417. Who Owns India's Past?
BIC TALKS
Just outside Madurai, beneath the scorching southern sun, the excavations at Keeladi have unsettled long-held ideas about India’s ancient history. Since its discovery in 2014, the site has emerged as one of the country’s most contested digs: celebrated by some as evidence of a thriving urban civilisation in South India, and questioned by others as political mythmaking. In her book The Dig, journalist and author Sowmiya Ashok traces this journey from serendipitous find to cultural flashpoint, traveling from Iron Age Tamil Nadu to Harappan Rakhigarhi, revealing how battles over the...
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416. The Trial that Shook Britain
BIC TALKS
A courtroom drama that shook an empire. In 1945, three Indian National Army officers stood trial for treason against the British Crown. Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Dhillon were convicted. Then something unexpected happened; events that would accelerate the transfer of power and expose cracks in both British authority and Congress strategy. While Congress built its reputation on passive resistance, at this critical moment it applauded and capitalized on the INA’s use of force. What does this contradiction reveal about the final phase of India’s independence struggle? How did a...
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415. Why Doesn’t Patriarchy Die?
BIC TALKS
This conversation will shift your understanding of power, and of possibility. In this session Rahila Gupta will examine how male dominance persists across radically different societies from theocracies to democracies, dictatorships to socialist states. Her co-authored book Planet Patriarchy asks what makes patriarchy so resilient, and where feminism is not just surviving but genuinely thriving. In conversation with Ashwini Jaisim, content strategist and editor, the session centres on a revelation: a little-known women’s revolution in Rojava, Northeast Syria. Here, women are...
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414. Queer Journeys
BIC TALKS
Some histories vanish not by accident, but by design. In the wake of colonial rule, Forbidden Desire unspools a compelling narrative of how British imperial power erased India’s far-reaching traditions of gender and sexual diversity. The book draws from feminist historiography, anthropology, South Asian queer theory, decolonial studies and the history of medicine and legislation to map the transformation of lives once lived in fluid, expressive spaces. Author Sindhu Rajasekaran invites us into archive after archive where nautch dancers, courtesans, trans and queer persons,...
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413. Election Commission – A Guardian of Democracy
BIC TALKS
At a moment when democratic legitimacy rests on public trust, the role of the Election Commission demands urgent, sober reflection. This Constitution Day session examines the institution at the heart of India’s electoral democracy: one tasked with ensuring free and fair elections for over 900 million voters. Yet recent concerns over voter-roll preparation, election scheduling, enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, and responses to hate speech raise critical questions about its autonomy and constitutional resilience. Grounded in the original vision of an independent referee, the...
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412. The Women No Longer Wait
BIC TALKS
A wobbling world tries to find its axis: fabrics tear, lands splinter, loved ones vanish, names fade. This session intertwines conversation and poetry, inviting audiences into the bold, shimmering world of Arundhathi Subramaniam’s luminous new collection. The session will trace the arc through the sacred and the feminine, culminating in this celebration of fierce, unruly womanhood. Sumbramaniam’s collection takes us through shifting landscapes, following the strides of extraordinary women. Women who vault over borders, stroll naked through history, tilt sideways into the unexpected, and...
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411. Rediscovery of a Lost Gandhi
BIC TALKS
Meet Mohandas: experimenting, debating, and testing the ideas that would later define him as Mahatma. This conversation around The Dawn of Life, Prabhudas Gandhi’s newly translated memoir, returns us to the ashram circles of South Africa, where Gandhi was still shaping the ideals that would one day define him. Translated into English for the first time by Hemang Ashwinkumar, recipient of the 2024–25 New India Foundation Translation Fellowship, the book revives a family archive both historical and deeply personal. Written by his young grandnephew who lived alongside him at Phoenix...
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410. Worlds Within Worlds
BIC TALKS
Four poets from Bangalore come together for an evening of poetry in English and Hindi, exploring how language moves across geographies, experiences, and ways of seeing. Their poems reveal how words can hold multiple realities, opening up Worlds Within Worlds through translation, memory, and imagination. The event will feature readings from Perennial: The Red River Book of 21st Century Hindi Poetry (Red River, 2025), edited by Sourav Roy and Tuhin Bhowal; So That You Know (HarperCollins, 2025) by Mani Rao; and The Book of Blue (Red River, 2024) by Atreyee Majumder....
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409. Bengaluru Bus Stories
BIC TALKS
Carrying the people and pulse of a city. Bengaluru Bus Stories is a conversation on how public transport weaves lives together by connecting neighbourhoods, opportunities, and communities across the city. Drawing from EQUIMOB, an international research collaboration between the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Utrecht University, Bangalore Bus Prayaanikara Vedike, and SAMVADA, the discussion explores how buses shape daily life, build connections, and remain vital to the city’s social fabric. Moderated by Dr. Ranjana Raghunathan of Vidyashilp University, the panel brings...
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408. India's Development Odyssey
BIC TALKS
What happens when one-sixth of humanity undertakes the world’s most complex development experiment? In A Sixth of Humanity, renowned political scientist Devesh Kapur and former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian unpack India’s audacious journey of nation-building and economic transformation. Blending democracy, socialism, and liberalization in an unprecedented way, India has charted a “precocious” path to development—one that defies conventional models and continues to reshape global geopolitics and economics. Through this conversation, the authors reflect on India’s...
info_outlineInsider accounts from political aides, bureaucrats, and diplomats have long illuminated the workings of power—but even more enigmatic were the lobbyists. Operating in the shadows, often invisible to public scrutiny, they were intimately privy to clandestine negotiations, back-channel discussions, and subtle bureaucratic skirmishes. In his new roman-à-clef For No Reason At All, Ramjee Chandran shines a light on this hidden world.
Chandran—well‑known in Bangalore as a journalist, publisher, and podcaster—has, until now, remained silent about his time as a lobbyist in 1980s New Delhi, a pivotal era just before major economic reforms took hold.
Drawing from real events, the novel charts the journey of a young lobbyist caught in a high-stakes conflict over silicon metal—a material deemed strategically vital. Central to the drama is Metkem Silicon, which, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, devoted 17 years to developing indigenous silicon metal technology. Yet their efforts collided with a rival scheme spearheaded by the Department of Electronics, which wanted to bypass local innovation and import U.S. technology.
What ensued was a four‑year bureaucratic war: media leaks, secret memorandums, and the covert involvement of the Soviets and other intelligence agencies—culminating in a final decision placed in the hands of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Set against the backdrop of Cold War Delhi on the cusp of liberalisation, the novel paints a vivid portrait of a nation—and capital—torn between ideologies and ambitions. The Soviet Union may have vanished, lobbyists have receded from public corridors, and few can claim first‑hand knowledge of that era.
In Confessions of a Lobbyist, Siddharth Raja—a lawyer, historian, and bibliophile—sits down with Ramjee Chandran to peel back the layers of this story, offering an insider’s glimpse into a world that feels at once distant and disarmingly relevant.
In this episode of BIC Talks, Ramjee Chandran will be in conversation with Siddharth Raja. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.
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