Cultural Encounters: Freedom and Citizenship Histories
VIEW EVENT DETAILSTuesday, 9 July 2024, 6:00 pm
Ideas live many times, changing and adapting when they are in the hands of successive thinkers and leaders. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, for example, credited American philosopher John Dewey as being central to his work on the annihilation of caste. Perhaps Dewey’s work on education and democracy as central to reform took on a new life and meaning as Ambedkar imagined representation and opportunity for Dalits. Ambedkar also travelled to present-day Sri Lanka to learn about Buddhism, thoughts that would continue to inspire him and those that followed him after his life. Similarly, Bangladeshi poet Kazi Nasrul Islam wrote about Turkey’s first President Kemal Ataturk in a way that stirred pre-Independence Bengal, as it thought about the Bengali language and the independence of present-day Bangladesh, “to its depths.” Mahatma Gandhi often corresponded with Russian author Leo Tolstoy, leading to a shared commitment to non-violence that shaped political life in India and South Asia. A study of South Asian nations, national imagination, and political movements reveals many such serendipitous and critical links, where interaction between cultures and people shape thought and life. What are the other surprising interchanges and exchanges that formed how nation-states in South Asia were formed? What thoughts about freedom, expression and citizenship travelled to create the social movements that have existed in South Asia for years?
As we conclude our four-part look at cultural history in South Asia, we want to end by celebrating the political thought that has driven independence, democracy, citizenship, protest, nation-building, and rights in South Asia, and understand the linkages inherent in this thought.
This is the final session of Cultural Encounters: South Asian History in the 'Third Space,' this year's edition of our annual summer learning series, taking place virtually over June and July. Over four sessions and with panels of experts, we will explore the ways in which cultural similarities, hybridity, and interaction have shaped South Asia.The programmes focus on the colonial vs. local; food histories; religious histories; and histories of freedom. For more, visit this link.
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