Contemporary India is witness to a huge change in which, space for serious conversations on all aspects of culture, is receding. The advocacy of religious-cultural nationalism has come to replace all forms of culture. It has also come to take many forms. For instance, the murder of rationalists – Kalburgi, Pansare, and Gauri Lankesh – underlines the contested nature of secularism, and the fragile space for freedom of thought in religion, media and culture in India. There has been a...

That the 20th century shapes our present and will influence our future is common point of debate in India. Clearly, politics and economics, culture and society clearly were deeply influenced, if not fundamentally shaped, by choices made at key points of time. Yet this applies equally, so with even greater long-term consequences, to the environment in its widest sense. In a more focussed way, this is how human actions, via technological choices or the ways land or water are governed, influence...

Kumaravyasa’s Bharata is a crown jewel of Kannada literature, beloved by scholars and common people alike. In this 15th-century classic, Kumaravyasa reimagines Vyasa’s epic, making it more compact, dramatic, closer to everyday life and language. He dispenses with most didactic material, cuts out subsidiary tales, and concludes with the end of the war. Here, Krishna, who is cool, clever, charming, and charismatic, is the central character, but many others, such as Draupadi, Karna, and...

Kumaravyasa’s Bharata is a crown jewel of Kannada literature, beloved by scholars and common people alike. In this 15th-century classic, Kumaravyasa reimagines Vyasa’s epic, making it more compact, dramatic, closer to everyday life and language. He dispenses with most didactic material, cuts out subsidiary tales, and concludes with the end of the war. Here, Krishna, who is cool, clever, charming, and charismatic, is the central character, but many others, such as Draupadi, Karna, and...

Kumaravyasa’s Bharata is a crown jewel of Kannada literature, beloved by scholars and common people alike. In this 15th-century classic, Kumaravyasa reimagines Vyasa’s epic, making it more compact, dramatic, closer to everyday life and language. He dispenses with most didactic material, cuts out subsidiary tales, and concludes with the end of the war. Here, Krishna, who is cool, clever, charming, and charismatic, is the central character, but many others, such as Draupadi, Karna, and...

How do people, who are often at the receiving end of legal violence, engage with the law? Amidst the grinding terror trials – which are replete with stories of torture, illegal detention and fabricated charges – this presentation will discuss how the terror-accused schooled themselves in legal language and came to understand how paperwork’s certificatory procedures produce legal truth. Though seemingly mundane, legal technicalities are fraught and highly contested, and acquire urgent ethical...

Pranay Kotasthane, Co-author of "Missing in Action," and Devashish Dhar, Author of "India’s Blind Spot," come together for a unique duet in the realm of policy. Drawing inspiration from the classical music approach of jugalbandi that allows artists to showcase their mastery of instruments, Pranay and Devashish leverage their experiences at Takshashila Institution and NITI Aayog, respectively, to weave a harmonious narrative on public policymaking. Having both spent time at the Takshashila...

Gandhiji gave expression to his dreams for Swaraj or Independent India on many occasions in many ways. “The Swaraj of my…our…dream recognizes no race or religious destinations. Nor is it to be the monopoly of the lettered persons nor yet of moneyed men. Swaraj is to be for all, including the farmer, but emphatically including the maimed, the blind, the starving toiling millions.” Young India, 26-3-1931 “It has been said that Indian Swaraj will be the rule of the majority community, i. e....

This episode of BIC Talks is an excerpt from a live discussion at the BIC premises presented by DAKSH in late October 2023. The panelists in this discussion were Justice Suraj Govindraj, Judge, Karnataka High Court; Sarayu Natarajan, Founder, Aapti Institute; Prof. Nomesh Boliya, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Delhi and moderated by Surya Prakash BS, Programme Director at DAKSH. The panel discusses Daksh’s newest publication - Technology and Analytics for Law and...

In the aftermath of ChatGPT fueled AI hype, there’s an equally charged conversation on how the public and governments should respond to present (and future) harms related to these technologies. It’s a crowded space – with AI industry voices and existential risk (x-risk) doomers trying to shape the narrative on regulation alongside civil society advocates and government agencies.  With many combined decades of experience critiquing and working within the tech industry, Meredith Whittaker,...

As we approach the 300 episode milestone, this special installment of BIC Talks - the last of 2023 - featuring V Ravichandar, honorary director of BIC, Raghu Tenkayala, Chief of Operations and Infrastructure and Vikram Bhat, current Joint Director, taking over as director from the first of January in conversation with Lekha Naidu, Programme Manager and Custodian of the podcast. This episode features an informal chat - an exercise in looking back for insights and looking forward with an...

In a world where more and more people burrow deeper into the silos of their way of thinking, the separation from an understanding of another view, much less an appreciation, is shrinking. In a healthy society, the moderate middle continues to grow at the expense of fringes competing against each other in deepening the wells of hate and misunderstanding. As a consequence, the reality of each of us, of all of us, belonging to a common humanity gets lost. Three decades ago, it was pointed out...

The Indians is a collection of essays by some of South Asia’s foremost historians and scholars that maps the origins, evolution, and present-day reality of India's civilisation and people. The collection covers a period of some 12,000 years-from the last Ice Age to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into seven sections - the first part looks at the evolution of humans in South Asia through the lens of the early 'Indian' population, their migrations, and the climate. The second...

The Indians is a collection of essays by some of South Asia’s foremost historians and scholars that maps the origins, evolution, and present-day reality of India's civilisation and people. The collection covers a period of some 12,000 years-from the last Ice Age to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into seven sections - the first part looks at the evolution of humans in South Asia through the lens of the early 'Indian' population, their migrations, and the climate. The second...

The Indians is a collection of essays by some of South Asia’s foremost historians and scholars that maps the origins, evolution, and present-day reality of India's civilisation and people. The collection covers a period of some 12,000 years-from the last Ice Age to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into seven sections - the first part looks at the evolution of humans in South Asia through the lens of the early 'Indian' population, their migrations, and the climate. The second...

The Indians is a collection of essays by some of South Asia’s foremost historians and scholars that maps the origins, evolution, and present-day reality of India's civilisation and people. The collection covers a period of some 12,000 years-from the last Ice Age to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into seven sections - the first part looks at the evolution of humans in South Asia through the lens of the early 'Indian' population, their migrations, and the climate. The second...

The Indians is a collection of essays by some of South Asia’s foremost historians and scholars that maps the origins, evolution, and present-day reality of India's civilisation and people. The collection covers a period of some 12,000 years-from the last Ice Age to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into seven sections - the first part looks at the evolution of humans in South Asia through the lens of the early 'Indian' population, their migrations, and the climate. The second...

The Indians is a collection of essays by some of South Asia’s foremost historians and scholars that maps the origins, evolution, and present-day reality of India's civilisation and people. The collection covers a period of some 12,000 years-from the last Ice Age to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into seven sections - the first part looks at the evolution of humans in South Asia through the lens of the early 'Indian' population, their migrations, and the climate. The second...

The Indians is a collection of essays by some of South Asia’s foremost historians and scholars that maps the origins, evolution, and present-day reality of India's civilisation and people. The collection covers a period of some 12,000 years-from the last Ice Age to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into seven sections - the first part looks at the evolution of humans in South Asia through the lens of the early 'Indian' population, their migrations, and the climate. The second...

This lecture by the critic, thinker, educator and activist Professor GN Devy, focuses on the year 1923 and recounts Rabindranath Tagore’s visit to Gujarat in October/November of that year, Mahatma Gandhi’s days in prison and Dr. Ambedkar being awarded the D.SC. and being admitted to Bar in London. The lecture featured in this episode of BIC Talks presents the thoughts of the three on the question of Nationalism, during the India’s independence movement and compares those three visions with...

Over a month into Israel’s strikes on Gaza in retaliation for Hamas terror attacks, is the world on the brink of a bigger war with repercussions across West Asia? What are the likely off-ramps that could see a peaceful outcome now and how could the continuing violence impact the world? And, amidst growing global polarisation, what are India’s options and is there a possible role in ending the crisis at hand. In this episode of BIC Talks, Suhasini Haidar, Diplomatic Editor of The Hindu,...

None Wiser than the Law is a miniseries of in-depth conversations with Justice MN Venkatachaliah, providing an intimate exploration of the legal realm, his life journey, political insights, and the Indian constitution. The title of this podcast draws inspiration from Aristotle, who said to seek to be wiser than the law is the very thing which is by good laws forbidden. Justice Venkatachaliah, a distinguished figure in the realm of jurisprudence, acknowledges this aphorism in one of his...

None Wiser than the Law is a miniseries of in-depth conversations with Justice MN Venkatachaliah, providing an intimate exploration of the legal realm, his life journey, political insights, and the Indian constitution. The title of this podcast draws inspiration from Aristotle, who said to seek to be wiser than the law is the very thing which is by good laws forbidden. Justice Venkatachaliah, a distinguished figure in the realm of jurisprudence, acknowledges this aphorism in one of his...

None Wiser than the Law is a miniseries of in-depth conversations with Justice MN Venkatachaliah, providing an intimate exploration of the legal realm, his life journey, political insights, and the Indian constitution. The title of this podcast draws inspiration from Aristotle, who said to seek to be wiser than the law is the very thing which is by good laws forbidden. Justice Venkatachaliah, a distinguished figure in the realm of jurisprudence, acknowledges this aphorism in one of his...

None Wiser than the Law is a miniseries of in-depth conversations with Justice MN Venkatachaliah, providing an intimate exploration of the legal realm, his life journey, political insights, and the Indian constitution. The title of this podcast draws inspiration from Aristotle, who said to seek to be wiser than the law is the very thing which is by good laws forbidden. Justice Venkatachaliah, a distinguished figure in the realm of jurisprudence, acknowledges this aphorism in one of his...