“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? Who are its arbiters? And does constitutional morality exist in India today? In this podcast, host Shruti Vishwanathan of the Equals Project talks to advocates and scholars Disha Wadekar, Anurag Bhaskar & Malavika Prasad as they discuss the elements of constitutional morality in India, and its importance for Indian society. Visit the BIC website for show notes and links related to this podcast. 

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 collection, Sing of Life - Revisioning Tagore’s Gitanjali which chisels his prose poems into intense new poems. In the midst of a pandemic we are invited, through this book, to re-engage with Tagore’s prescient ideas on translation and his views on nature, death and suffering. The author, along with translator and writer Arshia Sattar, explore the ways in which this work of Tagore remains relevant to the 21st century even as he points backwards to the long and diverse tradition of spiritual poetry in the South Asian subcontinent.

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 book, Lady Doctors - The Untold Stories of India's First Women in Medicine. It is a compelling yet poignant read that profiles six Indian women who defied odds and prevailing social norms of the late 19th and early 20th century to study medicine. As Kavitha Rao puts it, they were all fighters and had plenty to fight. These inspiring women have mostly been forgotten today and Kavitha Rao’s book is a step towards changing that and re-establishing this female presence in our public discourse.

A celebrated politician, scholar and diplomat in his lifetime, V.S. Srinivasa Sastri (1869-1946) is now a largely forgotten figure. Hailed as the ‘very voice of international conscience’, Sastri advocated for racial equality and securing the rights of Indians both at home and abroad. The book also illuminates the contradictions of being a ‘native diplomat’, of being treated as an equal on the world stage while lacking equality at home. In this episode of BIC Talks, Vineet Thakur Assistant Professor, History & International Relations, Leiden University and author of India’s First Diplomat speaks to Ian Sanjay Patel, Fellow, Dept of Sociology, London School of Economic about India’s roving ambassador in the 1920s. Vineet speaks of Sastri’s most distinctive contribution to India that came through his diplomatic work. But going further, he argues that Sastri is also a key protagonist who shaped the contours of the ‘liberal’ international order. 

Known as the Father of India's Space Programme, Vikram Sarabhai's interests included space and nuclear energy, architecture, industry and business, institution building, management development, art, music, and theatre. He was a scientist and entrepreneur, an educator, and a businessman. When he passed away unexpectedly at the young age of 52, he left behind a legacy few can match, having set up internationally reputed institutions and organisations that have made India proud and put us on the world map. In this episode of  BIC Talks, Dr. Padmanabh K Joshi, who heads the Vikram Sarabhai Archives at the Nehru Foundation for Development, Ahmedabad and author & publisher Divya Arora, discuss the towering personality of Dr.Sarabhai and share various anecdotes, from Dr.Joshi’s personal interaction with him as a young man and bits of information to piece together a wholly fuller image of the person. They have jointly authored the book, Vikram Sarabhai India's Space Pioneer- an illustrated biography for Dr. Sarabhai’s birth centenary in 2019, which is testament to their mutual admiration and love for Dr. Sarabhai and his work.

As COVID-19 raged through Bangalore, the city’s crematoria and burial grounds were overwhelmed with the dead and their grieving kin. The hard labour of processing corpses as well as collective grief fell on Bangalore’s crematorium and cemetery workers. Overwhelmingly Dalit, city funerary workers are generationally condemned to labour under a social stigma that is designed to deprive them of dignity, regular wages, social security, advancement opportunities, and adequate housing. In this episode of BIC Talks, anthropologist Shreyas Sreenath interviews researcher and activist Swathi Seshadri. Swathi recently co-authored a report released by the All India Central Council for Trade Unions (AICCTU) detailing labor conditions at Bangalore’s crematoria and cemeteries. They discuss the significance of funerary work in holding together the fabric of our social, psychic, and spiritual lives, both in times of stability and crisis. They also speak about the various ways in which caste prejudice routinely degrades communities pushed into toiling with our dead. The full report can be accessed here.

On July 11, 2006 tragedy struck when a series of bombs went off along the Western line of the suburban train network in Mumbai killing and injuring commuters by the hundreds. In the investigations and arrests that followed, Abdul Wahid Shaikh was held as one of the twelve accused who were incarcerated for over 9 years as undertrials. In this episode of BIC Talks, teacher, lawyer and activist Abdul Wahid Shaikh speaks to journalist Praveen Swami about his imprisonment and walks us through details of the immediate aftermath of the blasts, the decade that followed and his book Begunah Qaidi which has been translated into English recently as Innocent Prisoners. This episode is bi-lingual, in Hindustani and English.  Abdul Wahid Shaikh is a school teacher, lawyer and activist. He works with the Innocence Network providing pro bono legal and investigative services to individuals seeking to prove innocence of crimes for which they have been convicted. His book Begunah Qaidi originally in Urdu has been translated into Hindi and English as Innocent Prisoners. Praveen Swami is an Indian journalist and author specialising on international strategic and security issues.

Writer-politician Muthuvel Karunanidhi is amongst the most important political figures India has ever seen. He was the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for five terms and leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for over five decades. Still remembered for his fruitful career as a regional leader who helped in the formation of various coalition governments at Delhi, his contribution to Tamil history and culture has been invaluable. This episode of BIC Talks is about the meticulously researched and deeply engrossing book, Karunanidhi: A Life  that delves into the life and times of this unforgettable man. This conversation with author AS Panneerselvan and journalist Rohini Mohan explores how Karunanidhi became a sort of metaphor of modern Tamil Nadu, where language, empowerment, self-respect, art and literary forms and films coalesce to lend a unique vibrancy to politics. AS Panneerselvan is the Readers’ Editor of The Hindu, an independent internal news ombudsman functioning with clearly formulated Terms of Reference. Apart from being a regular columnist, he is also a journalism teacher and is an adjunct faculty of the prestigious Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. Rohini Mohan is a Bangalore-based independent journalist writing on human rights and politics.

Neha Sahgal, Associate Director, Pew Research Center walks us through the major new Pew Research Center survey of religion across India that has been subject to many analyses, opinion pieces and discussions in formal and informal settings. In this episode of BIC Talks, Impact Investor and co-founder of Bangalore Literature Festival, Srikrishna Ramamoorthy engages Neha in a conversation about what went into this gargantuan undertaking. The study, which was based on nearly 30,000 face-to-face interviews of adults conducted in 17 languages between late 2019 and early 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic), explores the role of religion in Indian public life. The study is part of a larger effort by Pew Research Center to understand religious change and its impact on societies around the world. Neha was also part of a panel discussion on the BIC Streams platform where the study was engaged with on a wide spectrum of approaches. This discussion is available to view on the BIC Youtube channel.

Ramachandra Guha has been an astute and lucid guide to Indian history, with an ability to paint both the broad canvas as well fill in the minute details. Most people know him as a columnist – sometimes controversial, but always insightful and engaging. But there is another side to him, that of the scrupulous historian and scholarly path breaker –  in the field of environmental history, the social history of Indian cricket, the history of the Indian republic, and in biographies of lesser-known figures like Verrier Elwin and very public figures like Gandhi. This episode of BIC Talks is a series of extracts from a Festschrift in honour of Ramachandra Guha, originally presented as a BIC Streams session based on A Functioning Anarchy, a collection of essays by historians, social scientists, ecologists and journalists- edited by Nandini Sundar and Srinath Raghavan- in appreciation of the scholar in Guha.