BIC TALKS

Through the last two millennia, Indian poets and philosophers have addressed existential questions surrounding the individuals role in society, dealing with inequity, discrimination and oppression. Their answers have ranged from a philosophical acceptance to outright call for revolution. Yet others didn't wait for a crisis to occur before calling for change, from the minor to a complete overhaul....

The recent proposal by the current government to reform agricultural markets through three controversial farm laws, the farmer protests that ensued, and the ultimate repeal of these laws has raised questions on what a desired policy on agricultural markets should be. Providing farmers access to agricultural markets in a mode that benefits both farmer and consumer has proven elusive. At one end is...

Today, Kalki R Krishnamurthy (1899-1954) is best known for his historical fiction— Sivakamiyin Sapatham, Ponniyin Selvan and Parthiban Kanavu —recreating the glorious eras of the Pallavas and the Cholas. The mighty conquests and magnificent art and culture of these two kingly dynasties are brought to bear on contemporary Tamil self-fashioning. In a comprehensive biography of the iconic writer, Sun...

With India in its seventy-fifth year of independence, conventional policy is unlikely to combat the breadth of its economic challenges. Does India need the state to be big or small? Is growth to be manufacturing-led or services driven? Will India produce for the exports market or the home market? Do the young prefer government jobs to private sector employment? Across a range of areas - human capi...

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata have exerted immense influence on the life and thought of Indians. If the Ramayana is a 'unitary' saga, the Mahabahrata is a 'federal epic'.  Its impact has remained as deep now as it was two thousand years.  Who actually composed it?  Why did the epic allow people to weave in it? This episode of BIC Talks is an extract from the second of a series of four mastercla...

Has the artificial memory already taken a complete possession of the human memory? Have Indians altogether forgotten from where they arrived here? Where does one locate the beginning of India as a civilisation? Does it originate in the Vedas? Does it go back to the Indus civilisation? Was there a civilisation before the Indian mythos emerged? What was India when the Holocene began 12000 years befo...

Indians belong either to castes or to tribes. What makes the tribal people tribal or adivasis? What have been there cultural traditions, their thought patterns and their philosophy of life? What led to some of them getting branded as 'criminal tribes'? What is the future of the culture of the Adivasis in the 21st century world? This lecture will present views of the speaker based on his experience...

The Census of India had listed 1652 'Mother Tongues' in its 1961 language report. In 1971, this number was brought down to just 108. Where did the remaining 1455 mother tongues disappear? This lecture will present the story of the epic search for those 'silence' languages and the people's movement which emerged out of the search. It will present the changing profile of India's language diversity a...

Marriages in India are a universal phenomenon that continue to be characterized by  rigid social and cultural norms. 90% of marriages in India are family-arranged. Individuals have a strong preference for caste homogamy, women tend to marry more  educated men (educational hypergamy). Dowry payments are still quite common at the  time of marriage. Given these sticky norms, how would an unexpected d...

Listen to the young changemakers who have weathered incredible adversities and pioneered programs that are changing the world. Bringing awareness to the plight of disadvantaged children and youth was important to Rishi, a young teenager who was passionate about the happiness of the world. His sudden departure at the age of 17 years brought people together, bonded with grief and love, and the fire...

The project of Indian art cinema began in the years following independence in 1947, at once evoking the global reach of the term "art film" and speaking to the aspirations of the new nation-state. This episode is a conversation between an author and a historian who are both invested in the histories of cinema and the city, Kolkata in particular. Using ideas in the book Art Cinema and India's Forgo...

India and Bangladesh achieved a historic victory in the 1971 war. Yet fifty years later, important questions remain about India's aims and policy in the war. Did India have a prior plan to break up Pakistan? When and why did it involve itself with the Bangladesh freedom struggle? When did India decide to prepare for military action? Why was no other country prepared to support the cause of an inde...

All of Mumbai's memories and castaway possessions come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. And among these vast, teetering piles of discarded things – medical waste, rotten food, old clothes, broken glass and twisted metal – a small, forgotten community lives and works. Scouring the dump for whatever can be resold or recycled, waste pickers also mark the familiar milestones of babies born, lov...

In the 1990s, Girish's work and his public persona took a distinctly political turn as he began to respond overtly to what was happening around him. Here, Girish talks about how he created strong women characters in his plays, how he saw Islam and Muslims as an integral part of our nation's fabric, how he became a secular humanist.  He also talks for the first time about two short stories that he...

Does god exist? What is the source of morality? Girish's plays often take on big moral and philosophical questions, questions that he asked himself about how to live in the world and how to be a good human being. Here Girish talks about what he learnt from the Mahabharata and explores what he took from European Existentialism. About the Series: In June 2019, a few days before his death, Girish Kar...

What was Girish's impact on the national theatre scene? Did his plays influence or inspire other playwrights and theatre makers? In Part 2 of this episode, Shanta Gokhale and Sunil Shanbag talk about how the 60s and 70s were such a critical moment for theatre in different parts of India. They talk about the unique sensibilities that Girish brought to the stage and how Girish set himself apart from...

What was Girish's impact on the national theatre scene? Did his plays influence or inspire other playwrights and theatre makers? Part 1 of this 2-part episode features Shanta Gokhale and Sunil Shanbag remembering the exhilaration of watching Hayavadana for the first time. They talk more about Girish's major collaborators and what that meant as a newly independent nation developed its own norms of...

Girish talks more about his dramatic and literary influences which range from classical Sanskrit plays like Mricchakatika to such avant garde practitioners as Jerzy Grotowski. About the Series: In June 2019, a few days before his death, Girish Karnad and Arshia Sattar had extensive conversations about his work, his life, and the concerns that had occupied him over almost sixty years as a writer an...

Girish was a Kannada playwright, but his knowledge of theatre came from all over the world and from many languages. We explore his relationship with English and other languages and literatures. Girish talks about his plays that he believes do not work, what he learned from them, and how he responded to their failure. About the Series: In June 2019, a few days before his death, Girish Karnad and Ar...

The conversation with Vivek Shanbhag continues, touching upon the literary groups and movements that animated Kannada literature in the 1950s and 1960s. Girish talks about some of the people and institutions that shaped him as a writer, the many Jnanpith awardees in Kannada, and who he considered to be his rivals, while we hear Vivek talk about the importance of Girish's work. About the Series: In...

Girish had a long friendship with the Kannada writer, Vivek Shanbhag, our special guest for this episode. Vivek prods Girish to talk about his challenges with writing contemporary plays. They also talk about his complex relationship with Kannada and finding the right language for what a writer wants to say. Besides readings from Wedding Album and Tughlaq, we also get to listen to short scene from ...

In June 2019, a few days before his death, Girish Karnad and Arshia Sattar had extensive conversations about his work, his life, and the concerns that had occupied him over almost sixty years as a writer and a public intellectual. This podcast is a distillation of those freewheeling conversations, a short intellectual biography to celebrate the life and work of one of India's finest playwrights an...