Sep 30, 2022

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...

Sep 27, 2022

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...

Sep 22, 2022

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...

Sep 17, 2022

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...

Sep 13, 2022

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...