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Based on Tarapada Roy’s story, dramatised by Soumitra Basu, Gadha Kahini is a political satire that portrays through a story telling style on how some of the decision making authorities are being driven by their whims and fancies and how it all turns out to be a comedy of errors

Reflections on the Indian Constitution and Judiciary in the Current Moment

The transfer of judges their appointments and related challenges throw long shadows on the efficacy and credibility of the system. Is the last sentinel suffering an credibility crisis or is it being attacked?

Speaker: L Ravichander is a Senior Lawyer practising at Hyderabad High Court.

Ishq Mastana | Drunk on Love Life and philosophy of Kabir, in story and song by Vipul Rikhi

An introduction to the enigmatic, iconoclastic 15th century Bhakti-Sufi poet, Kabir, through storytelling, commentary, poetry and songs. The songs are in dialects of Hindi and the entire narration will be in English.

Why Kabir? Over 500 years after his lifetime, Kabir still speaks to our times. In simple, direct words, he addresses complex emotional and cultural issues, with deep insight and clarity. But who was Kabir? How and where did he live? What made him who he was? Was he just one person or has he become many? Exploring legends around his life, his poetry, the depth of his thought, and the beauty of the music that has sprung up around him, we take a journey into the heart of this unique phenomenon.

Vipul Rikhi is a poet, translator and singer, and a co-creator of Ajab Shahar, a forthcoming digital archive that celebrates the oral traditions of Bhakti, Sufi and Baul music and poetry. His work with Kabir Project includes extensive writings and translations in the area of mystic poetry, including forthcoming books. He is also the author of a novel and collections of poetry and short stories.

http://ishqfakiri.com/ https://vipulrikhi.com/

IS INDIA A SECULAR COUNTRY? Tue Sep 10, 7:00 PM

Journalist and commentator Kapil Komireddi will discuss his critically acclaimed new book, Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, with Mohan Guruswamy and Sridala Swami.

Under Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, India has undergone the most total transformation since 1991. The ‘invisible threads’ Nehru said held together an improbable union divided by language, religion and ethnicity have snapped under the burden of Modi’s Hindu-supremacist rule.

In this blistering critique of post-Independence India from Nehru to Modi, Komireddi charts the unsound course of Indian nationalism: its cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India’s past and demeaning bribes to India’s minorities. He argues that the missteps of the nation’s founders, the mistakes of Nehru, the betrayals of his daughter and her sons, the anti-democratic fetish for technocracy inaugurated by Narasimha Rao and carried to the extremes by Manmohan Singh—all of them laid down the road on which Hindu nationalists rode to absolute power.

Hindu bigotry, ennobled under Modi as a healthy form of self-assertion, has reopened old fissures that threaten to devour India’s hard-won unity. If secularists fail to reclaim the republic from Hindu nationalists, Komireddi argues, India will become Pakistan by another name. A short history of the modern Indian nation, Malevolent Republic is also an impassioned plea for India’s reclamation.

Kapil will be joined in conversation with Mohan Guruswamy, founder and chairman of the Guruswamy Centre, and poet Sridala Swami.

Praise for Malevolent Republic:

‘In precise and sharp language Malevolent Republic takes readers on a terrifying and yet illuminating journey through the rapidly transforming political, social and religious landscape of Modi’s India.’ — Times Literary Supplement

The water need in the city is massive, and the city extracts groundwater for the same. With depleting groundwater levels and fluctuating climate conditions, the method, with hands on practical knowledge, promises to go a long way to help mitigate water shortage and maintain the water balance by collecting rainfall for future usage.

Hyderabad, with its topographic and underground water specifics, also requires to look at this method a lot more carefully. Applied questions such as how rainwater harvesting should be practiced or where is it viable to practice rainwater harvesting, are best answered by practitioners engaged with this technology through years of experience. The Rainwater Harvesting Mela intends to demonstrate locally developed means and processes of water harvesting that people in and around the city of Hyderabad have been using. Through this mela, we hope to disseminate reliable knowledge to capture rainwater that not only recharge local aquifers in an arid zone, but also reduce urban flooding by integrating rainwater harvesting as an integral means for Hyderabad’s annual flood control.

Join us on 7th September 2019, Saturday, from 10.00 am onwards to know more about doable and practical rainwater harvesting from resource persons who will be available on site. Stay tuned to this page for more updates, from time to time !

Navayana and Lamakaan present

Aishwary Kumar’s

Public lecture: “Cruelty, Courage, and the Constitution: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and the Liberalisms of our Fear” Kumar will inscribe the question of political courage and its antithesis—political cruelty—at the heart of the relation between Ambedkar and Gandhi. Ambedkar returns to us today, he argues, because his constitutionalism offers a searing insight into the complexity of human fear that liberalisms of our time have decisively failed to examine.

followed by a conversation with K. Satyanarayana, Professor, EFLU

at Lamakaan Off-Road 1, Near GVK Mall Banjara Hills Hyderabad 500034 Ph 9642731329

to celebrate the launch of the Indian edition of Radical Equality Ambedkar, Gandhi and the Risk of Democracy

‘Kumar is a writer in whose company Ambedkar’s spectres make forceful utterances’—Kalyan Kumar Das in his Foreword

Indian classical music is the most ancient form of art in India. It’s surreal and sublime.The roots of the classical music of India are found in the Vedic literature and the ancient Natyashastra, the classic Sanskrit text on performance arts by Bharata Muni. There has been very rare and few occasions when Two different kind of classical musicians collaborated together on the same stage. This Ensemble project is one of those miraculous events in the history of classical music which we , the musicians try to infer upon. Let us take the opportunity to introduce a professional Classical,semiclassical Vocalist Pramith Ganguly and a Young Sarod Maestro Srinjoy Mukherjee. Pramith is a senior disciple of Shri.Kaushik Goswami (Disciple of Guru Pt.Ajoy Chakraborty) he’s a professionally and musically trained singer in the fields of Nazrul Geeti, Rabindra Sangeet, Atulprosadi and other forms of music namely Bhajan,Ghazal,Geet ,Bangla Kheyal Other Than Hindustani classical vocal. He’s coming to South India for concerts in the month of August With the very renounced and able young Sarod maestro Srinjoy Mukherjee who is a the master in his field and has immense knowledge in other sectors of music as well ,Srinjoy is the torch bearer of the Great Bangash Gharana . He’s an Able disciple of Ut. Amaan ali Bangash the son of the global sarod icon Ud.Amjad ali khan sahb. They are collaborating for a Cause of World Peace and Harmony.

Unmasked theatre productions present to you An Evening with Chekov. Two of Anton Chekov’s plays will be staged at 8pm on the 30th of August.

The first play, named The Seduction revolves around three characters. The protagonist (played by Utkarsh Singh), a single man who has a very peculiar hobby of seducing other men’s wives, reconnects with his old friend Nikhil (played by Nikhil Madhekar) and his lovely wife Reeta(played by Shilkha Agarwal) because he finds Reeta attractive. The play then shows the after effects of a neglected marriage. A genuine need for romance in reeta’s life. Nikhil’s hearfelt friendship towards Sumit and Sumit’s flawless seduction. How the protagonist uses this to his advantage is how the rest of this story plays out.

The second play named the surgery is laugh riot. Its two main characters, a dentist and a pastor come face to face when the Pastor has a root canal infection. How the dentist persuades the God fearing man into get his tooth removed is what makes up the rest of this rib tickling comedy.

Rohingya Refugees in Hyderabad

Expelled from Myanmar after a military genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, many thousands of Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh and India as stateless refugees. This panel will present a brief analysis of the Rohingya refugee crisis and the situation of Rohingya communities in Hyderabad. Drawing partly on their work in a refugee camp in the area of Balapur, panelists will discuss the refugees’ socioeconomic conditions as well as relate these to the broader context of democracy and human rights.

Lateef Mohammed Khan is general secretary of Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee (CLMC). For twenty years he has been a leader in the promotion of human rights in India and equal legal protection for minorities.

Dr. Rafath Seema is the head of Nisa Research and Resource Centre for Women, which works under Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee. She has been working with refugees in Hyderabad, providing education and humanitarian relief.

Z. Fareen Parvez is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, USA. She has conducted long-term research among Muslim minorities in India and France.