The world seems adrift, between orders, and faces a real prospect of economic recession and a debt crisis in...

From being the preserve of a handful of American and British authors in the late-20th century, science fiction (SF) today is a global phenomenon. From Afrofuturism to the popular Chinese Science Fiction of Cixxin Liu, Hao Jingfeng and others, writers, editors, and readers around the world are turning to the genre to make sense of our world and our futures. The global character of contemporary SF i...

India, the world's largest democracy, the land of yoga, spirituality and a rich civilizational past, has one of the youngest demographics and is without a doubt an exciting place to be in the twenty-first century. Our nation, at the same time, struggles with the rising gap between the rich and the poor, ignorance, social unrest and strained communal harmony. One is always overwhelmed and bewildere...

Rebels Against the Raj  tells the little-known story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who, from the late nineteenth century, arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence. Of the seven, four were British, two American and one Irish: four men, three women. Before and after being jailed or deported, they did remarkable and...

Our diverse culture has something for everyone. Our young population is thirsty for education and achievement. And a strong private sector is our engine of growth. We can lead the world in the future yet, we struggle to create a business-friendly environment. We lag in innovation. Education, public health and quality of jobs demand attention. Our governments control some things too much and neglec...