From dak at sarai.net Sat Dec 1 18:30:33 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 18:30:33 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] [Sarai-Newsletter] December 2007 Message-ID: <47515AF1.3030200@sarai.net> *Newsletter- December 2007 [[CONTENTS]]* * Announcement of Events* The Independent Fellowship Workshop ----------------------------------------------------------- Hindi Blog Writing Workshop ----------------------------------------------------------- Student Stipendship Workshop ----------------------------------------------------------- The Comix Workshop ----------------------------------------------------------- With winter setting in we plan to warm ourselves up with some passionate talks and discussions over hot cups of tea and coffee. We present a mélange of events ranging from serious to unconventional sharing of knowledge at the Independent Fellowship and Student Stipendship workshops to the inception of new thematic ideas at the blog writing and the comic book workshops. Hope you will make yourself available for the events and access the particulars announced to you. Best, Mitoo Das Programme Coordinator Sarai, CSDS Email me at: mitoo at sarai.net *Events: Working Questions: the 2007 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship Workshop Dates: 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th December Venue: Sarai and LTG Auditorium* Each year Sarai-CSDS's unique fellowship programme gives grants for all kinds of practitioners---artists, performers, writers, filmmakers, working professionals and academics too---to pursue their own (sometimes serious, sometimes quirky) research projects. The results of this research can be applied in any direction and, in recent years, has eventually led to all kinds of things, from comic to public actions to films to books. This year, Sarai's yearly Independent Fellowship workshop will be a special gala event, in the centre of town, looking back over the five years of the fellowship. It will feature presentations from this year's Independent Fellows, who will be coming in from various corners of the country, as well as some previous recipients of the Fellowship. Expect an unconventional convention. Expect talks (both academic and non-academic), musical and theatrical performances, books, videos, listening booths, slide shows, arguments, dialogues, merriment and controversy. A special curated multimedia exhibition accompanies the events. *Tuesday 4 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.30 -- 12.00 History Versus Reminiscence Chair: Debjani Sengupta Anuja Ghosalkar Papa Ajoba: My Grandfather, the Film Make Up Artist Renee C. Lulam and Julius L. Basaiawmoit Changing Faces of Democratic Spaces in Urban Cosmopolitan Shillong Sugata Nandi Eventful Adolescence, Memorable Youth: The Politics of Personal Reminiscence in Calcutta, 1947-1967 12.15 -- 1.15 Proving Residence Chair: Shveta Sarda Ajit K. Dwivedi Sealing ke Nazar Mein: Sealing Banam Pusta ka Visthapan (Media Study: Comparative Reporting on Land Ceilings and Displacement from Jamuna Pushta) Bipul K. Pandey The Residence Proof 1.30 pm -- 2.30 pm Sub-metropolitan Dreams Chair: Iram Ghufran Nalin Narain Mathur B-Grade Engineering College Culture Syed Zaigham Imam Sapno ke Rail (The Train of Dreams: Narratives from the Allahabad-Jaunpur Passenger Train): a short documentary film 2.45 -- 4.15 Hearing Spaces, Seeing Spaces Chair: Aarti Sethi Shahnawaz Khan Entertainment Ghosts in Srinagar: A Tale of Cinema Halls in the City Zubin Pastakia A Photographic Study of Bombay's Cinema Halls Sayandeb Mukherjee Corridors: An Exploration of Sound and Space 4.30---6.30 pm Special Panel: The Past of Research and the Present of Practice Featuring: TP Sabitha, Yousuf Saeed, Mahmood Farooqui and Rahaab Allana Discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta 7.00---7.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. *Wed 5 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 am -- 11.30 Distant Communities Chair: Ravikant Surya Prakash Upadhyay Guru on the Air: Televised Hinduism in Contemporary India Neelima Chauhan Blogit Hindi Jati ka Linkit Man: Blogon mein Hindi Hypertext ka Adhayayan (The World of Hindi Blogs) Raman Jit Singh Chima The Regulation of the Internet by the Indian State 11.45 -- 1.15 In the Midst of Conflict I: Looking Back and Looking Ahead Chair: Ravi Sundaram Arvind Kumar Caste Violence in Urban Maharashtra: A study of the 1974 Worli Riots in Mumbai and the Dalit Panthers Movement P. Jenny and C. Christy Chitralekha's Burning Autorickshaw: Caste, Class and Gender in the Urban Space of Keralam Meena Menon Recovering Lost Histories: Riot Victims, the Communal Polarisation of Mumbai and Its Impact on People and Perceptions about Communities 11.00 -- 11.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Short film on ragging---Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; [See also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday's programme below.] 1.30 -- 3.00 In the Midst of Conflict II: Reading Between the Column Inches Chair: Sanjay Sharma Shiju Sam Varughese The Public Sphere as a Site of Knowledge Production: Science in the Malayalam Press Alok Puranik Bazaar Reporting in Hindi Newspapers Shubhra Nagalia The Representation of Communal Conflicts in Hindi Media: A Case study of the 2005 Mau Riots 3.15---4.45 Other Traditions Chair: Priya Sen Priya Babu Traditions of the Aravani (Transgender) Community in Tamilnadu Mithun Narayan Bose Tracing Life from the Stroke: Documenting the Rickshaw-Painting of Kolkata Streets Deepak Kadyan Popular Musical Traditions and Configuration of Jat identity in Haryana, 1900-2000 5.30 -- 6.00 pm (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. 7.00 -- 8.15 (Back in main auditorium) "Creeper", a play written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham, recasting the Vikram and Vetal myth in a contemporary urban setting. Featuring Mallika Prasad and Abhishek Majumdar. *Thurs 6 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 am -- 11.30 Medicine and Modernity Chair: Awadhendra Sharan Gyaltsen Lama Shamans in Gangtok: A Graphic Novel M.S. Harilal Adopting Modernisation and Negotiating Modernisation: Placing Modern and Traditional Ayurvedic Sectors in the Context of Transformation Burton Cleetus Urbanisation, Western Medicine and Modernity: The Rockefeller Foundation in Travancore 11.00 -- 11.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Short film on ragging---Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; see also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday's programme below. 11.45 -- 12.45 Two Views of the Changing Industrial Landscape (short documentary films & discussion) Chair: Jeebesh Bagchi Ranu Ghosh The Story of a Laid-off Worker's Resistance to Eviction in Kolkata T. Venkat and Meghna Sukumar Building the Indian Dream: Living and Working Conditions of Migrant Workers on Chennai's IT Corridor 1pm -- 2pm Tracking Literatures Chair: Ravikant Rajiv Ranjan Giri Saraswati ki Sarvajanik Duniya, 1900-1920 (The Popular World of the Journal Saraswati, 1900-1920) Gopal Ji Pradhan Hindi mein Uttar Purv (The North-east in Hindi Literature) 2.15 --4.15 Special Panel: Where Does Research Go? Featuring: Zainab Bawa, Parismita Singh, Madhavi Tangella and Prasad Shetty. Discussant: Vivek Narayanan. 4.30 -- 5.45 Work In "Progress": Feature-length video by 2007 Sarai-CSDS Associate Fellow Debkamal Ganguly 6.15 -- 6.45 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. 7.15pm -- 8pm Solo Performance: Pritham K Chakravarty The Life of an Actor in Chennai's Sabha Drama *Fri Dec 7 Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 -- 11.00 Proofreading: Identity and Publishing Chair: Mahmood Farooqui Vijay Kumar Pandey Meerut ka Prakasan Udyog (The Publishing Industry in Meerut) Yoginder Sikand & Naseemur Rahman Islamic Publishing Houses in Delhi 11.00 -- 12.15 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Side Effects: Collaborations and Conversations Between Independent Fellows. Short film on ragging---Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; discussion and commentary by Shivam Vij, who studied ragging for his Sarai-CSDS Fellowship. Introduced and moderated by Iram Ghufran 11.15 -- 12.15 Maps for Lost Cities Chair: Shuddhabrata Sengupta Surojit Sen The Displacement of Prostitutes: A Tale of Two Cities in Two Centuries Mohit K. Ray & Soma Ghosh Heritage Ponds of Kolkata: A Contemporary History 12.30 -- 1.30 Rethinking the Social Chair: Vivek Narayanan Santana Issar and Aditi Saraf Rethinking Animal Activism in an Urban Context Arnab Chatterjee Beyond Private and Public: New Perspectives on the Personal and Personalist in Social Work 1.45 pm -- 3.45 pm Special Presentation: The SARAI-CSDS Associate Fellowships Nancy Adajania: A New Journal for the Arts: Prototype Issue, 2007 Debkamal Ganguly: An Imaginative Text Based on Contemporary Travel Through the "Forests" Described in Bibhuthibhushan's Memoirs (see complete video by Debkamal Ganguly on previous day.) Chair: Monica Narula 4.00 -- 5.30 pm Towards a Future for Independent Research: Interactive Open Discussion 7.00 -- 8.30 Punches Ponytails Ringtones: Women Boxers in India A film by Pankaj Rishi Kumar (82 mins) Introduced by Shuddhabrata Sengupta (A complete programme of the workshop which would include the participants' abstracts and their information will be brought out on a separate Sarai-Newsletter.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Hindi Blog Writing Workshop Date: 11th December, 2007 Time: 2 to 5 pm Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS* Today blogging has become an important tool of communication. Diverse things from ideas, analysis, critiques and memoirs to travelogues are all being written and shared through blogs. Blogs in Hindi are gradually becoming popular as writing in Hindi on the internet is no more a problem (there is a huge variety of tools to start with). But we still have to go a long way before Hindi blogs become much favoured, the main drawback being lack of knowledge among the public. The Hindi Blog Writing Workshop at Sarai-CSDS is an attempt to involve people who are interested in blogging in the world of Hindi and would like to learn more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Sarai-CSDS Student Stipendship Workshop Dates: 14th and 15th December, 2007 Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS * Every year Sarai provides studentship to conduct research on the city Life. These stipendships are provided to post graduate researchers enrolled in different academic programmes across the country. Apart from financial support, Sarai conducts three workshops to discuss various aspects of research, provide a platform to share ongoing study with a wider community of urban researchers and practitioners and give critical inputs to help orient individual projects in a better manner. This year, 20 stipendships were provided to researchers who come from a myriad range of disciplines and places. On 14-15th December 2007, they will be making public presentations on their nine months of research work. A more detailed programme will be announced before the event. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *The Comix Workshop Session I Dates: 17th, 18th and 19th December Venue: French Information and Resource Centre 2 Aurangzeb Road, New Delhi* It would be an understatement to say that comics in India have not had as flourishing a practice as cinema, literature and art. The public knowledge about the comic book practice and culture in India has often been limited to a few major publications and epic productions. Most of them have happened at least a decade ago, maybe more. And now that we stand on the threshold of what is being touted as the graphic novel/comic boom in India, a few questions stare at us. How do we talk, in a public platform, about the hidden narratives that have contributed so immensely to the growth and evolution of the form in India? How do we popularize the discourse of comics in India? How do we know and share the knowledge pool that contributes to the comic book practice and readership in India? In an attempt to address these questions, Sarai-CSDS and the French Information and Resource Center (FIRC) have collaborated to produce a series of events focusing on a deeper and richer conversation about the comic book culture in India. One such event is the Comic Book Workshop The first session for the workshop will be taken by two French comic artists. Mathieu Sapin, Francois Mathieu Sapin and Francois Demaut. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * [[END OF NEWSLETTER]] * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Sat Dec 1 19:08:15 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:08:15 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Ind.Fellowship Workshop- Detailed Programme Message-ID: <475163C7.4050005@sarai.net> *Working Questions: The 2007 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship Workshop PROGRAMME 4-7 December 2007* Working Questions: a curated multimedia exhibition of work and archival material by Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows This curated journey gathers together a wide and various range of audio-visual and print material from Sarai's archives, collected and produced by Independent Fellows. It features photographic work, graphic panels, audio and visual loops, short films, etc., from research areas as diverse as Jazz in Bollywood, glass negatives from early cinema, signage in the Indian city, digital imaging in photo studios, street musicians, video theaters, and much much more... *Tuesday 4 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House * 10.30 -- 12.00 History Versus Reminiscence Chair: Debjani Sengupta [Debjani Sengupta (debjanisgupta @yahoo.com) is an ex independent fellow and teaches English Literature at Indraprastha College, Delhi University. She is the editor of Mapmaking: Partition Stories from two Bengals, and has translated Taslima Nasreen's Selected Columns. Most recently, she co-edited and wrote Working Questions , the Sarai Independent Fellowship book.] Anuja Ghosalkar Papa Ajoba: My Grandfather, the Film Make Up Artist The project chronicles the life of my grandfather, who was a make up artist in the Hindi film industry from 1941 to 2000: from his early years at Raj Kamal studio with V. Shantaram (when they literally made their own make-up) to his 17 years spent at the Filmistan studio. There is a sharper focus on the 1960's - when he predominantly worked with Shammi Kapoor, Asha Parekh, Sadhana & Saira Banu. It also documents film history from the point of view of a technician who might lacquer it with his own stories. It is finally, a tribute to a grandfather who narrated stories of his everyday life, not knowing that stories often become history. The research is primarily through interviews. The presentation will be in an audio-visual form with a written essay. Anuja Ghosalkar (anu.ghosalkar @gmail.com) is a lecturer and researcher in film and has been involved with an experimental theatre group in Mumbai for over half a decade. She is currently working with Breakthrough -- a globally active human rights organization. Her project blog can be found at: http://www.papaajoba.blogspot.com/ Renee C. Lulam and Julius L. Basaiawmoit Changing Faces of Democratic Spaces in Urban Cosmopolitan Shillong Understanding personal events as profoundly social allows a broader perception of human interactions that have shaped the past and continue into the present. As the research progresses and we meet more people sharing their versions of 'cosmopolitan', we find that the backdrop we initially placed the research against has often proven inadequate and therefore challenging. In one of the testimonies, Shillong has been called an 'artifact of British administration....artificial...' The place and people are variously known to have been tolerant, narrow, short sighted, confused, but most of all, absorbent. Our intention through this research is to explore the different ways Shillong considers 'cosmopolitan'.We were fortunate that in the course of our research, an event like the Indian Idol contest took place, evoking an almost 'patriotic' fervour over the finalist from Shillong. Many have quoted it as an example of how Shillong has progressed in cosmopolitan tolerance, though much of it was driven by emotion and tended towards the superficial and reactionary, in the observation of some others. Through excerpts of audio interviews, video clips, newspaper or journal articles, photographs, city soundscapes, and an interpretative paper, we will attempt to present a picture of the changing faces of Shillong vis-à-vis the term 'cosmopolitan'. Julius Basaiawmoit (lemiwell @hotmail.com) specializes in sound for film and television. Renee Lulam (renee75 @gmail.com) works with independent research based projects. Both are from Shillong. Sugata Nandi Eventful Adolescence, Memorable Youth: The Politics of Personal Reminiscence in Calcutta, 1947-1967 Personal reminisces of the adolescents and youths of the 1950s and 1960s in Kolkata, of specific incidents listed above will be gathered through interviews with them. The oral data thus gathered will constitute the primary source for constructing a collage of remembered experiences. The project will treat the same as texts authored by individuals who endeavour to locate and to interpret through the emotional performance of remembering what may be termed as significant episodes in the recent history of the city. The project, on completion of research, will be given the shape of a academic history paper. At the moment I have fixed the target of writing the paper in about 15 thousand words, which might have to be increased if required. As of now I have planned to record (in audio cassettes) the interviews that will constitute the archival text for the work, if resources permit then I would try to make audio-visual record of the interviews. Sugata Nandi (largestriver @hotmail.com) is Lecturer in History, Krishnagar Government College, West Bengal 12.15 -- 1.15 Proving Residence Chair: Shveta Sarda [Shveta Sarda (shveta @sarai.net) is a content editor and translator with Sarai. She works in Cybermohalla as a process chronicler and edits the labs' content for diverse circulation -- books, website, blogs, broadsheets, and wall magazines. At present she is working with the various research projects at the CM mobile lab. She was part of the editorial collective of the broadsheet series Sarai.txt.] Ajit K. Dwivedi Sealing ke Nazar Mein: Sealing Banam Pusta ka Visthapan (Media Study: Comparative Reporting on Land Ceilings and Displacement from Jamuna Pushta) Ajit K. Dwivedi (dajeet @gmail.com) is a career journalist. He just left Dainik Bhaskar to join ITV News as Associate Editor. Bipul K. Pandey The Residence Proof Bipul Pandey (bipulpandey @gmail.com) worked in print media for nine years. He currently works with Star News as Associate Producer. 1.30 pm -- 2.30 pm Sub-metropolitan Dreams Chair: Iram Ghufran [Iram Ghufran (iram @sarai.net) is trained as a media practitioner and works as video/ audio editor in Sarai Media Lab. She has co-researched the work culture of call centres, and is part of the editorial collective of the broadsheet series Sarai.txt. She works on various multimedia, video and audio works produced at Sarai.] Nalin Narain Mathur B-Grade Engineering College Culture Being subjected with the experience of studying at an engineering college, I happened to witness the living experiences, aspirations and values that make an 'engineer' beyond all the techy stuff he learns in the classroom. Add to it the different background and identity of students and the acute realization that "This -- is- not -- IIT", which more often then not looms large in everyone's conscience. Hence, engineering colleges constitute of interesting and fantastical cultural dynamics wherein a mix of identities, cultures and aspirations are played out in non-metropolitan spaces to get an amalgamation of different worlds in one campus. Through this project I aim to study the phase of social and emotional renaissance which unavoidably crops up during one's stay away from his natural locale. Nalin Narain Mathur (nalin.mathur @gmail.com) works as a systems analyst. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Uttar Pradesh Technical University, Lucknow. Syed Zaigham Imam Sapno ke Rail (The Train of Dreams: Narratives from the Allahabad-Jaunpur Passenger Train): a short documentary film If faster trains denote speed and arrival, slower trains can sometimes nurture dreams that compress a lifetime into a few hours. Zaigham's project is to study how students, literally, arrive at Allahabad. The passenger trains, so called because they stop at even the smallest of stations connecting Allahabad (the educational headquarters of Northern India) to Jaunpur and Faizabad, two towns in the hinterland and encompassing other smaller towns such as Pratapgarh, Mau and Aimma. Sixty percent of the people travelling in these trains are students on their way to Allahabad. Not so much to enroll at the university but to join one of the innumerable coaching centres and to prepare for the Central and Provincial Civil Services Exams. In the seventies and eighties, students from Allahabad dominated the civil service selections, not only at the centre, but also in states such as UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The sons mainly of farmers, who travelled out of the smaller qasbas chasing a dream, even came to be known as 'collectors.' What does the inside of these trains look like? Zaigham travels up and down the ravaged trains with missing bulbs, fans and fittings and investigates peculiarities like ACP, a short form for alarm chain pulling. People use it to stop the train at convenient points, an illegal practice that is stoically accepted by the authorities, and most travel ticket-less. The towns and stations falling on the way represent the rise and fall of the qasbas of UP, like Mau Aimma which is an important production centre for crackers. The story of these trains is also a metaphor for the democratisation of higher education that took place in the last three decades of the twentieth century. Through interviews with passengers and train officials, and unsuccessful attempts to get information through the Right to Information Act, Zaigham builds a picture of slow development and the aspiration for a government job that is primary, on the poor students all over India. Trained as a journalist, Zaigham Imam (zaighamimam @rediffmail.com) also writes fiction and is currently trying his hand at filmmaking. He left Amar Ujala recently to work with BAG films. The project is blogged at: http://www.merirail.blogspot.com/ 2.45 -- 4.15 Hearing Spaces, Seeing Spaces Chair: Aarti Sethi [Aarti Sethi (aarti.sethi @gmail.com) previously worked with the Sarai Programme; currently she is pursuing her M.Phil in Film Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU.] Shahnawaz Khan Entertainment Ghosts in Srinagar: A Tale of Cinema Halls in the City This study aims to analyse the impact of the closure of cinema halls in Srinagar after the outbreak of armed insurgency in early nineties. Most of the closed cinema halls are occupied by paramilitary troopers and have even functioned as torture centres in the nineties. Some others have changed business. Only one is functional, but not in good condition. Shahnawaz talks to people associated with the trade, cine goers who have been to these halls when they functioned, and the youth today who do not find a place to go for a movie in the city. The study also looks at the psychological impact of these structures in the city, which stand witness to the times they have gone through. Shahnawaz Khan (fsrnkashmir @gmail.com) is a journalist based in Srinagar, associated with the US based Free Speech Radio News. Along with some friends he launched Kashmirnewz.com in 2006. Zubin Pastakia A Photographic Study of Bombay's Cinema Halls The project seeks to photographically examine the cultural experience of different types of cinema halls in Bombay city. In part, this is a meditation on different urban spaces. More importantly, this is an attempt to illustrate the subjective nature of the film-going experience. From the designer shop - to cinema hall - to chain restaurant mall/multiplex experience, to the still-standing single-screen bastions of the art-deco era, to the musty largely male-dominated "c-grade" halls, the photographs will evoke the unique experience of these different spaces. The intention is to eventually produce a monograph on Bombay's cinema halls as well as to exhibit the photographs publicly. Zubin Pastakia (zubinpastakia @gmail.com) is a photographer and filmmaker living in Bombay. He blogs his photos at: http://peripheralvision.blogspot.com/ Sayandeb Mukherjee Corridors: An Exploration of Sound and Space This project delves into the emotional and acoustic contours of corridors. This contemporary architectural design which may appear simple structurally possesses a complicated and sometimes convoluted auditory space due to reflective and diffractive properties of sound. The project attempts to enlighten the variability of these acoustic qualities/characterestics of corridors integrated in different urban spaces. The process of research includes a vivid physical involvement and exploration in the corridor like spaces, taking notes in a descriptive way in the spot itself, acquiring photographs and live recordings of the acoustic environments at different spots of the same space. The recording process may also involve time stamps (i.e. recordings of the same space over the different parts of a day) for the analysis of the soundscape in a particular space. The process also includes the collection of films, texts or any other form of art, where one can notice a conscious application of such corridor-like spaces. Sayandeb Mukherjee (sayandebmukherjee @yahoo.co.in) is a graduate of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata who now works as a professional sound recordist in Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad. 4.30---6.30 pm Special Panel: The Past of Research and the Present of Practice Featuring: TP Sabitha, Yousuf Saeed, Mahmood Farooqui and Rahaab Allana Discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta How might a detailed study of the past, dredging and building archives, serve not just to make museums, but invigorate and change our sense of the present, feed directly into practice? The panelists, who are all former Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows, are all people whose research has engaged deeply with the archive, with documents and images from the past. At the same time, as performers, writers, photographers, and filmmakers they are also people who work with and produce highly contemporary forms. TP Sabitha (sabitha_tp @yahoo.co.uk) is a writer who writes in both Malayalam and English, as well as a teacher and researcher of literature and art. Yousuf Saeed (ysaeed7 @yahoo.com) is a filmmaker and writer in Urdu and English. He is currently associated with a new archival initiative for visual culture, TasveerGhar. Mahmood Farooqui (mahmood @sarai.net) is a historian and performance artist. He works with the Independent Fellowship programme and with the translation and editing of Hindi publications at Sarai. Rahaab Allana (rahaab @acparchives.com) currently works as a curator for the Alkazi Foundation for Photography. Shuddhabrata Sengupta (shuddha @sarai.net) is a writer, columnist and media practitioner with training in sociology and filmmaking. He is one of the co-initiators of Sarai, one of the editors of the Sarai Reader series and a member of the Raqs Media Collective. He has contributed numerous scholarly and popular articles in newspapers, magazines, journals, anthologies and books on a range of themes. He coordinates the distributed research network at Sarai. 7.00---7.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. Inder Salim (indersalim @gmail.com), an Independent Fellow this year, is a performance artist based in Delhi. He blogs his work at: http://indersalim.livejournal.com/ *Wed 5 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House * 10.00 am -- 11.30 Distant Communities Chair: Ravikant [Ravikant (ravikant @sarai.net) taught and researched history in Delhi University for a number of years. He currently conceptualises and edits content in Hindi at Sarai. He is the co-editor of Deewan-e-Sarai (the Hindi Reader series). He also writes for Hindi magazines and newspapers on the issues of media, language, computing and translation.] Surya Prakash Upadhyay Guru on the Air: Televised Hinduism in Contemporary India The project proposes to look at the instrumentality of audio-visual media in the construction and maintenance of the religio-spiritual world in contemporary Hinduism and in the mobilization of people towards "tele-gurus". The project attempts to look into a recent and interesting addition in the religious sphere, especially in present-day Hinduism, catered to the people by cable television in the urban spaces. It looks at a new-age guru named Asharam Bapu, and at the phenomenon of media playing a vital part in the growth of his organization, in increasing the numbers of followers and devotees, and in propagation as well as spread of religiosity and spirituality among people. There are several gurus and also several devotional channels that are highly influential in urban spaces, transmitting their programmes through television and providing an opportunity for people to listen and watch their favorite guru. This development in the media sector has filled the gap of physical absence of the guru and multiplied the communication between him and his followers. The aim of the research is to give a 'thick description' of the whole phenomenon. Surya Prakash Upadhyay (surya_rajan21 @yahoo.com) is a Research Scholar in the Dept of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Neelima Chauhan Blogit Hindi Jati ka Linkit Man: Blogon mein Hindi Hypertext ka Adhayayan (The World of Hindi Blogs) This research attempts to do an online study of Hindi hyper text on Hindi blogs. It will be an attempt to make a critical appreciation of Language and style of hypertextual prose as it flows through the terminals of Hindi Bloggers. It will be an online study which will take in account the existing blogs, Hindi Networks, Blog Archives, Comments etc. Narratives from the Hindi Online community will be collected. The objective is to identify the construction of the grand narrative of 'Hindi Jati' (Hindi nationality) as described in Hindi literary criticism, especially that by Ram Vilas Sharma. This construction of Hindi Jati where geographical space seemingly becomes meaningless (or less important, at least) will be explored. As the research will be an online study, its progress will be available to all interested in real time. Neelima Chauhan (neelimasayshi @gmail.com)'s doctoral and postdoctoral work is in post-colonial Hindi prose. She teaches Hindi at Delhi University's Zakir Husain Post Graduate Evening College. The blog for this project can be found at: http://linkitmann.blogspot.com/ Raman Jit Singh Chima The Regulation of the Internet by the Indian State Though considerable work has been done on exploring how the Internet is capable of being regulated, not much has been done to chart out the exact shape of such regulation of expression on the Internet in India. More importantly, the exact manner in which the Indian State has regulated the Internet through all the structures and mechanisms at its disposal has not been studied, which is important since this affects the flow of speech and expression. In order to attempt to chart out the empirical aspects of Internet regulation in India and its linkages with normative frameworks, the focus of this project is thus on the following two goals: firstly, to track out and study the manner in which the Indian State regulates the Internet through legal structures and connected mechanism (both through formal legal rules as well as through informal measure such as executive action); and secondly, to analyze how this regulatory framework relates to the constitutional safeguards with respect to the limitations on state action viz. free speech and expression and whether it respects these constraints. Raman Chima (ramanchima @gmail.com) is pursuing the B.A.LL.B. (Hons) program at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and is currently in the 3rd year of this course. The blog for this project can be found at: http://stateoftheweb.blogspot.com/ 11.45 -- 1.15 In the Midst of Conflict I: Looking Back and Looking Ahead Chair: Ravi Sundaram [Ravi Sundaram (ravis @sarai.net) is a Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. He is one of the initiators of Sarai and is one of the editors of the Sarai Reader series. He coordinates the media city research project. He has written extensively on contemporary intersection of technology, media and urban experience.] Arvind Kumar Caste Violence in Urban Maharashtra: A study of the 1974 Worli Riots in Mumbai and the Dalit Panthers Movement The proposed study intends to analyse the Worli riots of 1974 when there was a violent clash between the Shiv Sena and the Dalit Panthers. In this riot the main target of communal wrath were dalits who opted out of the oppressive caste-hindu religion and converted to Neo-Buddhism. Theriots and the agitation brought to the surface dissensions within the Dalit Panther movement, which ultimately led to its split in 1974. There are enough sources available on Dalit Panther movement. The consciousness of revolt was also expressed in an outburst of poetry by new writers like Namdev Dhasal, Daya Powar, J V Pawar, Waman Nimbalkar, Arun Kamble and many others. The present study will locate the Worli riots in a historical perspective and will try and address new questions as and when they arise through the course of the study. Arvind Kumar (arvind.access @gmail.com) is pursuing a PhD in American Studies at the School of International Studies, JNU on the topic 'Discrimination and Resistance - A Comparative Study of Black Movements in the U.S and Dalit Movements in India'. P. Jenny and C. Christy Chitralekha's Burning Autorickshaw: Caste, Class and Gender in the Urban Space of Keralam This proposal is about a Dalit woman married to a Backward Caste man and their struggle to move above caste and gender structures in a moffusil town in Keralam. The story begins when the couple buys an autorickshaw in Chithra Lekha's name and she decides to drive it herself. However, Chithra Lekha's caste and gender identity makes it impossible for her to step into the public sphere of this liberated moffusil town. The leftist trade union (mainly consisting of a dominant BC caste) already angered by her caste violation of marrying above her caste, acts against her by delaying her membership card and continues to harass her till at last her autorickshaw is burned to ashes. In this project we collect and document each and every aspect of this (true) incident by conducting thorough interviews with all the people concerned. Along with this we would also like to produce a theoretical paper which tries to understand how caste, class, gender relations constitute the urban space in Keralam. Here we would examine: > how the dominant Marxist party works to reproduce the caste and gender structure in Keralam; > the important tools of sexual morality which are used against the progress of Dalit and "other" women; > the intricacies of the OBC-Dalit relationship and the reasons that triggers violence between them; > the role of subaltern masculinities in the entire incident. P. Jenny (jenny.chithra @gmail.com) is an independent researcher, writer and columnist. She holds a PhD on Malayalam Cinema, from the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. C. Christy (christy.carmel @gmail.com) is at present doing her PhD in Media and Commmunications from the Central University of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Meena Menon Recovering Lost Histories: Riot Victims, the Communal Polarisation of Mumbai and Its Impact on People and Perceptions about Communities Is Mumbai the unbreakable city it is touted to be? As a city, it has changed in obvious and not so obvious ways since the post Babri Masjid demolition riots of December 1992 and January 1993. The main focus of the research will be the families of the riot victims and their lives after more than a decade since the violence. The research is based on interviews first hand visits to places and talking to as wide a spectrum of people as possible--- including researchers, journalists, riot affected families, government, police officials, apart from political parties. At the end of the research I would like to use the material for a book. Meena Menon (meenamenon @gmail.com) is currently a special correspondent with The Hindu. She has been a journalist for 22 years and has worked with The Times of India, Mid-day and the United of News of India. 11.00 -- 11.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; [See also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday's programme below.] Listen Little Man is a 28-minute documentary film study of ragging in India. Madhavi Tangella (manzilechar @yahoo.com) worked on Sagar Cinema, a "poor man's multiplex" for her Sarai Independent Fellowship. She is currently a film student at SRFTI, Kolkata. 1.30 -- 3.00 In the Midst of Conflict II: Reading Between the Column Inches Chair: Sanjay Sharma [Sanjay Sharma (sanjaykusharma @yahoo.co.in) is a historian and radio broadcaster. He teaches History at Zakir Hussain College, Delhi University and is co-editor of Sarai-CSDS's Hindi reader series, Deewan-e-Sarai.] Shiju Sam Varughese The Public Sphere as a Site of Knowledge Production: Science in the Malayalam Press This study attempts to understand the functioning of the public sphere, constituted through the regional press in Keralam, as a site of knowledge production in the context of scientific controversies. This will be studied by taking a specific scientific controversy as case. In the wake of an earthquake on 12th December 2000, several unusual geophysical incidents including well collapses, coloured rains and micro tremors began appearing in Keralam. These phenomena have been reported in the regional press from every nook and cranny of the region and the deliberations over it continued for almost one year in the regional press, involving a wide range of issues and actors. This case will be studied in detail based on content analysis of five major Malayalam newspapers (Malayala Manorama, Mathrubhumi, Deshabhimani, Madhyamam, and Keralam Kaumudi) as well as interviews with key actors involved in the controversy. This is to demonstrate how the public sphere acts as a site of knowledge production in the context of a scientific controversy. Shiju Sam Varughese (shijusam @gmail.com)is a doctoral candidate at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research is on the public understanding of science in Keralam. Alok Puranik Bazaar Reporting in Hindi Newspapers In the days when the Sensex is a mandatory presence in news reporting, Alok Puranik tried to study reportage of the market in Hindi newspapers down the years. When did these market reports originate, how did its terminology evolve, what was its relationship with the rest of the news and how has it changed over the years? He starts his study in 1947 and concentrates on two dailies published from Delhi. Alok Puranik (puranika @gmail.com) is an economist, columnist, satirist, and blogger who teaches at Agrasen College, Delhi University. His books include Neki kar Akhbar mein Daal and Arthik Patrakarita. Shubhra Nagalia The Representation of Communal Conflicts in Hindi Media: A Case study of the 2005 Mau Riots The research investigates the reportage of Mau riots by electronic and print media. While there has been extensive documentation and studies on the 'communalisation' of media and its role in riot situations, the small town manifestation of this phenomenon in Mau and its resultant repercussions on hegemonic discourses and construction of religious identity will be one of the areas of our study. The images, slogans, language and presentation of Mau riots through the lens of Hindi media; linkages between political influences, capital and communities that shapes the contours of media in general and local news in particular will also be subjects of our research. The paper also contains detailed interview excerpts. Shubhra Nagalia (shubhra_n71 @yahoo.com) is doing her Ph.D in the School of International Studies, JNU. She has taught Women's Studies at Mahatma Gandhi University, Wardha. She is a longtime activist and a member of All India Progressive Womens' Association. 3.15---4.45 Other Traditions Chair: Priya Sen [Priya Sen is a trained filmmaker who has taught media production in the US and India. She works with sound, multimedia and radio content at the Cybermohalla Labs. She is part of the editorial collective of the broadsheet series Sarai.txt.] Priya Babu Traditions of the Aravani (Transgender) Community in Tamilnadu Aravanis, called Hijrahs in north India, have existed in Tamilnadu for several centuries. Though born biologically as males, they closely identify themselves as girl/woman. By doing so, they undergo a lot of suffering due to the great psychological pressure exerted by different social forces that prevail. Because of lack of understanding among the general public and the society, those who do not behave like boys are often discrimination and even face violence from their own family members. Hence they are forced to leave their family members and later join the Aravani community, which accepts them and provides support. This research will study and document the Tamilnadu Aravani community's varied traditions. It will try to understand different sects and their hierarchies with a focus on interrelations during public celebrations and private gatherings. In the process, the project will also document their worshipping places, their relation with the god Aravan and the story of how they became linked with mainstream society. Priya Babu (priyababu_sudar @yahoo.co.in) is a Chennai-based researcher, journalist and coordinator of the theatre group, 'Kannadi Kalai Kuzhu'. She is herself a member of the Aravani community. Mithun Narayan Bose Tracing Life from the Stroke: Documenting the Rickshaw-Painting of Kolkata Streets The paintings behind the rickshaws of the city of Calcutta are a unique example of an unnoticed urban folk-art, and the detailed study of the paintings can be an alternative way to know about the life of these people. As most of the Calcutta rickshaw-pullers have migrated to the city from other places, the paintings' style reflect the form/ style of art available at the rickshaw-puller's place of origin. A unique heterogeneity is also observed due to its confluence with the urban style. Thematically, the rickshaw paintings of Calcutta-streets are of different types (e.g. religious, landscape, portrait of near and dear ones, film star etc.). In this project, the painting behind the rickshaws is documented with the help of both video recording and photography. Mithun Narayan Bose (bangali_mnb @yahoo.com) is a language teacher at a Kolkata school. He contributes regularly to several Kolkata little magazines, and his interests include poetry, folklore, cultural anthropology, art and art criticism. Deepak Kadyan Popular Musical Traditions and Configuration of Jat identity in Haryana, 1900-2000 This research seeks to examine the relationship between popular musical traditions and the forging of a jat identity in north India in general and in Haryana in particular. The processes of identity formation and self-perceived notions of community are analyzed and discerned through the prism of popular culture and as to how a 'community' viewed itself, and what its aspirations have been over a period of time. An important aspect of this study is an analysis of the sites of performance and circulation of this oral tradition. One such site is the akharas (lit. a wrestling arena, but here, it refers to a space for rehearsals and practice), influential until the mid twentieth century. Another such site available to oral tradition for circulation was the colonial army and police. The history of oral tradition is intertwined with the history of prominent performers, and major structural and performative changes, whether in terms of musical instruments, rhythms, intonation, appropriation of symbols or content--- in other words, the relationship between performers and performance. Interestingly, the social composition of oral tradition in Haryana is different, as it wasn't dominated by any particular community. Deepak Kadyan can be reached at: hie.deepak at gmail.com 5.30 -- 6.00 pm (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. Inder Salim (indersalim @gmail.com), an Independent Fellow this year, is a performance artist based in Delhi. He blogs his work at: http://indersalim.livejournal.com/ 7.00 -- 8.15 (Back in main auditorium) "Creeper", a play written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham, recasting the Vikram and Vetal myth in a contemporary urban setting. Featuring Mallika Prasad and Abhishek Majumdar. (Running time: 1 hour fifteen minutes) "Shit!" "What?" "Some kid fell off an escalator in Garuda mall and died." "It's ok, it's ok. As long as it's not someone we know. Just someone else's kid." "How can they let this happen? People must be allowed to go shopping in peace." About the play This is a story about two people in the city.She is the expert narrator, he is a mischievous sutradhar. These two story-tellers have amazing stories to share.Problem is they don't agree on how to tell the story! Creeper is a modern re-imagination of the tale of Vikram and Vetal. The play slams this mythos into a contemporary urban setting -- creating a shadowy world that is immediately recognizable, yet bizarre and entertaining. "Creeper" was written and produced as part of Ram Ganesh Kamatham's project on Vikram and Vetal during the 2007 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship. Kamatham, one of Bangalore's best known up-and-coming directors (ramganeshk @gmail.com) has created work for stage, film, radio, and video games. The project is blogged at: http://addledbraindump.blogspot.com/ *Thurs 6 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 am -- 11.30 Medicine and Modernity Chair: Awadhendra Sharan Gyaltsen Lama Shamans in Gangtok: A Graphic Novel A four part graphic novel exploring the lives of four different shamans in Gangtok, Sikkim. 20 pages of each part with black and white illustrations. Each part is approached with different illustration and narrative styles. Gyaltsen Lama (gyaltsenlama @gmail.com) received his bachelor of fine arts degree in 2000 from the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai. He is currently the fine arts teacher at the Tashi Namgyal Academy, Gangtok. Photographs, interview transcripts, pages from the novel and videos for this project are uploaded at: http://www.etattoo7.com/sarai/home.html M.S. Harilal Adopting Modernisation and Negotiating Modernisation: Placing Modern and Traditional Ayurvedic Sectors in the Context of Transformation The study endeavors to analyze responses of the larger transformation of a traditional medical system, namely Ayurveda, to a more affirmative institutional system and a well developed market. The modern forms of Ayurveda seem to be pulled by both pharmaceutical companies and modern practitioners in a direction that flaunts cultural authenticity and tradition as well as scientific efficacy and standardization for its products. It analyses how the stakeholders in this bifurcation - traditional and modern ayurvedic manufacturing, perceive and deal with modernization, which is two fold, both in form and content. The two specific questions that the study intends to explore, based on selected case analysis and necessary ethnographic works, are: one, How do we explain the recent gains made by many firms operating in the 'modern' sector? Two, what are the ways in which the traditional-informal sector has coped with the processes of transformation? To the gist, we are addressing the question of agential relation in the transformation and want to contrast and compare how the two sections deal with the challenge of globalization or negotiate to find their space in the global era. Three rationales may be given for this study: one, the traditional knowledge systems are increasingly become relevant, two, there is a universal concern to addressing community ownership of traditional knowledge and third, it will help us understand the struggle and revival of similarly placed traditional industries. M.S. Harilal (harilalms @gmail.com) is, at present, a doctoral scholar in Economics at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. His current areas of interests are the modernization of Indian systems of medicine, the medicinal plants sector, IPR and traditional knowledge. Burton Cleetus Urbanisation, Western Medicine and Modernity: The Rockefeller Foundation in Travancore One of the most important interventions made by the "progressive" state of Travancore which later became part of the state of Kerala, was in the field of health care. The reorganization of the public health department with the aid of the Rockefeller Foundation of the United States was aimed at drafting a coherent health care policy for the state, primarily to cater to the needs of the emerging population in the urban centres. The study seeks to argue that the process of reconstituting the health care policy by the princely state in the early twentieth century was a political project of governance aimed at socio-cultural framing. A comparison between activities of the Rockefeller foundation in addressing the spread of malaria and plague in the early twentieth century with the attempts made by the state of Kerala in tackling similar contagious diseases in recent times would enable to one understand the shifts in the frames of references of the nature of interventions of western medicine over the last century. Burton Cleetus (burtoncleetus @yahoo.co.uk) is a PhD scholar from the Center for Historical Studies, JNU. He did his post graduation and MPhil from JNU. His research on the institutionalization of indigenous medicine in Kerala is an attempt to explore as to how esoteric cultural practices and localized healing techniques were refashioned, revitalized and consequently institutionalized into the broad framework of Ayurveda. 11.00 -- 11.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Short film on ragging---Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; see also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday's programme below. Madhavi Tangella (manzilechar @yahoo.com) worked on Sagar Cinema, a "poor man's multiplex" for her Sarai Independent Fellowship. She is currently a film student at SRFTI, Kolkata. 11.45 -- 12.45 Two Views of the Changing Industrial Landscape (short documentary films & discussion) Chair: Jeebesh Bagchi Ranu Ghosh The Story of a Laid-off Worker's Resistance to Eviction in Kolkata I have been following the transformation of a productive, half a century old Jay Engineering Works into Kolkata's South City Project, "Eastern India's largest mixed use real estate development". Jay Engineering, commonly called Usha Factory, started operations manufacturing electrical consumer durables in the 1950s. The labour force of this reasonably large manufacturing unit was mostly comprised of migrants from Bihar and UP, and refugees from East Pakistan. The Works was closed down, made defunct and the land was handed over to the real estate consortium of five major real estate "magnates" in 2003. The factory buildings were demolished and the construction of the South City Projects comprising three 35-storey and one 28-storey tower, a shopping mall, school, multiplex, club etc, started from February 2004, which included the illegal filling up of one of south Calcutta's largest natural water bodies. The workers of Jay were forced into retirement with little or no compensation and sent into limbo, except for Shambhu Prasad Singh. Shambhu has refused to opt for the meagre handouts and has instead taken his case to court. Against all odds, and withstanding the sustained pressure of the builders, he continues to live in his original quarters, surrounded and dwarfed on all sides by the construction in progress of South City. This brave stand taken by an individual is an example of how such "development" can be challenged. Since the latter half of 2004 I have been documenting in video and still formats, the stages of development at the construction site as the work progressed and the displaced labour force, and out of that, Shambhu Prasad evolved as an outstanding example of the protest against this "development". I began to follow his everyday life, his improvised strategies of survival in the face of difficult circumstances and his innate zeal to fight for his rights. He has transformed from a character in my film into that of a collaborator, adding a unique dimension to the project. Ranu Ghosh (ghosh.ranu @gmail.com)has worked as a freelance camera person and director in the Indian industry for the past eight years. T. Venkat and Meghna Sukumar Building the Indian Dream: Living and Working Conditions of Migrant Workers on Chennai's IT Corridor Cities in this country have been promoting huge infrastructural projects in their attempt to redefine themselves to the age of globalisation. The 6 lane express way, christened the IT corridor, along with the luxurious industrial, commercial and residential complexes are part of Chennai city's attempt to create a global image. Thus to the people of the city it is an image, a dream and an opportunity for change and transformation. To the migrant construction workers it is undeniably an opportunity with enormous economic prospects, but in what ways does it transform their lives? What hope does it hold out for them? What image does it create in them? What is their stake in it? Presented through a short documentary film, our research delves into the aspirations of the workers, and their imageries of the creature they are building. It enquires into the change and transformation that this grand project has brought to their lives. T. Venkata Naga Narasimhan, alias Venkat (venkatt2k @gmail.com), is a post graduate in sociology from the University of Madras. He joined as research assistant to Dr. Karen Coelho (an earlier Sarai Independent Fellow and asst professor at Madras Institute of Development Studies) on a project titled "Neighbourhood Associations as Urban Collective Actors: a comparative study of Bangalore and Chennai" in the year 2006-07. 1pm -- 2pm Tracking Literatures Chair: Ravikant Rajiv Ranjan Giri Saraswati ki Sarvajanik Duniya, 1900-1920 (The Popular World of the Journal Saraswati, 1900-1920) Rajiv Ranjan Giri has published extensively on the history of Hindi. He co-edits a Hindi journal called Samved. He can be reached at: rajeevgirijnu at rediffmail.com . Gopal Ji Pradhan Hindi mein Uttar Purv (The North-east in Hindi Literature) Gopal Ji Pradhan is a writer and activist. He teaches Hindi at Assam University, Silchar and can be reached at: gopaljeepradhan at rediffmail.com . 2.15 --4.15 Special Panel: Where Does Research Go? Featuring: Zainab Bawa, Parismita Singh, Madhavi Tangella and Prasad Shetty. Discussant: Vivek Narayanan. If research really did proceed as it plans to do, time after time, in the bright, overdeterminate clarity of good proposals, asking direct questions and receiving exact answers, this would not be saying very much for the richness or depth of our lives, our social and built structures and knotted networks! Instead, we wander, we diverge, we rethink, we scratch out, we revisit: the strength of research is not in the attempt to control the world's material but in questions leading to new questions, that is, in the ability to stay alert while the ground unexpectedly shifts under us. In this panel, we ask four previous Independent Fellows to look back on their fellowship research, considering the ways they have been led to unexpected conclusions, new projects, critiques of what they were doing in the first instance, and revisitings of the original site of research to find it changed. How does research evolve, and what kinds of other projects does it lead to? Prasad Shetty (askshetty @rediffmail.com) is an architect and urban planner. He is a founding member of CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai. Parismita Singh (parismitasingh @yahoo.com) is finishing her first graphic novel, due in 2008. Zainab Bawa (zainabbawa @yahoo.com) talks her walks through a world of words on her infrequently updated blog www.xanga.com/citybytes. Madhavi Tangella (manzilechar @yahoo.com) is currently a film student at SRFTI. Vivek Narayanan (vivek @sarai.net) co-coordinates the Independent Fellowship programme for Sarai and writes, mostly poetry and some fiction. He is Consulting Editor for the web-based literary journal, Almost Island and an Associate Editor for the Boston-based international poetry annual, Fulcrum. His first book of poems appeared last year. 4.30 -- 6.00 Work In "Progress": Feature-length video by Debkamal Ganguly (87 minutes) Following the trail of a 1932 journey by one key Bengali novelist, Bibhutibhushan, the video tries to explore varied ways of interaction of 'urban-subject' with 'non-urban' forest and plateau-like spaces, close to the western border of West Bengal. Selecting Bangla texts as early as 1872 to as late as 2007, the video tries to articulate the changing trajectory of space-emotion, from mythical to self-conscious to sublime to existentialist and finally the virtual and hyper-real. The video acknowledges the random and arbitrary as an aesthetic function and recycles whatever comes along its way. Debkamal Ganguly (deb99kamal @yahoo.com)'s work as a scriptwriter, film and sound editor (including with director Vipin Vijay) has earned him some national and international recognition. He pursues this current project as a 2007 Sarai-CSDS Associate Fellow. 6.15 -- 6.45 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. Inder Salim (indersalim @gmail.com), an Independent Fellow this year, is a performance artist based in Delhi. He blogs his work at: http://indersalim.livejournal.com/ 7.15pm -- 8pm Chennai Sabha Drama: An Actor's Story: Solo performance by Pritham Chakravarty (running time: 30 mins) For her 2007 Independent Fellowship project, Pritham Chakravarty researched and revisited the lingering artifacts of a scene that she herself had been a part of as a child actress: Chennai's "sabha drama", a semi-amateur subscription theatre scene. Her solo show performance is not autobiographical, but is based on a composite reconstruction of interviews with actors and others---it draws on Chakravarty's usual and intensive method of designing one-person scripts based on a series of interviews, inhabiting the persona of the interviewed. Pritham K. Chakravarty (prithu7 @hotmail.com) has been a political theatre performer and theatre activist based in Chennai for 20 years; but her acting debut first came on the Sabha drama stage itself, at the age of six. *Fri Dec 7 Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 -- 11.00 Proofreading: Identity and Publishing Chair: Mahmood Farooqui Vijay Kumar Pandey Meerut ka Prakasan Udyog (The Publishing Industry in Meerut) The publication industry of Meerut is almost 200 years old. During this period the industry has evolved with time and flourished. The present turnover of the industry is nearly Rs. 200 crore per annum and provides employment to approximately one lakh people. The study aims at identifying the factors contributing to the rapid growth and evolution of this industry in Meerut during past 200 years as well as the problems and challenges before it. It will also look into how the industry has changed with time. Vijay Kumar Pandey (vijaykharsh @yahoo.co.in) has been a journalist for the last five years. He is currently with Amar Ujala. Yoginder Sikand & Naseemur Rahman Islamic Publishing Houses in Delhi This research project focuses on the Muslim publishing industry in Delhi. It examines various aspects of this industry, including content of publications and linkages between authors, publishers and consumers of the literature produced by these publishing houses. It also looks at how the Muslim publishing industry is responding to the various challenges that Muslims in India today see themselves faced with. Naseem ur Rahman (majidee @yahoo.com) is a Ph.D. student at the Jamia Millia Islamia and is presently working with the Markazi Maktaba Islami, a leading Muslim publishing house in Delhi; and Yoginder Sikand, Professor at the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. 11.00 -- 12.15 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Side Effects: Collaborations and Conversations Between Independent Fellows. A documentary film on ragging---Listen, Little Man (28 mins)-- by Madhavi Tangella; discussion and commentary by Shivam Vij, who studied ragging for his Sarai-CSDS Fellowship. Introduced and moderated by Iram Ghufran Madhavi Tangella (manzilechar @yahoo.com) worked on Sagar Cinema, a "poor man's multiplex" for her Sarai Independent Fellowship. She is currently a film student at SRFTI, Kolkata. Shivam Vij (mail @shivamvij.com) is a journalist, blogger, and runs the website stopragging.org . His research on the nature of ragging in hostels for the Independent Fellowship in 2005 led him to being appointed as a consultant to the R.K. Raghavan committee set up by the Supreme Court to recommend measures to curb ragging. His journalistic interests include caste, social mobility, internet censorship, and online communities. 11.15 -- 12.15 Maps for Lost Cities Chair: Shuddhabrata Sengupta Surojit Sen The Displacement of Prostitutes: A Tale of Two Cities in Two Centuries This paper focuses on a satirical text Bodmaes Jobdo (Wicked Punished) by Prankrishna Dutta in 1869 on the aftermath of 1868 The Contagious Diseases Act XIV. Which the British enforced in April 1869 in order to control flesh trade and prevent the brothel-going soldiers from contracting venereal diseases. The Act made it mandatory for the prostitutes to register their names and undergo medical examination and treatment (if necessary ). While the police used the legislation as a ploy to harass the prostitutes, their clients also felt axed by the Act. Things came to such a pass that some prostitutes brought the matter to the attention Viceroy Lord Mayo and his wife through a letter (19 July, 1869 ) most probably written by someone on their behalf. The chaotic situation forced a section of prostitutes to leave the Sonagachi red light area of Calcutta for Chandannagar town, then under French rule, and throng the brothel that had existed there since the 1770s. This 200 year old settlement was demolished by some promoters bent on using the land as real estate. The prostitutes living there couldn't resist the onslaught; nor did any organization come to their rescue. I view the event from the standpoint of 'rights' and relate it to the recently proposed amendment to the existing ITPA Act ( 1987 ). Which tends to treat prostitution as criminal offence even as it has not been declared illegal. Without making any provision for their rehabilitation or alternative livelihood, this official move I argue, is going to take away the little space that the 'fallen' women have and marginalize them further. Surojit Sen (surojit369 @yahoo.co.in) does research for documentary films, writes book reviews, short prose pieces on literature and scripts for telefilms (in Bengali). He renders editorial service and is now working on his first Bengali novel named City Edition. Mohit K. Ray Heritage Ponds of Kolkata: A Contemporary History Kolkata is a city of ponds. Job Charnok, the first well-known British merchant, set up his office by the side of a pond called Lal Dighi, which still exists to remind of this city's colonial past. There are many ponds like this with rich historical linkages. Many streets and places of Kolkata are named after ponds. Even after the onslaught of the real estate sector, the city has more than 3500 ponds. The significance of these urban waterbodies as water resources is being appreciated now as never before. These ponds form a part of the cultural history of the city. Once, it was the place where community people met during bathing; Bengali literature has so many narratives about the ghats of these ponds. The fields by the side of some ponds provide space to hold fairs. However, there is still no proper documentation of such an important city heritage. This study will add to the urban cultural history where the city ponds are not mere past heroes, but active agents of a thriving present. Mohit Ray (mrsg @vsnl.com), the principal researcher, is an environmental professional who has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and works for environmental rights. 12.30 -- 1.30 Rethinking the Social Chair: Vivek Narayanan Santana Issar and Aditi Saraf Rethinking Animal Activism in an Urban Context Human-animal relationships have been historically constituted in complex and intimate ways along the economic, the affective, the cultural and ritual, and the metaphoric. As these relationships have receded into an irretrievable past, it has been suggested that animals have been reconfigured in the urban imagination; as household pets, as objects of wonder in zoos and circuses, and as (Kentucky or not) fried chicken. Our question is - does this driving of a wedge between human lives and those of animals inform dominant notions of 'animal welfare'? We study the relationship between the theory of the human-animal interaction in a post-industrial urban context, and the practices of animal rescue and welfare, in order to understand how, and to what extent, each is shaped by the other. All this in the particular context of our very own urban jungle -- Delhi. Both Santana Issar (santanaissar @gmail.com) and Aditi Saraf (aditisrf @gmail.com) are graduates of St Stephen's College. Santana is a filmmaker, Aditi works as a research associate at the National Knowledge Commission. Arnab Chatterjee Beyond Private and Public: New Perspectives on Personal and Personalist Social Work In the first part of my presentation ( in the final version of the paper too) I shall dwell on the importance of the public/private divide in modern social theory and ask, is the public/private divide the main unresolved dilemma that haunts the sign of our own times ? How does the personal interrupt and contaminate the above binary and wherefrom our engagement could temporarily begin? An impersonal public sphere, threatened by the deceptive nature of the personal, was founded to ground political modernity and was extended to cover such remote questions of personal charity which --some like Hegel sought to replace by state related public assistance or welfare. This normalizing restraint was energized even at the level of speech, but through the instance of personal attacks, the repressed narrative of the personal seemed to recur at the cost of our unease---a political pornography of sorts. An excavation informed us--behind the masked ordeal of innocent impersonality, there lurks the obscene narratives of manipulation, lying, backstabbing, blackmailing, fraud, betrayal, malice by which persons govern each other. Now, all proposed resolutions, located within the impasse, have they worked? I discuss the Gandhian attempt and discuss the dictatorial desire. The failure to integrate the public and the private until it vanishes in the terrorized unity of the person/al -- inaugurates---in a sense-- and urges us to recover the suppressed history of the personal and subsequently a theory of the personal with its roots in the German version of personalism. Finally, does the category personal, through the sieve of personalist social work, solve the public/private problem posed in the beginning, or compound the problem further? How, despite the personalist indeterminacy and irreducibility of the person, a personalist ethics could be found will be addressed in this section; I'll spend a considerable five minutes on the above and end by reflecting on my most recent work not covered in SARAI postings. Arnab Chatterjee (apnawritings @yahoo.co.in) is Doctoral Fellow at the department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University, Kolkata and on the visiting faculty of Ethics and Human Values at the Bengal Institute of Technology, Kolkata. 1.45 pm -- 3.45 pm Special Presentation: The SARAI-CSDS Associate Fellowships Chair: Monica Narula [Monica Narula (monica @sarai.net) is a media practitioner with a background in filmmaking and English Literature. She is one the co-initiators of Sarai and one of the editors of the Sarai Reader series. She is part of the Raqs Media Collective. She coordinates the media practice projects at Sarai.] Nancy Adajania: A New Journal for the Arts: Prototype Issue, 2007 Although there have been exciting recent developments in the world of Indian art, there is a strong sense that much of it has been happening in the dark, without enough open discussion made widely available to the public. Hoskote and Adajania argue that in order for art to have significance and value beyond a point, it needs to be made in the context of lively discussion and critical debate. Modern India has had a rich history of such critical initiatives, but in the current context there are very few platforms for such engagement; those that do exist confine themselves largely to reporting on events, or more often, to sales figures and scandals, focusing on the life of the studio, the solitary creator, and of economic institutions such as the gallery and the auction house. Both senior art critics in their own right, Hoskote and Adajania propose to make a journal that focuses on actually mobilising and creating a new context for the production of art. Rather than being a public relations exercise for art in India, the journal would be a colloquium across disciplines, regions, traditions and intellectual lineages. It would include, among other forms of writing, analytical essays, tactical accounts, select reviews, and polemical texts. The journal would be interested in developing a perspective of what the proposal calls "a nuanced critical regionalism", which would reject both the "neo-tribalism" of an inward-looking isolationism, as well as an uncritical globalism that lacks anchorage in a specific cultural context. Last but not least, the journal would seek and institute collaborative ventures between artists and public-sphere or civil-society activists. Nancy Adajania (nancyadajania71 at yahoo.co.uk) is a well-known cultural theorist, art critic and independent curator. She is developing this project for the Associate Fellowship with Ranjit Hoskote. Debkamal Ganguly: An Imaginative Text Based on Contemporary Travel Through the "Forests" Described in Bibhuthibhushan's Memoirs [note showing of complete video by Debkamal Ganguly at 4.30 on previous day, Thursday December 6. On the 7th, Ganguly will show excerpts from the video, discuss its making and answer questions.] Sarai generally focusses on urban spaces and the processes of urbanisation. However, a very crucial emerging question in contemporary India is, how are "rural" and forest spaces being transformed in the current context, and what is the relationship of this process to the development of cities? One could look at the question only in terms of contemporary transformations, but another approach would also situate it historically, in relation to accounts of what these non-urban areas used to look like. The project looks precisely at this question, in the context of Eastern India. Debkamal Ganguly is interested in how the idea of "nature" has developed and has been changed by visitors from the city, over several decades, including himself. He seeks to understand "how an otherwise 'underdeveloped' marginalized geographical/cultural space in the immediate west of the Gangetic plains has been entangled in multilayered relationship with the urban consciousness and artistic creativity of Kolkata." 4.00 -- 5.30 pm Towards a Future for Independent Research: Interactive Open Discussion All participants. 7.00 -- 8.30 Punches Ponytails Ringtones: Women Boxers in India A film by Pankaj Rishi Kumar (82 mins) Introduced by Shuddhabrata Sengupta "This is a journey into the science of boxing as practiced by 2 Indian women. From Dec'04 to May'07, I shot with them as they tried to understand their bodies, their undying love for the sport and their constant struggle to realize their dreams. The film unfolds their story." Pankaj Rishi Kumar (kumartalkies at yahoo.com) has been making making documentary films for the last 11 years. His best known films include Kumar Talkies. He showed the first rushes from his Independent Fellowship project on women boxers at the 2005 workshop. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Wed Dec 12 12:16:39 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:16:39 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Student Stipendship Workshop 2007 Message-ID: <475F83CF.3050507@sarai.net> *Sarai, CSDS Student Stipendship Workshop 2007 PROGRAMME 14th-15th December* Every year Sarai provides stipendships to conduct research on the city Life. These stipendships are provided to post graduate researchers enrolled in different academic programmes across the country. Apart from financial support, Sarai conducts three workshops to discuss various aspects of research, provide a platform to share ongoing study with a wider community of urban researchers and practitioners and give critical inputs to help orient individual projects in better manner. This year, 20 stipendships were provided to researchers who come from a wide range of disciplines and places. On 14-15th December 2007, they will be making public presentations of their nine months of research. Here is the programme in detail: *Day I Friday, 14 December 2007 * 9.30-9.45 *Tea* 9.45-10.00 Introductory Remarks: Ravi Sundaram, Awadhendra Sharan and Sadan Jha 10.00-11.00 Spaces and Institutions of Commercial Life Chair: Ipsita Sahu Hijam Eskoni Devi, Manipur, "Relevance of Traditional Institution in Urban Governance: A Case Study of Nupi Keithel, Imphal" Discussant: Mayuri Samant Sumalatha.B.S., Trivandrum, "Space for Brokering Branches in Kerala Townships: A Casual Link with Urbanisation" Discussant: Sreeja Open Remarks 11.00-11.15 *Tea Break* 11.15-1.00 Music,Television and Theatres Chair:Meera Baindur Vineet Kumar,Delhi, "Niji Samachar Chennelon ki Bhashik Sanskriti: Vishesh Sandarbh Aajtak" Discussant: Priyanka Gupta D.Karthikeyan, Chennai,"Music From The Margins: Gaana Songs As A Subaltern Phenomenon" Discussant:Sowjanya R.Peddi Rohit Parkash, Patna, "Kalidas Rangalaya: Patna Ka Ek Sanskritik Kendra" Discussant:Agniv Ghosh Open Remarks 1.00---2.00 *Lunch Break* 2.00-3.30 Environment, Governance and Planning Chair:Sreedeep Geetanjoy Sahu, Bangalore, "Urban Environmental Governance" Discussant: D.Karthikeyan Sutapa Ghosh, Mumbai, "Modernist Planning" Discussant:Hijam Eskoni Devi Meera Baindur, Sreeja K.G. and Sowjanya R. Peddi, Bangalore, "The 'Lake' As Urban Public Space" Discussant: Kartik Nair Open Remarks 3.30-3.45 *Tea Break* 3.45-5.00 Open Session (Observations and Suggestions for Further Improvement by Workshop Participants. Moderator: Sadan Jha). *Day II Saturday, 15 December 2007* 10.00-11.00 Visual/(In)Visible City Chair:Kartik Nair Priyanka Gupta, Kolkata, "Graffiti and Kolkatascape: A Discourse of Conflicting Rights, Class and Citizenship" Discussant:Bhavya Dore Akhil Katyal, Delhi, "Queer Urban Culture(s): The Case of New Delhi" Discussant:Vineet Open Remarks 11.00-11.15 *Tea Break* 11.15-1.00 Caste in the Changing Urban Milieu Chair:Vineet Abhishek Kumar Gupta, Delhi, "Ganga Main Bahati Jindagi" Discussant: Rohit Prakash Mayuri Samant, Delhi, "Caste Violence in Urban Spaces: A Study of Narratives" Discussant:Sumalatha B.S. Sangeeta Chandu Thosar, Pune, "Political Leadership of Women in Pune City: A Dalit Feminist study (1995-2007)" Discussant:Geetanjoy Sahu Open Remarks 1.00-2.00 *Lunch Break* 2.00-3.00 The Urban Reading Practices Chair:Bhavya Dore Sreedeep Bhattacharya, Delhi, "Pornography in Urban India: From Porn Sphere to Mainstream" Discussant: Akhil Katyal Agniv Ghosh, Delhi, "Nababus and their New Calcutta"a Open Remarks 3.00-3.15 *Tea Break* 3.15-4.15 Spectacle, Entertainment and the City Spaces Chair: Akhil Katyal Bhavya Dore and Kartik Nair, Delhi, "Appu Ghar: Amusing the City" Discussant: Sreedeep Ipsita Sahu, Delhi, "Gentrification in the Built Environment of Ghaziabad: A Focus on Malls and Multiplexes" Discussant: Meera Baindur Open Remarks 4.15-4.45 Open Session ( Observations and Suggestions for Further Improvement by Workshop Participants. Moderator: Sadan Jha). 4.45-5.00 Concluding Remarks: Ravi Sundaram. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [[END OF NEWSLETTER]] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Sat Dec 1 18:31:26 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:01:26 -0000 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] [Sarai-Newsletter] December 2007 Message-ID: <47515AF1.3030200@sarai.net> *Newsletter- December 2007 [[CONTENTS]]* * Announcement of Events* The Independent Fellowship Workshop ----------------------------------------------------------- Hindi Blog Writing Workshop ----------------------------------------------------------- Student Stipendship Workshop ----------------------------------------------------------- The Comix Workshop ----------------------------------------------------------- With winter setting in we plan to warm ourselves up with some passionate talks and discussions over hot cups of tea and coffee. We present a mélange of events ranging from serious to unconventional sharing of knowledge at the Independent Fellowship and Student Stipendship workshops to the inception of new thematic ideas at the blog writing and the comic book workshops. Hope you will make yourself available for the events and access the particulars announced to you. Best, Mitoo Das Programme Coordinator Sarai, CSDS Email me at: mitoo at sarai.net *Events: Working Questions: the 2007 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship Workshop Dates: 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th December Venue: Sarai and LTG Auditorium* Each year Sarai-CSDS's unique fellowship programme gives grants for all kinds of practitioners---artists, performers, writers, filmmakers, working professionals and academics too---to pursue their own (sometimes serious, sometimes quirky) research projects. The results of this research can be applied in any direction and, in recent years, has eventually led to all kinds of things, from comic to public actions to films to books. This year, Sarai's yearly Independent Fellowship workshop will be a special gala event, in the centre of town, looking back over the five years of the fellowship. It will feature presentations from this year's Independent Fellows, who will be coming in from various corners of the country, as well as some previous recipients of the Fellowship. Expect an unconventional convention. Expect talks (both academic and non-academic), musical and theatrical performances, books, videos, listening booths, slide shows, arguments, dialogues, merriment and controversy. A special curated multimedia exhibition accompanies the events. *Tuesday 4 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.30 -- 12.00 History Versus Reminiscence Chair: Debjani Sengupta Anuja Ghosalkar Papa Ajoba: My Grandfather, the Film Make Up Artist Renee C. Lulam and Julius L. Basaiawmoit Changing Faces of Democratic Spaces in Urban Cosmopolitan Shillong Sugata Nandi Eventful Adolescence, Memorable Youth: The Politics of Personal Reminiscence in Calcutta, 1947-1967 12.15 -- 1.15 Proving Residence Chair: Shveta Sarda Ajit K. Dwivedi Sealing ke Nazar Mein: Sealing Banam Pusta ka Visthapan (Media Study: Comparative Reporting on Land Ceilings and Displacement from Jamuna Pushta) Bipul K. Pandey The Residence Proof 1.30 pm -- 2.30 pm Sub-metropolitan Dreams Chair: Iram Ghufran Nalin Narain Mathur B-Grade Engineering College Culture Syed Zaigham Imam Sapno ke Rail (The Train of Dreams: Narratives from the Allahabad-Jaunpur Passenger Train): a short documentary film 2.45 -- 4.15 Hearing Spaces, Seeing Spaces Chair: Aarti Sethi Shahnawaz Khan Entertainment Ghosts in Srinagar: A Tale of Cinema Halls in the City Zubin Pastakia A Photographic Study of Bombay's Cinema Halls Sayandeb Mukherjee Corridors: An Exploration of Sound and Space 4.30---6.30 pm Special Panel: The Past of Research and the Present of Practice Featuring: TP Sabitha, Yousuf Saeed, Mahmood Farooqui and Rahaab Allana Discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta 7.00---7.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. *Wed 5 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 am -- 11.30 Distant Communities Chair: Ravikant Surya Prakash Upadhyay Guru on the Air: Televised Hinduism in Contemporary India Neelima Chauhan Blogit Hindi Jati ka Linkit Man: Blogon mein Hindi Hypertext ka Adhayayan (The World of Hindi Blogs) Raman Jit Singh Chima The Regulation of the Internet by the Indian State 11.45 -- 1.15 In the Midst of Conflict I: Looking Back and Looking Ahead Chair: Ravi Sundaram Arvind Kumar Caste Violence in Urban Maharashtra: A study of the 1974 Worli Riots in Mumbai and the Dalit Panthers Movement P. Jenny and C. Christy Chitralekha's Burning Autorickshaw: Caste, Class and Gender in the Urban Space of Keralam Meena Menon Recovering Lost Histories: Riot Victims, the Communal Polarisation of Mumbai and Its Impact on People and Perceptions about Communities 11.00 -- 11.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Short film on ragging---Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; [See also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday's programme below.] 1.30 -- 3.00 In the Midst of Conflict II: Reading Between the Column Inches Chair: Sanjay Sharma Shiju Sam Varughese The Public Sphere as a Site of Knowledge Production: Science in the Malayalam Press Alok Puranik Bazaar Reporting in Hindi Newspapers Shubhra Nagalia The Representation of Communal Conflicts in Hindi Media: A Case study of the 2005 Mau Riots 3.15---4.45 Other Traditions Chair: Priya Sen Priya Babu Traditions of the Aravani (Transgender) Community in Tamilnadu Mithun Narayan Bose Tracing Life from the Stroke: Documenting the Rickshaw-Painting of Kolkata Streets Deepak Kadyan Popular Musical Traditions and Configuration of Jat identity in Haryana, 1900-2000 5.30 -- 6.00 pm (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. 7.00 -- 8.15 (Back in main auditorium) "Creeper", a play written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham, recasting the Vikram and Vetal myth in a contemporary urban setting. Featuring Mallika Prasad and Abhishek Majumdar. *Thurs 6 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 am -- 11.30 Medicine and Modernity Chair: Awadhendra Sharan Gyaltsen Lama Shamans in Gangtok: A Graphic Novel M.S. Harilal Adopting Modernisation and Negotiating Modernisation: Placing Modern and Traditional Ayurvedic Sectors in the Context of Transformation Burton Cleetus Urbanisation, Western Medicine and Modernity: The Rockefeller Foundation in Travancore 11.00 -- 11.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Short film on ragging---Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; see also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday's programme below. 11.45 -- 12.45 Two Views of the Changing Industrial Landscape (short documentary films & discussion) Chair: Jeebesh Bagchi Ranu Ghosh The Story of a Laid-off Worker's Resistance to Eviction in Kolkata T. Venkat and Meghna Sukumar Building the Indian Dream: Living and Working Conditions of Migrant Workers on Chennai's IT Corridor 1pm -- 2pm Tracking Literatures Chair: Ravikant Rajiv Ranjan Giri Saraswati ki Sarvajanik Duniya, 1900-1920 (The Popular World of the Journal Saraswati, 1900-1920) Gopal Ji Pradhan Hindi mein Uttar Purv (The North-east in Hindi Literature) 2.15 --4.15 Special Panel: Where Does Research Go? Featuring: Zainab Bawa, Parismita Singh, Madhavi Tangella and Prasad Shetty. Discussant: Vivek Narayanan. 4.30 -- 5.45 Work In "Progress": Feature-length video by 2007 Sarai-CSDS Associate Fellow Debkamal Ganguly 6.15 -- 6.45 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. 7.15pm -- 8pm Solo Performance: Pritham K Chakravarty The Life of an Actor in Chennai's Sabha Drama *Fri Dec 7 Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 -- 11.00 Proofreading: Identity and Publishing Chair: Mahmood Farooqui Vijay Kumar Pandey Meerut ka Prakasan Udyog (The Publishing Industry in Meerut) Yoginder Sikand & Naseemur Rahman Islamic Publishing Houses in Delhi 11.00 -- 12.15 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Side Effects: Collaborations and Conversations Between Independent Fellows. Short film on ragging---Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; discussion and commentary by Shivam Vij, who studied ragging for his Sarai-CSDS Fellowship. Introduced and moderated by Iram Ghufran 11.15 -- 12.15 Maps for Lost Cities Chair: Shuddhabrata Sengupta Surojit Sen The Displacement of Prostitutes: A Tale of Two Cities in Two Centuries Mohit K. Ray & Soma Ghosh Heritage Ponds of Kolkata: A Contemporary History 12.30 -- 1.30 Rethinking the Social Chair: Vivek Narayanan Santana Issar and Aditi Saraf Rethinking Animal Activism in an Urban Context Arnab Chatterjee Beyond Private and Public: New Perspectives on the Personal and Personalist in Social Work 1.45 pm -- 3.45 pm Special Presentation: The SARAI-CSDS Associate Fellowships Nancy Adajania: A New Journal for the Arts: Prototype Issue, 2007 Debkamal Ganguly: An Imaginative Text Based on Contemporary Travel Through the "Forests" Described in Bibhuthibhushan's Memoirs (see complete video by Debkamal Ganguly on previous day.) Chair: Monica Narula 4.00 -- 5.30 pm Towards a Future for Independent Research: Interactive Open Discussion 7.00 -- 8.30 Punches Ponytails Ringtones: Women Boxers in India A film by Pankaj Rishi Kumar (82 mins) Introduced by Shuddhabrata Sengupta (A complete programme of the workshop which would include the participants' abstracts and their information will be brought out on a separate Sarai-Newsletter.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Hindi Blog Writing Workshop Date: 11th December, 2007 Time: 2 to 5 pm Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS* Today blogging has become an important tool of communication. Diverse things from ideas, analysis, critiques and memoirs to travelogues are all being written and shared through blogs. Blogs in Hindi are gradually becoming popular as writing in Hindi on the internet is no more a problem (there is a huge variety of tools to start with). But we still have to go a long way before Hindi blogs become much favoured, the main drawback being lack of knowledge among the public. The Hindi Blog Writing Workshop at Sarai-CSDS is an attempt to involve people who are interested in blogging in the world of Hindi and would like to learn more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Sarai-CSDS Student Stipendship Workshop Dates: 14th and 15th December, 2007 Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS * Every year Sarai provides studentship to conduct research on the city Life. These stipendships are provided to post graduate researchers enrolled in different academic programmes across the country. Apart from financial support, Sarai conducts three workshops to discuss various aspects of research, provide a platform to share ongoing study with a wider community of urban researchers and practitioners and give critical inputs to help orient individual projects in a better manner. This year, 20 stipendships were provided to researchers who come from a myriad range of disciplines and places. On 14-15th December 2007, they will be making public presentations on their nine months of research work. A more detailed programme will be announced before the event. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *The Comix Workshop Session I Dates: 17th, 18th and 19th December Venue: French Information and Resource Centre 2 Aurangzeb Road, New Delhi* It would be an understatement to say that comics in India have not had as flourishing a practice as cinema, literature and art. The public knowledge about the comic book practice and culture in India has often been limited to a few major publications and epic productions. Most of them have happened at least a decade ago, maybe more. And now that we stand on the threshold of what is being touted as the graphic novel/comic boom in India, a few questions stare at us. How do we talk, in a public platform, about the hidden narratives that have contributed so immensely to the growth and evolution of the form in India? How do we popularize the discourse of comics in India? How do we know and share the knowledge pool that contributes to the comic book practice and readership in India? In an attempt to address these questions, Sarai-CSDS and the French Information and Resource Center (FIRC) have collaborated to produce a series of events focusing on a deeper and richer conversation about the comic book culture in India. One such event is the Comic Book Workshop The first session for the workshop will be taken by two French comic artists. Mathieu Sapin, Francois Mathieu Sapin and Francois Demaut. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * [[END OF NEWSLETTER]] * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Sat Dec 1 19:09:41 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:39:41 -0000 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Ind.Fellowship Workshop- Detailed Programme Message-ID: <475163C7.4050005@sarai.net> *Working Questions: The 2007 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship Workshop PROGRAMME 4-7 December 2007* Working Questions: a curated multimedia exhibition of work and archival material by Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows This curated journey gathers together a wide and various range of audio-visual and print material from Sarai's archives, collected and produced by Independent Fellows. It features photographic work, graphic panels, audio and visual loops, short films, etc., from research areas as diverse as Jazz in Bollywood, glass negatives from early cinema, signage in the Indian city, digital imaging in photo studios, street musicians, video theaters, and much much more... *Tuesday 4 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House * 10.30 -- 12.00 History Versus Reminiscence Chair: Debjani Sengupta [Debjani Sengupta (debjanisgupta @yahoo.com) is an ex independent fellow and teaches English Literature at Indraprastha College, Delhi University. She is the editor of Mapmaking: Partition Stories from two Bengals, and has translated Taslima Nasreen's Selected Columns. Most recently, she co-edited and wrote Working Questions , the Sarai Independent Fellowship book.] Anuja Ghosalkar Papa Ajoba: My Grandfather, the Film Make Up Artist The project chronicles the life of my grandfather, who was a make up artist in the Hindi film industry from 1941 to 2000: from his early years at Raj Kamal studio with V. Shantaram (when they literally made their own make-up) to his 17 years spent at the Filmistan studio. There is a sharper focus on the 1960's - when he predominantly worked with Shammi Kapoor, Asha Parekh, Sadhana & Saira Banu. It also documents film history from the point of view of a technician who might lacquer it with his own stories. It is finally, a tribute to a grandfather who narrated stories of his everyday life, not knowing that stories often become history. The research is primarily through interviews. The presentation will be in an audio-visual form with a written essay. Anuja Ghosalkar (anu.ghosalkar @gmail.com) is a lecturer and researcher in film and has been involved with an experimental theatre group in Mumbai for over half a decade. She is currently working with Breakthrough -- a globally active human rights organization. Her project blog can be found at: http://www.papaajoba.blogspot.com/ Renee C. Lulam and Julius L. Basaiawmoit Changing Faces of Democratic Spaces in Urban Cosmopolitan Shillong Understanding personal events as profoundly social allows a broader perception of human interactions that have shaped the past and continue into the present. As the research progresses and we meet more people sharing their versions of 'cosmopolitan', we find that the backdrop we initially placed the research against has often proven inadequate and therefore challenging. In one of the testimonies, Shillong has been called an 'artifact of British administration....artificial...' The place and people are variously known to have been tolerant, narrow, short sighted, confused, but most of all, absorbent. Our intention through this research is to explore the different ways Shillong considers 'cosmopolitan'.We were fortunate that in the course of our research, an event like the Indian Idol contest took place, evoking an almost 'patriotic' fervour over the finalist from Shillong. Many have quoted it as an example of how Shillong has progressed in cosmopolitan tolerance, though much of it was driven by emotion and tended towards the superficial and reactionary, in the observation of some others. Through excerpts of audio interviews, video clips, newspaper or journal articles, photographs, city soundscapes, and an interpretative paper, we will attempt to present a picture of the changing faces of Shillong vis-à-vis the term 'cosmopolitan'. Julius Basaiawmoit (lemiwell @hotmail.com) specializes in sound for film and television. Renee Lulam (renee75 @gmail.com) works with independent research based projects. Both are from Shillong. Sugata Nandi Eventful Adolescence, Memorable Youth: The Politics of Personal Reminiscence in Calcutta, 1947-1967 Personal reminisces of the adolescents and youths of the 1950s and 1960s in Kolkata, of specific incidents listed above will be gathered through interviews with them. The oral data thus gathered will constitute the primary source for constructing a collage of remembered experiences. The project will treat the same as texts authored by individuals who endeavour to locate and to interpret through the emotional performance of remembering what may be termed as significant episodes in the recent history of the city. The project, on completion of research, will be given the shape of a academic history paper. At the moment I have fixed the target of writing the paper in about 15 thousand words, which might have to be increased if required. As of now I have planned to record (in audio cassettes) the interviews that will constitute the archival text for the work, if resources permit then I would try to make audio-visual record of the interviews. Sugata Nandi (largestriver @hotmail.com) is Lecturer in History, Krishnagar Government College, West Bengal 12.15 -- 1.15 Proving Residence Chair: Shveta Sarda [Shveta Sarda (shveta @sarai.net) is a content editor and translator with Sarai. She works in Cybermohalla as a process chronicler and edits the labs' content for diverse circulation -- books, website, blogs, broadsheets, and wall magazines. At present she is working with the various research projects at the CM mobile lab. She was part of the editorial collective of the broadsheet series Sarai.txt.] Ajit K. Dwivedi Sealing ke Nazar Mein: Sealing Banam Pusta ka Visthapan (Media Study: Comparative Reporting on Land Ceilings and Displacement from Jamuna Pushta) Ajit K. Dwivedi (dajeet @gmail.com) is a career journalist. He just left Dainik Bhaskar to join ITV News as Associate Editor. Bipul K. Pandey The Residence Proof Bipul Pandey (bipulpandey @gmail.com) worked in print media for nine years. He currently works with Star News as Associate Producer. 1.30 pm -- 2.30 pm Sub-metropolitan Dreams Chair: Iram Ghufran [Iram Ghufran (iram @sarai.net) is trained as a media practitioner and works as video/ audio editor in Sarai Media Lab. She has co-researched the work culture of call centres, and is part of the editorial collective of the broadsheet series Sarai.txt. She works on various multimedia, video and audio works produced at Sarai.] Nalin Narain Mathur B-Grade Engineering College Culture Being subjected with the experience of studying at an engineering college, I happened to witness the living experiences, aspirations and values that make an 'engineer' beyond all the techy stuff he learns in the classroom. Add to it the different background and identity of students and the acute realization that "This -- is- not -- IIT", which more often then not looms large in everyone's conscience. Hence, engineering colleges constitute of interesting and fantastical cultural dynamics wherein a mix of identities, cultures and aspirations are played out in non-metropolitan spaces to get an amalgamation of different worlds in one campus. Through this project I aim to study the phase of social and emotional renaissance which unavoidably crops up during one's stay away from his natural locale. Nalin Narain Mathur (nalin.mathur @gmail.com) works as a systems analyst. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Uttar Pradesh Technical University, Lucknow. Syed Zaigham Imam Sapno ke Rail (The Train of Dreams: Narratives from the Allahabad-Jaunpur Passenger Train): a short documentary film If faster trains denote speed and arrival, slower trains can sometimes nurture dreams that compress a lifetime into a few hours. Zaigham's project is to study how students, literally, arrive at Allahabad. The passenger trains, so called because they stop at even the smallest of stations connecting Allahabad (the educational headquarters of Northern India) to Jaunpur and Faizabad, two towns in the hinterland and encompassing other smaller towns such as Pratapgarh, Mau and Aimma. Sixty percent of the people travelling in these trains are students on their way to Allahabad. Not so much to enroll at the university but to join one of the innumerable coaching centres and to prepare for the Central and Provincial Civil Services Exams. In the seventies and eighties, students from Allahabad dominated the civil service selections, not only at the centre, but also in states such as UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The sons mainly of farmers, who travelled out of the smaller qasbas chasing a dream, even came to be known as 'collectors.' What does the inside of these trains look like? Zaigham travels up and down the ravaged trains with missing bulbs, fans and fittings and investigates peculiarities like ACP, a short form for alarm chain pulling. People use it to stop the train at convenient points, an illegal practice that is stoically accepted by the authorities, and most travel ticket-less. The towns and stations falling on the way represent the rise and fall of the qasbas of UP, like Mau Aimma which is an important production centre for crackers. The story of these trains is also a metaphor for the democratisation of higher education that took place in the last three decades of the twentieth century. Through interviews with passengers and train officials, and unsuccessful attempts to get information through the Right to Information Act, Zaigham builds a picture of slow development and the aspiration for a government job that is primary, on the poor students all over India. Trained as a journalist, Zaigham Imam (zaighamimam @rediffmail.com) also writes fiction and is currently trying his hand at filmmaking. He left Amar Ujala recently to work with BAG films. The project is blogged at: http://www.merirail.blogspot.com/ 2.45 -- 4.15 Hearing Spaces, Seeing Spaces Chair: Aarti Sethi [Aarti Sethi (aarti.sethi @gmail.com) previously worked with the Sarai Programme; currently she is pursuing her M.Phil in Film Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU.] Shahnawaz Khan Entertainment Ghosts in Srinagar: A Tale of Cinema Halls in the City This study aims to analyse the impact of the closure of cinema halls in Srinagar after the outbreak of armed insurgency in early nineties. Most of the closed cinema halls are occupied by paramilitary troopers and have even functioned as torture centres in the nineties. Some others have changed business. Only one is functional, but not in good condition. Shahnawaz talks to people associated with the trade, cine goers who have been to these halls when they functioned, and the youth today who do not find a place to go for a movie in the city. The study also looks at the psychological impact of these structures in the city, which stand witness to the times they have gone through. Shahnawaz Khan (fsrnkashmir @gmail.com) is a journalist based in Srinagar, associated with the US based Free Speech Radio News. Along with some friends he launched Kashmirnewz.com in 2006. Zubin Pastakia A Photographic Study of Bombay's Cinema Halls The project seeks to photographically examine the cultural experience of different types of cinema halls in Bombay city. In part, this is a meditation on different urban spaces. More importantly, this is an attempt to illustrate the subjective nature of the film-going experience. From the designer shop - to cinema hall - to chain restaurant mall/multiplex experience, to the still-standing single-screen bastions of the art-deco era, to the musty largely male-dominated "c-grade" halls, the photographs will evoke the unique experience of these different spaces. The intention is to eventually produce a monograph on Bombay's cinema halls as well as to exhibit the photographs publicly. Zubin Pastakia (zubinpastakia @gmail.com) is a photographer and filmmaker living in Bombay. He blogs his photos at: http://peripheralvision.blogspot.com/ Sayandeb Mukherjee Corridors: An Exploration of Sound and Space This project delves into the emotional and acoustic contours of corridors. This contemporary architectural design which may appear simple structurally possesses a complicated and sometimes convoluted auditory space due to reflective and diffractive properties of sound. The project attempts to enlighten the variability of these acoustic qualities/characterestics of corridors integrated in different urban spaces. The process of research includes a vivid physical involvement and exploration in the corridor like spaces, taking notes in a descriptive way in the spot itself, acquiring photographs and live recordings of the acoustic environments at different spots of the same space. The recording process may also involve time stamps (i.e. recordings of the same space over the different parts of a day) for the analysis of the soundscape in a particular space. The process also includes the collection of films, texts or any other form of art, where one can notice a conscious application of such corridor-like spaces. Sayandeb Mukherjee (sayandebmukherjee @yahoo.co.in) is a graduate of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata who now works as a professional sound recordist in Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad. 4.30---6.30 pm Special Panel: The Past of Research and the Present of Practice Featuring: TP Sabitha, Yousuf Saeed, Mahmood Farooqui and Rahaab Allana Discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta How might a detailed study of the past, dredging and building archives, serve not just to make museums, but invigorate and change our sense of the present, feed directly into practice? The panelists, who are all former Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows, are all people whose research has engaged deeply with the archive, with documents and images from the past. At the same time, as performers, writers, photographers, and filmmakers they are also people who work with and produce highly contemporary forms. TP Sabitha (sabitha_tp @yahoo.co.uk) is a writer who writes in both Malayalam and English, as well as a teacher and researcher of literature and art. Yousuf Saeed (ysaeed7 @yahoo.com) is a filmmaker and writer in Urdu and English. He is currently associated with a new archival initiative for visual culture, TasveerGhar. Mahmood Farooqui (mahmood @sarai.net) is a historian and performance artist. He works with the Independent Fellowship programme and with the translation and editing of Hindi publications at Sarai. Rahaab Allana (rahaab @acparchives.com) currently works as a curator for the Alkazi Foundation for Photography. Shuddhabrata Sengupta (shuddha @sarai.net) is a writer, columnist and media practitioner with training in sociology and filmmaking. He is one of the co-initiators of Sarai, one of the editors of the Sarai Reader series and a member of the Raqs Media Collective. He has contributed numerous scholarly and popular articles in newspapers, magazines, journals, anthologies and books on a range of themes. He coordinates the distributed research network at Sarai. 7.00---7.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. Inder Salim (indersalim @gmail.com), an Independent Fellow this year, is a performance artist based in Delhi. He blogs his work at: http://indersalim.livejournal.com/ *Wed 5 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House * 10.00 am -- 11.30 Distant Communities Chair: Ravikant [Ravikant (ravikant @sarai.net) taught and researched history in Delhi University for a number of years. He currently conceptualises and edits content in Hindi at Sarai. He is the co-editor of Deewan-e-Sarai (the Hindi Reader series). He also writes for Hindi magazines and newspapers on the issues of media, language, computing and translation.] Surya Prakash Upadhyay Guru on the Air: Televised Hinduism in Contemporary India The project proposes to look at the instrumentality of audio-visual media in the construction and maintenance of the religio-spiritual world in contemporary Hinduism and in the mobilization of people towards "tele-gurus". The project attempts to look into a recent and interesting addition in the religious sphere, especially in present-day Hinduism, catered to the people by cable television in the urban spaces. It looks at a new-age guru named Asharam Bapu, and at the phenomenon of media playing a vital part in the growth of his organization, in increasing the numbers of followers and devotees, and in propagation as well as spread of religiosity and spirituality among people. There are several gurus and also several devotional channels that are highly influential in urban spaces, transmitting their programmes through television and providing an opportunity for people to listen and watch their favorite guru. This development in the media sector has filled the gap of physical absence of the guru and multiplied the communication between him and his followers. The aim of the research is to give a 'thick description' of the whole phenomenon. Surya Prakash Upadhyay (surya_rajan21 @yahoo.com) is a Research Scholar in the Dept of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Neelima Chauhan Blogit Hindi Jati ka Linkit Man: Blogon mein Hindi Hypertext ka Adhayayan (The World of Hindi Blogs) This research attempts to do an online study of Hindi hyper text on Hindi blogs. It will be an attempt to make a critical appreciation of Language and style of hypertextual prose as it flows through the terminals of Hindi Bloggers. It will be an online study which will take in account the existing blogs, Hindi Networks, Blog Archives, Comments etc. Narratives from the Hindi Online community will be collected. The objective is to identify the construction of the grand narrative of 'Hindi Jati' (Hindi nationality) as described in Hindi literary criticism, especially that by Ram Vilas Sharma. This construction of Hindi Jati where geographical space seemingly becomes meaningless (or less important, at least) will be explored. As the research will be an online study, its progress will be available to all interested in real time. Neelima Chauhan (neelimasayshi @gmail.com)'s doctoral and postdoctoral work is in post-colonial Hindi prose. She teaches Hindi at Delhi University's Zakir Husain Post Graduate Evening College. The blog for this project can be found at: http://linkitmann.blogspot.com/ Raman Jit Singh Chima The Regulation of the Internet by the Indian State Though considerable work has been done on exploring how the Internet is capable of being regulated, not much has been done to chart out the exact shape of such regulation of expression on the Internet in India. More importantly, the exact manner in which the Indian State has regulated the Internet through all the structures and mechanisms at its disposal has not been studied, which is important since this affects the flow of speech and expression. In order to attempt to chart out the empirical aspects of Internet regulation in India and its linkages with normative frameworks, the focus of this project is thus on the following two goals: firstly, to track out and study the manner in which the Indian State regulates the Internet through legal structures and connected mechanism (both through formal legal rules as well as through informal measure such as executive action); and secondly, to analyze how this regulatory framework relates to the constitutional safeguards with respect to the limitations on state action viz. free speech and expression and whether it respects these constraints. Raman Chima (ramanchima @gmail.com) is pursuing the B.A.LL.B. (Hons) program at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and is currently in the 3rd year of this course. The blog for this project can be found at: http://stateoftheweb.blogspot.com/ 11.45 -- 1.15 In the Midst of Conflict I: Looking Back and Looking Ahead Chair: Ravi Sundaram [Ravi Sundaram (ravis @sarai.net) is a Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. He is one of the initiators of Sarai and is one of the editors of the Sarai Reader series. He coordinates the media city research project. He has written extensively on contemporary intersection of technology, media and urban experience.] Arvind Kumar Caste Violence in Urban Maharashtra: A study of the 1974 Worli Riots in Mumbai and the Dalit Panthers Movement The proposed study intends to analyse the Worli riots of 1974 when there was a violent clash between the Shiv Sena and the Dalit Panthers. In this riot the main target of communal wrath were dalits who opted out of the oppressive caste-hindu religion and converted to Neo-Buddhism. Theriots and the agitation brought to the surface dissensions within the Dalit Panther movement, which ultimately led to its split in 1974. There are enough sources available on Dalit Panther movement. The consciousness of revolt was also expressed in an outburst of poetry by new writers like Namdev Dhasal, Daya Powar, J V Pawar, Waman Nimbalkar, Arun Kamble and many others. The present study will locate the Worli riots in a historical perspective and will try and address new questions as and when they arise through the course of the study. Arvind Kumar (arvind.access @gmail.com) is pursuing a PhD in American Studies at the School of International Studies, JNU on the topic 'Discrimination and Resistance - A Comparative Study of Black Movements in the U.S and Dalit Movements in India'. P. Jenny and C. Christy Chitralekha's Burning Autorickshaw: Caste, Class and Gender in the Urban Space of Keralam This proposal is about a Dalit woman married to a Backward Caste man and their struggle to move above caste and gender structures in a moffusil town in Keralam. The story begins when the couple buys an autorickshaw in Chithra Lekha's name and she decides to drive it herself. However, Chithra Lekha's caste and gender identity makes it impossible for her to step into the public sphere of this liberated moffusil town. The leftist trade union (mainly consisting of a dominant BC caste) already angered by her caste violation of marrying above her caste, acts against her by delaying her membership card and continues to harass her till at last her autorickshaw is burned to ashes. In this project we collect and document each and every aspect of this (true) incident by conducting thorough interviews with all the people concerned. Along with this we would also like to produce a theoretical paper which tries to understand how caste, class, gender relations constitute the urban space in Keralam. Here we would examine: > how the dominant Marxist party works to reproduce the caste and gender structure in Keralam; > the important tools of sexual morality which are used against the progress of Dalit and "other" women; > the intricacies of the OBC-Dalit relationship and the reasons that triggers violence between them; > the role of subaltern masculinities in the entire incident. P. Jenny (jenny.chithra @gmail.com) is an independent researcher, writer and columnist. She holds a PhD on Malayalam Cinema, from the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. C. Christy (christy.carmel @gmail.com) is at present doing her PhD in Media and Commmunications from the Central University of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Meena Menon Recovering Lost Histories: Riot Victims, the Communal Polarisation of Mumbai and Its Impact on People and Perceptions about Communities Is Mumbai the unbreakable city it is touted to be? As a city, it has changed in obvious and not so obvious ways since the post Babri Masjid demolition riots of December 1992 and January 1993. The main focus of the research will be the families of the riot victims and their lives after more than a decade since the violence. The research is based on interviews first hand visits to places and talking to as wide a spectrum of people as possible--- including researchers, journalists, riot affected families, government, police officials, apart from political parties. At the end of the research I would like to use the material for a book. Meena Menon (meenamenon @gmail.com) is currently a special correspondent with The Hindu. She has been a journalist for 22 years and has worked with The Times of India, Mid-day and the United of News of India. 11.00 -- 11.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; [See also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday's programme below.] Listen Little Man is a 28-minute documentary film study of ragging in India. Madhavi Tangella (manzilechar @yahoo.com) worked on Sagar Cinema, a "poor man's multiplex" for her Sarai Independent Fellowship. She is currently a film student at SRFTI, Kolkata. 1.30 -- 3.00 In the Midst of Conflict II: Reading Between the Column Inches Chair: Sanjay Sharma [Sanjay Sharma (sanjaykusharma @yahoo.co.in) is a historian and radio broadcaster. He teaches History at Zakir Hussain College, Delhi University and is co-editor of Sarai-CSDS's Hindi reader series, Deewan-e-Sarai.] Shiju Sam Varughese The Public Sphere as a Site of Knowledge Production: Science in the Malayalam Press This study attempts to understand the functioning of the public sphere, constituted through the regional press in Keralam, as a site of knowledge production in the context of scientific controversies. This will be studied by taking a specific scientific controversy as case. In the wake of an earthquake on 12th December 2000, several unusual geophysical incidents including well collapses, coloured rains and micro tremors began appearing in Keralam. These phenomena have been reported in the regional press from every nook and cranny of the region and the deliberations over it continued for almost one year in the regional press, involving a wide range of issues and actors. This case will be studied in detail based on content analysis of five major Malayalam newspapers (Malayala Manorama, Mathrubhumi, Deshabhimani, Madhyamam, and Keralam Kaumudi) as well as interviews with key actors involved in the controversy. This is to demonstrate how the public sphere acts as a site of knowledge production in the context of a scientific controversy. Shiju Sam Varughese (shijusam @gmail.com)is a doctoral candidate at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research is on the public understanding of science in Keralam. Alok Puranik Bazaar Reporting in Hindi Newspapers In the days when the Sensex is a mandatory presence in news reporting, Alok Puranik tried to study reportage of the market in Hindi newspapers down the years. When did these market reports originate, how did its terminology evolve, what was its relationship with the rest of the news and how has it changed over the years? He starts his study in 1947 and concentrates on two dailies published from Delhi. Alok Puranik (puranika @gmail.com) is an economist, columnist, satirist, and blogger who teaches at Agrasen College, Delhi University. His books include Neki kar Akhbar mein Daal and Arthik Patrakarita. Shubhra Nagalia The Representation of Communal Conflicts in Hindi Media: A Case study of the 2005 Mau Riots The research investigates the reportage of Mau riots by electronic and print media. While there has been extensive documentation and studies on the 'communalisation' of media and its role in riot situations, the small town manifestation of this phenomenon in Mau and its resultant repercussions on hegemonic discourses and construction of religious identity will be one of the areas of our study. The images, slogans, language and presentation of Mau riots through the lens of Hindi media; linkages between political influences, capital and communities that shapes the contours of media in general and local news in particular will also be subjects of our research. The paper also contains detailed interview excerpts. Shubhra Nagalia (shubhra_n71 @yahoo.com) is doing her Ph.D in the School of International Studies, JNU. She has taught Women's Studies at Mahatma Gandhi University, Wardha. She is a longtime activist and a member of All India Progressive Womens' Association. 3.15---4.45 Other Traditions Chair: Priya Sen [Priya Sen is a trained filmmaker who has taught media production in the US and India. She works with sound, multimedia and radio content at the Cybermohalla Labs. She is part of the editorial collective of the broadsheet series Sarai.txt.] Priya Babu Traditions of the Aravani (Transgender) Community in Tamilnadu Aravanis, called Hijrahs in north India, have existed in Tamilnadu for several centuries. Though born biologically as males, they closely identify themselves as girl/woman. By doing so, they undergo a lot of suffering due to the great psychological pressure exerted by different social forces that prevail. Because of lack of understanding among the general public and the society, those who do not behave like boys are often discrimination and even face violence from their own family members. Hence they are forced to leave their family members and later join the Aravani community, which accepts them and provides support. This research will study and document the Tamilnadu Aravani community's varied traditions. It will try to understand different sects and their hierarchies with a focus on interrelations during public celebrations and private gatherings. In the process, the project will also document their worshipping places, their relation with the god Aravan and the story of how they became linked with mainstream society. Priya Babu (priyababu_sudar @yahoo.co.in) is a Chennai-based researcher, journalist and coordinator of the theatre group, 'Kannadi Kalai Kuzhu'. She is herself a member of the Aravani community. Mithun Narayan Bose Tracing Life from the Stroke: Documenting the Rickshaw-Painting of Kolkata Streets The paintings behind the rickshaws of the city of Calcutta are a unique example of an unnoticed urban folk-art, and the detailed study of the paintings can be an alternative way to know about the life of these people. As most of the Calcutta rickshaw-pullers have migrated to the city from other places, the paintings' style reflect the form/ style of art available at the rickshaw-puller's place of origin. A unique heterogeneity is also observed due to its confluence with the urban style. Thematically, the rickshaw paintings of Calcutta-streets are of different types (e.g. religious, landscape, portrait of near and dear ones, film star etc.). In this project, the painting behind the rickshaws is documented with the help of both video recording and photography. Mithun Narayan Bose (bangali_mnb @yahoo.com) is a language teacher at a Kolkata school. He contributes regularly to several Kolkata little magazines, and his interests include poetry, folklore, cultural anthropology, art and art criticism. Deepak Kadyan Popular Musical Traditions and Configuration of Jat identity in Haryana, 1900-2000 This research seeks to examine the relationship between popular musical traditions and the forging of a jat identity in north India in general and in Haryana in particular. The processes of identity formation and self-perceived notions of community are analyzed and discerned through the prism of popular culture and as to how a 'community' viewed itself, and what its aspirations have been over a period of time. An important aspect of this study is an analysis of the sites of performance and circulation of this oral tradition. One such site is the akharas (lit. a wrestling arena, but here, it refers to a space for rehearsals and practice), influential until the mid twentieth century. Another such site available to oral tradition for circulation was the colonial army and police. The history of oral tradition is intertwined with the history of prominent performers, and major structural and performative changes, whether in terms of musical instruments, rhythms, intonation, appropriation of symbols or content--- in other words, the relationship between performers and performance. Interestingly, the social composition of oral tradition in Haryana is different, as it wasn't dominated by any particular community. Deepak Kadyan can be reached at: hie.deepak at gmail.com 5.30 -- 6.00 pm (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. Inder Salim (indersalim @gmail.com), an Independent Fellow this year, is a performance artist based in Delhi. He blogs his work at: http://indersalim.livejournal.com/ 7.00 -- 8.15 (Back in main auditorium) "Creeper", a play written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham, recasting the Vikram and Vetal myth in a contemporary urban setting. Featuring Mallika Prasad and Abhishek Majumdar. (Running time: 1 hour fifteen minutes) "Shit!" "What?" "Some kid fell off an escalator in Garuda mall and died." "It's ok, it's ok. As long as it's not someone we know. Just someone else's kid." "How can they let this happen? People must be allowed to go shopping in peace." About the play This is a story about two people in the city.She is the expert narrator, he is a mischievous sutradhar. These two story-tellers have amazing stories to share.Problem is they don't agree on how to tell the story! Creeper is a modern re-imagination of the tale of Vikram and Vetal. The play slams this mythos into a contemporary urban setting -- creating a shadowy world that is immediately recognizable, yet bizarre and entertaining. "Creeper" was written and produced as part of Ram Ganesh Kamatham's project on Vikram and Vetal during the 2007 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship. Kamatham, one of Bangalore's best known up-and-coming directors (ramganeshk @gmail.com) has created work for stage, film, radio, and video games. The project is blogged at: http://addledbraindump.blogspot.com/ *Thurs 6 December Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 am -- 11.30 Medicine and Modernity Chair: Awadhendra Sharan Gyaltsen Lama Shamans in Gangtok: A Graphic Novel A four part graphic novel exploring the lives of four different shamans in Gangtok, Sikkim. 20 pages of each part with black and white illustrations. Each part is approached with different illustration and narrative styles. Gyaltsen Lama (gyaltsenlama @gmail.com) received his bachelor of fine arts degree in 2000 from the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai. He is currently the fine arts teacher at the Tashi Namgyal Academy, Gangtok. Photographs, interview transcripts, pages from the novel and videos for this project are uploaded at: http://www.etattoo7.com/sarai/home.html M.S. Harilal Adopting Modernisation and Negotiating Modernisation: Placing Modern and Traditional Ayurvedic Sectors in the Context of Transformation The study endeavors to analyze responses of the larger transformation of a traditional medical system, namely Ayurveda, to a more affirmative institutional system and a well developed market. The modern forms of Ayurveda seem to be pulled by both pharmaceutical companies and modern practitioners in a direction that flaunts cultural authenticity and tradition as well as scientific efficacy and standardization for its products. It analyses how the stakeholders in this bifurcation - traditional and modern ayurvedic manufacturing, perceive and deal with modernization, which is two fold, both in form and content. The two specific questions that the study intends to explore, based on selected case analysis and necessary ethnographic works, are: one, How do we explain the recent gains made by many firms operating in the 'modern' sector? Two, what are the ways in which the traditional-informal sector has coped with the processes of transformation? To the gist, we are addressing the question of agential relation in the transformation and want to contrast and compare how the two sections deal with the challenge of globalization or negotiate to find their space in the global era. Three rationales may be given for this study: one, the traditional knowledge systems are increasingly become relevant, two, there is a universal concern to addressing community ownership of traditional knowledge and third, it will help us understand the struggle and revival of similarly placed traditional industries. M.S. Harilal (harilalms @gmail.com) is, at present, a doctoral scholar in Economics at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. His current areas of interests are the modernization of Indian systems of medicine, the medicinal plants sector, IPR and traditional knowledge. Burton Cleetus Urbanisation, Western Medicine and Modernity: The Rockefeller Foundation in Travancore One of the most important interventions made by the "progressive" state of Travancore which later became part of the state of Kerala, was in the field of health care. The reorganization of the public health department with the aid of the Rockefeller Foundation of the United States was aimed at drafting a coherent health care policy for the state, primarily to cater to the needs of the emerging population in the urban centres. The study seeks to argue that the process of reconstituting the health care policy by the princely state in the early twentieth century was a political project of governance aimed at socio-cultural framing. A comparison between activities of the Rockefeller foundation in addressing the spread of malaria and plague in the early twentieth century with the attempts made by the state of Kerala in tackling similar contagious diseases in recent times would enable to one understand the shifts in the frames of references of the nature of interventions of western medicine over the last century. Burton Cleetus (burtoncleetus @yahoo.co.uk) is a PhD scholar from the Center for Historical Studies, JNU. He did his post graduation and MPhil from JNU. His research on the institutionalization of indigenous medicine in Kerala is an attempt to explore as to how esoteric cultural practices and localized healing techniques were refashioned, revitalized and consequently institutionalized into the broad framework of Ayurveda. 11.00 -- 11.30 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Short film on ragging---Listen, Little Man-- by Madhavi Tangella; see also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday's programme below. Madhavi Tangella (manzilechar @yahoo.com) worked on Sagar Cinema, a "poor man's multiplex" for her Sarai Independent Fellowship. She is currently a film student at SRFTI, Kolkata. 11.45 -- 12.45 Two Views of the Changing Industrial Landscape (short documentary films & discussion) Chair: Jeebesh Bagchi Ranu Ghosh The Story of a Laid-off Worker's Resistance to Eviction in Kolkata I have been following the transformation of a productive, half a century old Jay Engineering Works into Kolkata's South City Project, "Eastern India's largest mixed use real estate development". Jay Engineering, commonly called Usha Factory, started operations manufacturing electrical consumer durables in the 1950s. The labour force of this reasonably large manufacturing unit was mostly comprised of migrants from Bihar and UP, and refugees from East Pakistan. The Works was closed down, made defunct and the land was handed over to the real estate consortium of five major real estate "magnates" in 2003. The factory buildings were demolished and the construction of the South City Projects comprising three 35-storey and one 28-storey tower, a shopping mall, school, multiplex, club etc, started from February 2004, which included the illegal filling up of one of south Calcutta's largest natural water bodies. The workers of Jay were forced into retirement with little or no compensation and sent into limbo, except for Shambhu Prasad Singh. Shambhu has refused to opt for the meagre handouts and has instead taken his case to court. Against all odds, and withstanding the sustained pressure of the builders, he continues to live in his original quarters, surrounded and dwarfed on all sides by the construction in progress of South City. This brave stand taken by an individual is an example of how such "development" can be challenged. Since the latter half of 2004 I have been documenting in video and still formats, the stages of development at the construction site as the work progressed and the displaced labour force, and out of that, Shambhu Prasad evolved as an outstanding example of the protest against this "development". I began to follow his everyday life, his improvised strategies of survival in the face of difficult circumstances and his innate zeal to fight for his rights. He has transformed from a character in my film into that of a collaborator, adding a unique dimension to the project. Ranu Ghosh (ghosh.ranu @gmail.com)has worked as a freelance camera person and director in the Indian industry for the past eight years. T. Venkat and Meghna Sukumar Building the Indian Dream: Living and Working Conditions of Migrant Workers on Chennai's IT Corridor Cities in this country have been promoting huge infrastructural projects in their attempt to redefine themselves to the age of globalisation. The 6 lane express way, christened the IT corridor, along with the luxurious industrial, commercial and residential complexes are part of Chennai city's attempt to create a global image. Thus to the people of the city it is an image, a dream and an opportunity for change and transformation. To the migrant construction workers it is undeniably an opportunity with enormous economic prospects, but in what ways does it transform their lives? What hope does it hold out for them? What image does it create in them? What is their stake in it? Presented through a short documentary film, our research delves into the aspirations of the workers, and their imageries of the creature they are building. It enquires into the change and transformation that this grand project has brought to their lives. T. Venkata Naga Narasimhan, alias Venkat (venkatt2k @gmail.com), is a post graduate in sociology from the University of Madras. He joined as research assistant to Dr. Karen Coelho (an earlier Sarai Independent Fellow and asst professor at Madras Institute of Development Studies) on a project titled "Neighbourhood Associations as Urban Collective Actors: a comparative study of Bangalore and Chennai" in the year 2006-07. 1pm -- 2pm Tracking Literatures Chair: Ravikant Rajiv Ranjan Giri Saraswati ki Sarvajanik Duniya, 1900-1920 (The Popular World of the Journal Saraswati, 1900-1920) Rajiv Ranjan Giri has published extensively on the history of Hindi. He co-edits a Hindi journal called Samved. He can be reached at: rajeevgirijnu at rediffmail.com . Gopal Ji Pradhan Hindi mein Uttar Purv (The North-east in Hindi Literature) Gopal Ji Pradhan is a writer and activist. He teaches Hindi at Assam University, Silchar and can be reached at: gopaljeepradhan at rediffmail.com . 2.15 --4.15 Special Panel: Where Does Research Go? Featuring: Zainab Bawa, Parismita Singh, Madhavi Tangella and Prasad Shetty. Discussant: Vivek Narayanan. If research really did proceed as it plans to do, time after time, in the bright, overdeterminate clarity of good proposals, asking direct questions and receiving exact answers, this would not be saying very much for the richness or depth of our lives, our social and built structures and knotted networks! Instead, we wander, we diverge, we rethink, we scratch out, we revisit: the strength of research is not in the attempt to control the world's material but in questions leading to new questions, that is, in the ability to stay alert while the ground unexpectedly shifts under us. In this panel, we ask four previous Independent Fellows to look back on their fellowship research, considering the ways they have been led to unexpected conclusions, new projects, critiques of what they were doing in the first instance, and revisitings of the original site of research to find it changed. How does research evolve, and what kinds of other projects does it lead to? Prasad Shetty (askshetty @rediffmail.com) is an architect and urban planner. He is a founding member of CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai. Parismita Singh (parismitasingh @yahoo.com) is finishing her first graphic novel, due in 2008. Zainab Bawa (zainabbawa @yahoo.com) talks her walks through a world of words on her infrequently updated blog www.xanga.com/citybytes. Madhavi Tangella (manzilechar @yahoo.com) is currently a film student at SRFTI. Vivek Narayanan (vivek @sarai.net) co-coordinates the Independent Fellowship programme for Sarai and writes, mostly poetry and some fiction. He is Consulting Editor for the web-based literary journal, Almost Island and an Associate Editor for the Boston-based international poetry annual, Fulcrum. His first book of poems appeared last year. 4.30 -- 6.00 Work In "Progress": Feature-length video by Debkamal Ganguly (87 minutes) Following the trail of a 1932 journey by one key Bengali novelist, Bibhutibhushan, the video tries to explore varied ways of interaction of 'urban-subject' with 'non-urban' forest and plateau-like spaces, close to the western border of West Bengal. Selecting Bangla texts as early as 1872 to as late as 2007, the video tries to articulate the changing trajectory of space-emotion, from mythical to self-conscious to sublime to existentialist and finally the virtual and hyper-real. The video acknowledges the random and arbitrary as an aesthetic function and recycles whatever comes along its way. Debkamal Ganguly (deb99kamal @yahoo.com)'s work as a scriptwriter, film and sound editor (including with director Vipin Vijay) has earned him some national and international recognition. He pursues this current project as a 2007 Sarai-CSDS Associate Fellow. 6.15 -- 6.45 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Performance Art: "This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar" by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only---first come, first serve. Inder Salim (indersalim @gmail.com), an Independent Fellow this year, is a performance artist based in Delhi. He blogs his work at: http://indersalim.livejournal.com/ 7.15pm -- 8pm Chennai Sabha Drama: An Actor's Story: Solo performance by Pritham Chakravarty (running time: 30 mins) For her 2007 Independent Fellowship project, Pritham Chakravarty researched and revisited the lingering artifacts of a scene that she herself had been a part of as a child actress: Chennai's "sabha drama", a semi-amateur subscription theatre scene. Her solo show performance is not autobiographical, but is based on a composite reconstruction of interviews with actors and others---it draws on Chakravarty's usual and intensive method of designing one-person scripts based on a series of interviews, inhabiting the persona of the interviewed. Pritham K. Chakravarty (prithu7 @hotmail.com) has been a political theatre performer and theatre activist based in Chennai for 20 years; but her acting debut first came on the Sabha drama stage itself, at the age of six. *Fri Dec 7 Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House* 10.00 -- 11.00 Proofreading: Identity and Publishing Chair: Mahmood Farooqui Vijay Kumar Pandey Meerut ka Prakasan Udyog (The Publishing Industry in Meerut) The publication industry of Meerut is almost 200 years old. During this period the industry has evolved with time and flourished. The present turnover of the industry is nearly Rs. 200 crore per annum and provides employment to approximately one lakh people. The study aims at identifying the factors contributing to the rapid growth and evolution of this industry in Meerut during past 200 years as well as the problems and challenges before it. It will also look into how the industry has changed with time. Vijay Kumar Pandey (vijaykharsh @yahoo.co.in) has been a journalist for the last five years. He is currently with Amar Ujala. Yoginder Sikand & Naseemur Rahman Islamic Publishing Houses in Delhi This research project focuses on the Muslim publishing industry in Delhi. It examines various aspects of this industry, including content of publications and linkages between authors, publishers and consumers of the literature produced by these publishing houses. It also looks at how the Muslim publishing industry is responding to the various challenges that Muslims in India today see themselves faced with. Naseem ur Rahman (majidee @yahoo.com) is a Ph.D. student at the Jamia Millia Islamia and is presently working with the Markazi Maktaba Islami, a leading Muslim publishing house in Delhi; and Yoginder Sikand, Professor at the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. 11.00 -- 12.15 (In Upstairs Gallery Space) Side Effects: Collaborations and Conversations Between Independent Fellows. A documentary film on ragging---Listen, Little Man (28 mins)-- by Madhavi Tangella; discussion and commentary by Shivam Vij, who studied ragging for his Sarai-CSDS Fellowship. Introduced and moderated by Iram Ghufran Madhavi Tangella (manzilechar @yahoo.com) worked on Sagar Cinema, a "poor man's multiplex" for her Sarai Independent Fellowship. She is currently a film student at SRFTI, Kolkata. Shivam Vij (mail @shivamvij.com) is a journalist, blogger, and runs the website stopragging.org . His research on the nature of ragging in hostels for the Independent Fellowship in 2005 led him to being appointed as a consultant to the R.K. Raghavan committee set up by the Supreme Court to recommend measures to curb ragging. His journalistic interests include caste, social mobility, internet censorship, and online communities. 11.15 -- 12.15 Maps for Lost Cities Chair: Shuddhabrata Sengupta Surojit Sen The Displacement of Prostitutes: A Tale of Two Cities in Two Centuries This paper focuses on a satirical text Bodmaes Jobdo (Wicked Punished) by Prankrishna Dutta in 1869 on the aftermath of 1868 The Contagious Diseases Act XIV. Which the British enforced in April 1869 in order to control flesh trade and prevent the brothel-going soldiers from contracting venereal diseases. The Act made it mandatory for the prostitutes to register their names and undergo medical examination and treatment (if necessary ). While the police used the legislation as a ploy to harass the prostitutes, their clients also felt axed by the Act. Things came to such a pass that some prostitutes brought the matter to the attention Viceroy Lord Mayo and his wife through a letter (19 July, 1869 ) most probably written by someone on their behalf. The chaotic situation forced a section of prostitutes to leave the Sonagachi red light area of Calcutta for Chandannagar town, then under French rule, and throng the brothel that had existed there since the 1770s. This 200 year old settlement was demolished by some promoters bent on using the land as real estate. The prostitutes living there couldn't resist the onslaught; nor did any organization come to their rescue. I view the event from the standpoint of 'rights' and relate it to the recently proposed amendment to the existing ITPA Act ( 1987 ). Which tends to treat prostitution as criminal offence even as it has not been declared illegal. Without making any provision for their rehabilitation or alternative livelihood, this official move I argue, is going to take away the little space that the 'fallen' women have and marginalize them further. Surojit Sen (surojit369 @yahoo.co.in) does research for documentary films, writes book reviews, short prose pieces on literature and scripts for telefilms (in Bengali). He renders editorial service and is now working on his first Bengali novel named City Edition. Mohit K. Ray Heritage Ponds of Kolkata: A Contemporary History Kolkata is a city of ponds. Job Charnok, the first well-known British merchant, set up his office by the side of a pond called Lal Dighi, which still exists to remind of this city's colonial past. There are many ponds like this with rich historical linkages. Many streets and places of Kolkata are named after ponds. Even after the onslaught of the real estate sector, the city has more than 3500 ponds. The significance of these urban waterbodies as water resources is being appreciated now as never before. These ponds form a part of the cultural history of the city. Once, it was the place where community people met during bathing; Bengali literature has so many narratives about the ghats of these ponds. The fields by the side of some ponds provide space to hold fairs. However, there is still no proper documentation of such an important city heritage. This study will add to the urban cultural history where the city ponds are not mere past heroes, but active agents of a thriving present. Mohit Ray (mrsg @vsnl.com), the principal researcher, is an environmental professional who has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and works for environmental rights. 12.30 -- 1.30 Rethinking the Social Chair: Vivek Narayanan Santana Issar and Aditi Saraf Rethinking Animal Activism in an Urban Context Human-animal relationships have been historically constituted in complex and intimate ways along the economic, the affective, the cultural and ritual, and the metaphoric. As these relationships have receded into an irretrievable past, it has been suggested that animals have been reconfigured in the urban imagination; as household pets, as objects of wonder in zoos and circuses, and as (Kentucky or not) fried chicken. Our question is - does this driving of a wedge between human lives and those of animals inform dominant notions of 'animal welfare'? We study the relationship between the theory of the human-animal interaction in a post-industrial urban context, and the practices of animal rescue and welfare, in order to understand how, and to what extent, each is shaped by the other. All this in the particular context of our very own urban jungle -- Delhi. Both Santana Issar (santanaissar @gmail.com) and Aditi Saraf (aditisrf @gmail.com) are graduates of St Stephen's College. Santana is a filmmaker, Aditi works as a research associate at the National Knowledge Commission. Arnab Chatterjee Beyond Private and Public: New Perspectives on Personal and Personalist Social Work In the first part of my presentation ( in the final version of the paper too) I shall dwell on the importance of the public/private divide in modern social theory and ask, is the public/private divide the main unresolved dilemma that haunts the sign of our own times ? How does the personal interrupt and contaminate the above binary and wherefrom our engagement could temporarily begin? An impersonal public sphere, threatened by the deceptive nature of the personal, was founded to ground political modernity and was extended to cover such remote questions of personal charity which --some like Hegel sought to replace by state related public assistance or welfare. This normalizing restraint was energized even at the level of speech, but through the instance of personal attacks, the repressed narrative of the personal seemed to recur at the cost of our unease---a political pornography of sorts. An excavation informed us--behind the masked ordeal of innocent impersonality, there lurks the obscene narratives of manipulation, lying, backstabbing, blackmailing, fraud, betrayal, malice by which persons govern each other. Now, all proposed resolutions, located within the impasse, have they worked? I discuss the Gandhian attempt and discuss the dictatorial desire. The failure to integrate the public and the private until it vanishes in the terrorized unity of the person/al -- inaugurates---in a sense-- and urges us to recover the suppressed history of the personal and subsequently a theory of the personal with its roots in the German version of personalism. Finally, does the category personal, through the sieve of personalist social work, solve the public/private problem posed in the beginning, or compound the problem further? How, despite the personalist indeterminacy and irreducibility of the person, a personalist ethics could be found will be addressed in this section; I'll spend a considerable five minutes on the above and end by reflecting on my most recent work not covered in SARAI postings. Arnab Chatterjee (apnawritings @yahoo.co.in) is Doctoral Fellow at the department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University, Kolkata and on the visiting faculty of Ethics and Human Values at the Bengal Institute of Technology, Kolkata. 1.45 pm -- 3.45 pm Special Presentation: The SARAI-CSDS Associate Fellowships Chair: Monica Narula [Monica Narula (monica @sarai.net) is a media practitioner with a background in filmmaking and English Literature. She is one the co-initiators of Sarai and one of the editors of the Sarai Reader series. She is part of the Raqs Media Collective. She coordinates the media practice projects at Sarai.] Nancy Adajania: A New Journal for the Arts: Prototype Issue, 2007 Although there have been exciting recent developments in the world of Indian art, there is a strong sense that much of it has been happening in the dark, without enough open discussion made widely available to the public. Hoskote and Adajania argue that in order for art to have significance and value beyond a point, it needs to be made in the context of lively discussion and critical debate. Modern India has had a rich history of such critical initiatives, but in the current context there are very few platforms for such engagement; those that do exist confine themselves largely to reporting on events, or more often, to sales figures and scandals, focusing on the life of the studio, the solitary creator, and of economic institutions such as the gallery and the auction house. Both senior art critics in their own right, Hoskote and Adajania propose to make a journal that focuses on actually mobilising and creating a new context for the production of art. Rather than being a public relations exercise for art in India, the journal would be a colloquium across disciplines, regions, traditions and intellectual lineages. It would include, among other forms of writing, analytical essays, tactical accounts, select reviews, and polemical texts. The journal would be interested in developing a perspective of what the proposal calls "a nuanced critical regionalism", which would reject both the "neo-tribalism" of an inward-looking isolationism, as well as an uncritical globalism that lacks anchorage in a specific cultural context. Last but not least, the journal would seek and institute collaborative ventures between artists and public-sphere or civil-society activists. Nancy Adajania (nancyadajania71 at yahoo.co.uk) is a well-known cultural theorist, art critic and independent curator. She is developing this project for the Associate Fellowship with Ranjit Hoskote. Debkamal Ganguly: An Imaginative Text Based on Contemporary Travel Through the "Forests" Described in Bibhuthibhushan's Memoirs [note showing of complete video by Debkamal Ganguly at 4.30 on previous day, Thursday December 6. On the 7th, Ganguly will show excerpts from the video, discuss its making and answer questions.] Sarai generally focusses on urban spaces and the processes of urbanisation. However, a very crucial emerging question in contemporary India is, how are "rural" and forest spaces being transformed in the current context, and what is the relationship of this process to the development of cities? One could look at the question only in terms of contemporary transformations, but another approach would also situate it historically, in relation to accounts of what these non-urban areas used to look like. The project looks precisely at this question, in the context of Eastern India. Debkamal Ganguly is interested in how the idea of "nature" has developed and has been changed by visitors from the city, over several decades, including himself. He seeks to understand "how an otherwise 'underdeveloped' marginalized geographical/cultural space in the immediate west of the Gangetic plains has been entangled in multilayered relationship with the urban consciousness and artistic creativity of Kolkata." 4.00 -- 5.30 pm Towards a Future for Independent Research: Interactive Open Discussion All participants. 7.00 -- 8.30 Punches Ponytails Ringtones: Women Boxers in India A film by Pankaj Rishi Kumar (82 mins) Introduced by Shuddhabrata Sengupta "This is a journey into the science of boxing as practiced by 2 Indian women. From Dec'04 to May'07, I shot with them as they tried to understand their bodies, their undying love for the sport and their constant struggle to realize their dreams. The film unfolds their story." Pankaj Rishi Kumar (kumartalkies at yahoo.com) has been making making documentary films for the last 11 years. His best known films include Kumar Talkies. He showed the first rushes from his Independent Fellowship project on women boxers at the 2005 workshop. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Wed Dec 12 12:17:10 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 06:47:10 -0000 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Student Stipendship Workshop 2007 Message-ID: <475F83CF.3050507@sarai.net> *Sarai, CSDS Student Stipendship Workshop 2007 PROGRAMME 14th-15th December* Every year Sarai provides stipendships to conduct research on the city Life. These stipendships are provided to post graduate researchers enrolled in different academic programmes across the country. Apart from financial support, Sarai conducts three workshops to discuss various aspects of research, provide a platform to share ongoing study with a wider community of urban researchers and practitioners and give critical inputs to help orient individual projects in better manner. This year, 20 stipendships were provided to researchers who come from a wide range of disciplines and places. On 14-15th December 2007, they will be making public presentations of their nine months of research. Here is the programme in detail: *Day I Friday, 14 December 2007 * 9.30-9.45 *Tea* 9.45-10.00 Introductory Remarks: Ravi Sundaram, Awadhendra Sharan and Sadan Jha 10.00-11.00 Spaces and Institutions of Commercial Life Chair: Ipsita Sahu Hijam Eskoni Devi, Manipur, "Relevance of Traditional Institution in Urban Governance: A Case Study of Nupi Keithel, Imphal" Discussant: Mayuri Samant Sumalatha.B.S., Trivandrum, "Space for Brokering Branches in Kerala Townships: A Casual Link with Urbanisation" Discussant: Sreeja Open Remarks 11.00-11.15 *Tea Break* 11.15-1.00 Music,Television and Theatres Chair:Meera Baindur Vineet Kumar,Delhi, "Niji Samachar Chennelon ki Bhashik Sanskriti: Vishesh Sandarbh Aajtak" Discussant: Priyanka Gupta D.Karthikeyan, Chennai,"Music From The Margins: Gaana Songs As A Subaltern Phenomenon" Discussant:Sowjanya R.Peddi Rohit Parkash, Patna, "Kalidas Rangalaya: Patna Ka Ek Sanskritik Kendra" Discussant:Agniv Ghosh Open Remarks 1.00---2.00 *Lunch Break* 2.00-3.30 Environment, Governance and Planning Chair:Sreedeep Geetanjoy Sahu, Bangalore, "Urban Environmental Governance" Discussant: D.Karthikeyan Sutapa Ghosh, Mumbai, "Modernist Planning" Discussant:Hijam Eskoni Devi Meera Baindur, Sreeja K.G. and Sowjanya R. Peddi, Bangalore, "The 'Lake' As Urban Public Space" Discussant: Kartik Nair Open Remarks 3.30-3.45 *Tea Break* 3.45-5.00 Open Session (Observations and Suggestions for Further Improvement by Workshop Participants. Moderator: Sadan Jha). *Day II Saturday, 15 December 2007* 10.00-11.00 Visual/(In)Visible City Chair:Kartik Nair Priyanka Gupta, Kolkata, "Graffiti and Kolkatascape: A Discourse of Conflicting Rights, Class and Citizenship" Discussant:Bhavya Dore Akhil Katyal, Delhi, "Queer Urban Culture(s): The Case of New Delhi" Discussant:Vineet Open Remarks 11.00-11.15 *Tea Break* 11.15-1.00 Caste in the Changing Urban Milieu Chair:Vineet Abhishek Kumar Gupta, Delhi, "Ganga Main Bahati Jindagi" Discussant: Rohit Prakash Mayuri Samant, Delhi, "Caste Violence in Urban Spaces: A Study of Narratives" Discussant:Sumalatha B.S. Sangeeta Chandu Thosar, Pune, "Political Leadership of Women in Pune City: A Dalit Feminist study (1995-2007)" Discussant:Geetanjoy Sahu Open Remarks 1.00-2.00 *Lunch Break* 2.00-3.00 The Urban Reading Practices Chair:Bhavya Dore Sreedeep Bhattacharya, Delhi, "Pornography in Urban India: From Porn Sphere to Mainstream" Discussant: Akhil Katyal Agniv Ghosh, Delhi, "Nababus and their New Calcutta"a Open Remarks 3.00-3.15 *Tea Break* 3.15-4.15 Spectacle, Entertainment and the City Spaces Chair: Akhil Katyal Bhavya Dore and Kartik Nair, Delhi, "Appu Ghar: Amusing the City" Discussant: Sreedeep Ipsita Sahu, Delhi, "Gentrification in the Built Environment of Ghaziabad: A Focus on Malls and Multiplexes" Discussant: Meera Baindur Open Remarks 4.15-4.45 Open Session ( Observations and Suggestions for Further Improvement by Workshop Participants. Moderator: Sadan Jha). 4.45-5.00 Concluding Remarks: Ravi Sundaram. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [[END OF NEWSLETTER]] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: