399. Hegemony, Revolt and Selfhood (Masterclass: 3 of 3)
BIC TALKS
The Masterclass Hegemony, Revolt and Selfhood: India’s Encounters with Languages explores three defining moments in India’s linguistic journey: the arrival of Sanskrit, Persian, and English. Each language came from beyond India’s borders, gained a foothold, and extended its influence across diverse cultures, communities, and tongues. Their dominance shaped not only communication but also identity, politics, and thought. Thus, becoming inseparable from the larger story of India itself. These lectures will trace how each language consolidated its power, how resistance took form,...
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398. Hegemony, Revolt and Selfhood (Masterclass: 2 of 3)
BIC TALKS
The Masterclass Hegemony, Revolt and Selfhood: India’s Encounters with Languages explores three defining moments in India’s linguistic journey: the arrival of Sanskrit, Persian, and English. Each language came from beyond India’s borders, gained a foothold, and extended its influence across diverse cultures, communities, and tongues. Their dominance shaped not only communication but also identity, politics, and thought. Thus, becoming inseparable from the larger story of India itself. These lectures will trace how each language consolidated its power, how resistance took form,...
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397. Hegemony, Revolt and Selfhood (Masterclass: 1 of 3)
BIC TALKS
The Masterclass Hegemony, Revolt and Selfhood: India’s Encounters with Languages explores three defining moments in India’s linguistic journey: the arrival of Sanskrit, Persian, and English. Each language came from beyond India’s borders, gained a foothold, and extended its influence across diverse cultures, communities, and tongues. Their dominance shaped not only communication but also identity, politics, and thought. Thus, becoming inseparable from the larger story of India itself. These lectures will trace how each language consolidated its power, how resistance took form,...
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396. Sama, Dana, Danda, Bheda: Friends, Rivals, or Just Trading Partners?
BIC TALKS
Trust is thin, history is long, and the consequences? Unforgiving. India and China share a long border and a longer shadow. Security risks and market hopes pull in opposite directions. In a world of shifting power, India must choose with care. This evening explores that choice through the ancient philosophical and logical Indian discipline of Purva Paksha. Each speaker first presents the other’s case, fully and fairly, before offering their own. The aim isn’t to score points, but rather, to see clearly: where trust frayed, where interests align, and where wisdom might guide policy....
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395. Reading the City Reading Ourselves
BIC TALKS
Sundar Sarukkai’s second novel published recently titled Water Days is a reflective look at the changes in his home city, Bangalore, how everyday life gets formed and what happens to the city insidiously and quietly. He explores migration and the changing social fabric, patriarchy, language, linguistic conflicts, power, and who gets to belong in the melting pot that is Bangalore. Water Days is not just a novel about a city; it is a novel about what it means to belong when everything around you is changing. Sarukkai does not romanticise Bangalore, but he listens carefully to...
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394. Building Teenage Mental Resilience
BIC TALKS
Adolescence has never been easy, but today’s teenagers face unique challenges: the pressures of a digital world, rising academic demands, and the aftershocks of a global pandemic. Rates of anxiety and depression are climbing, leaving parents searching for tools to support their children. This discussion, inspired by Resilience Decoded: What Every Parent Should Know About Teen Mental Health, brings together author Dr. Sujata Kelkar Shetty, biological scientist, writer and resilience coach; philanthropist and education innovator Rohini Nilekani; and award-winning filmmaker Pavitra Chalam,...
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393. Too Much Public Not Enough Interest
BIC TALKS
Public interest litigation (PIL) is a legal innovation of fairly recent vintage which was inspired by noble objectives. It has been seen as a useful tool in widening access to justice, especially in societies scarred by poverty, illiteracy, human exploitation, corruption and maladministration. The concept took deep roots in India some thirty years ago and has now become an ubiquitous feature of the legal landscape. Over the years, however, Indian PIL has, in Dr Venkat Iyer’s view, produced a plethora of serious negative consequences, most of them unintended (but not unforeseeable), which...
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392. Handlooms - Past Present Future
BIC TALKS
What does it take to keep a centuries-old craft alive in the 21st century? Handlooms: Past, Present and Future brings together some of the most influential voices in the craft world for a vital conversation on heritage, change, and continuity. From policy and preservation to design and storytelling, this panel explores how handwoven traditions have endured through countless centuries, and the new challenges the 21st century provides. The discussion features Laila Tyabji, founder of Dastkar and a pioneering force in India’s craft revival; Ratna Krishna Kumar, patron of traditional arts; actor...
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391. Code Red: Climate in the Dock
BIC TALKS
It’s here. The climate crisis is no longer a distant warning. Climate Change: The Policy, Law, and Practice is a vital intervention. A book that gathers decades of global negotiations, Indian legal battles, and emerging climate jurisprudence into one urgent and accessible narrative. From courtroom precedents to cutting-edge policy, from carbon markets to constitutional rights, it examines how law can both shape and respond to the climate emergency. Author and legal expert Jay Cheema draws from his experience as Amicus Curiae to the Supreme Court of India in a landmark carbon emissions case....
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390. Confessions of a Lobbyist
BIC TALKS
Insider 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...
info_outlineThe Masterclass Hegemony, Revolt and Selfhood: India’s Encounters with Languages explores three defining moments in India’s linguistic journey: the arrival of Sanskrit, Persian, and English. Each language came from beyond India’s borders, gained a foothold, and extended its influence across diverse cultures, communities, and tongues. Their dominance shaped not only communication but also identity, politics, and thought. Thus, becoming inseparable from the larger story of India itself.
These lectures will trace how each language consolidated its power, how resistance took form, and how new voices emerged in the process. Strikingly, in every encounter, it was not the imperial language that endured, but the languages rooted in the soil (the desa, the nadu) that reshaped and redefined the cultural landscape.
As we step into an uncertain digital future, this series asks whether India’s linguistic resilience will once again carry it forward, as it has so often before.
Decline and Transformation
Sanskrit reigned for millennia, Persian for centuries, English for decades. Yet, none endured unchallenged. Each gave way to the resilient desi-bhashas, rooted in the land and people. This lecture traces the rise, fall, and transformation of languages in India, and what these shifts reveal about power and imagination.