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 and the need for preservation of the diversity for safeguarding our federal structure. This episode of BIC Talks is an extract from the first of a series of four masterclass lectures by Prof. G N Devy, titled Memory, Culture and The Being of India that took place in the BIC premises in early February 2022. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app!

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 disaster alter these unique features of the Indian marriage market? Disasters, natural (such as floods, earthquakes), industrial (such as a chemical  leak) or a global pandemic (such as COVID-19), often come with little to no warning  with large-scale economic and demographic shocks to households, both temporarily and  permanently. Beyond the impact on economic livelihoods, studies have looked at  fertility responses, changes to human capital formation and other welfare outcomes due  to disasters. However, these events can also change social structures, including  marriages. In this episode of BIC Talks, Instructional Assistant Professor at Temple University, Dr.Shreyasee Das talks about ‘How Disasters Can Shape Marriages’ that she conducted along with Shatanjaya Dasgupta and in this conversation with Finance and Markets Journalist Bansari Kamdar, explores relationships, their social and economics lives and the impact sudden and acute stressors like a natural disaster may have on them. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, and Stitcher.

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 to continue what he started. In his memory, programs supporting these disadvantaged children have uncovered inspiring stories that are transformational. This episode of BIC Talks brings you stories narrated by ordinary children who have experienced extraordinary hardship and faced tremendous loss. They were brave enough to find a doorway into the world that showed them that success is not determined by avoiding challenges, but how they allowed the challenges to shape them. They have become extraordinary individuals and beacons of inspiration to others. And in being a light for the world, they spread their resilience and joie de vivre to others, transforming the world. These are the changemakers. This is an extract from a physical event that took place on August 19, 2022 at the BIC premises.

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 Forgotten Futures as a fulcrum, novelist, essayist, poet, and musician Amit Chaudhuri and Rochona Majumdar,  Associate Professor, Departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago, discuss the role of art films in postcolonial public life. BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.

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 independent Bangladesh? How was India able to counter the new US–China–Pakistan axis that emerged dramatically midway through the liberation struggle? How did India persuade the Soviet Union to shed its initial reluctance to support the liberation war? Did India ‘win the war but lose the peace’ by signing the Simla Agreement? Drawing on previously unexplored Indian records, eminent diplomat and historian Chandrashekhar Dasgupta dispels many myths as he sheds fascinating new light on these and other questions through his new book, India and the Bangladesh Liberation War. Deeply researched over eighteen years, this authoritative, lucid and compellingly narrated book also reveals why and how India fashioned an overarching grand strategy, employing every instrument of national power – political, diplomatic, economic and military – to help the Bangladesh freedom fighters speedily liberate their country. In this episode of BIC Talks, Ambassador Dasgupta discusses the more intriguing parts of this particular chapter in the history of the subcontinent with Ambassador Nirupama Menon Rao. This episode is an extract from a virtual event that took place in late January 2022. Speakers Chandrashekhar Dasgupta Ambassador (Retd), GoI & Author Chandrashekhar Dasgupta is a retired Indian Foreign Service officer, who served as ambassador to China (1993-96) and the European Union (1996-2000). He was involved in the UN climate change negotiations for over a decade, both during and after his years in the foreign service. He was a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights from 2007 to 2018. Dasgupta was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2008. His previous publications include War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 1947-48 and numerous articles on diplomatic history, climate change and sustainable development. Nirupama Menon Rao Ambassador & Former Foreign Secretary, GoI Nirupama Rao is a former Indian Foreign Service officer. She retired as Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, the senior most position in the Foreign Service, being the second woman to occupy the post (2009-2011). She was the first woman spokesperson (2001-02) of the Indian foreign office. She served as India’s first woman High Commissioner (Ambassador) to Sri Lanka (2004-2006) and to the People’s Republic of China (2006-2009). She was Ambassador of India to the United States from 2011 to 2013. In retirement she has been a Senior Visiting Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute at Brown University where she has taught an undergraduate seniors course on “India in the World” and George Ball Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Ambassador Rao was a Fellow at the India-China Institute of The New School, New York in 2016 and a Public Policy Fellow at The Wilson Center, Washington D.C. in 2017. She is now a Global Fellow of The Wilson Center. She was a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow from 2015-2016 and a Practitioner-in-Residence at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy in 2017. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and a Councillor on the World Refugee and MigrationCouncil. She has an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (2012) from Pondicherry University. . She is a staunch believer in the power of social media as an advocacy platform for policy and currently has over 1.3 million followers on Twitter. In 2016, she received the Vanitha Ratna Award from the Government of Kerala. She also received the Fellowship of Peace Award of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Center in Washington D.C in 2018. Ambassador Rao is a Founder-Trustee with her husband, Sudhakar, of The South Asian Symphony Foundation a not-for-profit Trust which is dedicated to promoting mutual understanding in South Asia through the creation of a South Asian Symphony Orchestra. Her most recent book is ‘The Fractured Himalaya: India Tibet China, 1949 to 1962’, published by Penguin Random House.

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, love found, illnesses suffered and recovered from. Like a mirror image, their stories are shaped by the influx of unwanted things from the world outside. But now, as Deonar’s toxic halo becomes undeniable, a change is coming. And as officials try to close it, the lives that the pickers have built on the Mountain seem more fragile than ever. In this episode of BIC Talks, author of Mountain Tales: Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings, Saumya Roy and V Ravichandar, full time champion of lost causes and hon. Director of Bangalore international centre, delve deep into the process of writing this powerful and delightful book about people who are trapped in the gravitational force of a garbage mountain in Mumbai centred around a deeply moving love story with unforgettable characters while also illuminating a country and a culture.

India’s Five-Year Plans were one of the developing world’s most ambitious experiments. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning the economy was meant to be independent India’s route from poverty to prosperity. Planning Democracy explores how India married liberal democracy to a socialist economy. Planning not only built India’s data systems, it even shaped the nature of its democracy. In this episode of BIC talks, author and Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame Nikhil Menon and economist and financial journalist Niranjan Rajadhyaksha discuss how India walked a tightrope between capitalism and communism and worked on the project of nation-building in the aftermath of empire. In this compelling history, Nikhil Menon brings the world of planning to life through the intriguing story of a gifted scientist known as the Professor, a trail-blazing research institute in Calcutta, and the alluring idea of ‘democratic planning’. Planning Democracy recasts our understanding of the Indian republic, uncovering how planning came to define the nation and revealing the ways in which it continues to shape our world today BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.

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 wrote in Kannada. 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 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 and thinkers. In this series, we hear Girish talk about Kannada literature, existentialism, making of modern Indian theatre, the art and craft of playwriting, and his life as a public intellectual. The series is hosted by Arshia Sattar and Anmol Tikoo, with special guests such as Vivek Shanbhag, Shanta Gokhale, and Sunil Shanbag, who provide the context for Girish’s comments. Each episode also contains scenes from his plays read by members of Bangalore’s theatre community. The readings show us how closely his philosophical and political ideas were to what he wrote. They also provide an opportunity for audiences, particularly those who might not be already familiar with Girish’s works, to experience the power of his work. The title for the series is taken from the song in Hayavadana (ಹಯವದನ), a song which has been musically recreated for us by Pallavi MD and Konarak Reddy. Apart from the fact that Neerina Mele Chitra remains one of Kannada’s most beloved ranga geethe, we found it to be particularly evocative as we remember a man who profoundly impacted India’s cultural arena in the last half of the 20th century. This podcast series, we hope, will bear witness to Girish Karnad, a man who gave us so much to remember, but also so much to take forward. Supported by Nilekani Philanthropies