School of Communication (SOC), MAHE and Edinburgh Napier University will jointly organise a two-day international conference on Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore on ‘Samaj and Freedom(s) - the Relevance of Gandhi and Tagore’s Ideas Today’ at Chaitya Hall, Fortune Inn Valley View from February 22.
SOC Director Dr Padma Rani told media persons here, on Thursday that the conference is conceptualised by
Dr Bashabi Fraser, director, Scottish Centre for Tagore Studies, Edinburgh Napier University.
The two-day collaborative effort is aimed at celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi as also the seminal contribution of Gurudev.
Tagore and Gandhi had admiration and respect for each other. As such, the conference seeks to serve as a platform, opening up to discussions on the two contemporaries who were friends as well as intellectual rivals.
The broad themes of this year’s conference are liberty and liberation in Samaj, Freedom(s) as basic human rights, creativity: the place of art and culture in Samaj (society), inter-cultural dialogue and trans-nationalism, the idea of Samaj/Society, environment and sustainability, education: holistic, creative and interdisciplinary, rural reconstruction Urban regeneration and the position of ‘truth’ today.
MAHE Vice-Chancellor Dr H Vinod Bhat will deliver the inaugural address.
During the programme, there will be dialogues and paper presentations on Gandhian and Tagorean ideals in the contemporary context.
The discussion begins with keynote addresses titled ‘A Samaj and Swaraj for the 21st Century’ by Dr Talat Ahmed from Edinburgh Napier University, followed by another keynote address by Dr Blanka Knotkova-Capkova, associate professor in Cultural Studies and head, Asian Studies, Metropolitan University, Prague.
‘Pleasures Prejudice Pride: An Indian Way of Film-making’, a film by Dr Piyush Roy, will be screened on the occasion. The film deliberates the universal pleasures of Indian cinema and argues some fundamental misconceptions around the perception and review of its ‘unique’ narrative attributes and ‘dramatic’ styles of storytelling.
Interspersed with archival footage spanning a century of cinema, the documentary features much loved, still-inspiring music and dance montages from India’s leading regional film industries, beyond the Hindi language cinema made from Bollywood.
The day two of the conference is set to begin with a keynote from Dr Deb Narayan Bandopadhyay, vice-chancellor, Bankura University, followed by two plenary sessions.
Mangalore University’s Department of English Chairman Prof Ravishankar Rao will deliver the valedictory address on ‘Textualising Tagore: Interrogating the Gandhi-Tagore Debate through Iconic Sites’.