Archive for the ‘Event Archive’ Category

Made in Delhi : Post-1947 Cultural Institutions

April 6th, 2011 by Kavya

The Delhi Urban Platform

invites you to

Made in Delhi : Post-1947 Cultural Institutions

http://delhiurbanplatform.org/2011/04/made-in-delhi-post-1947-cultural-institutions/

Speakers:

Ashok Vajpeyi, Hindi poet, critic, cultural administrator; Currently, Chairman,Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi

Kaushik Bhaumik, Historian and Senior Vice-President, The Film House, Osian’s

Vidya Shivadas, Art Critic and Curator, Vadhera Gallery, Delhi

Ram Rahman, Architect and Photographer

Ravi Vasudevan, Film Historian, CSDS/SARAI, Chair & Discussant

Date : 13th April, 2011  Time :4:30-6:30 pm

Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, New Delhi

This panel will interrogate an important aspect of  Delhi’s  identity  as a hosting site for a  national imaginary  about culture as it emerges, post-1947, via the realms of policy pertaining to language/literature, the arts, media and higher education.   Arguably, these domains were key to the articulation of an official vision through which the divergent logics of democracy, development and regional interests could be reconciled into manageable equations within the national-federal space.

And yet for all its centrality within the Nehruvian imagination, the making of cultural policy has proceeded without significant  debate, in largely ‘commonsensical’, un-reflexive ways, while the field has  remained somewhat stigmatized within the social sciences and the newer inter-disciplinary fields.

Seeking to move away from a facile view of policy as ‘mere’ application, this discussion will focus on the ways in which Delhi’s urban identity as a modern city has lent itself or, in turn, has been derived from its historic role as a space of mediation over key cultural and political issues.

An enduring part of Delhi’s  legacy  to the  nation, the making of cultural policy and its institutional elaboration in/via the national capital defined categories and mechanisms through which social hierarchies and  regional differences were negotiated and linked to structures of  patronage that would impinge on cultural and intellectual production. The location of these processes in Delhi has thus resonated profoundly in spaces far beyond the capital’s city limits.

Highlighting the elemental links between cultural policy interventions and the making of institutional cultures in the decades after 1947, or their remaking, both, post-Emergency and after liberalisation, our panelists will thus seek to explore possible continuities between the rationale and rhetoric of key policy junctures/documents/ statements, institutional forms and ongoing processes of democratization and marginalization.

Conceptualised by Veena Naregal, IEG

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Heritage and the City

December 30th, 2010 by Kavya

The Delhi Urban Platform

in collaboration with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture invites you to a discussion on-

Heritage and the City

Saturday, 8th January, 2011

2.30 pm -Walk through the Humayun’s Tomb Complex with conservationists of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture

4.00 pm (Panel on heritage)

Venue: Humayun’s Tomb Complex

The walk starts from the gateway of Isa Khan’s Tomb.

The panel discussion will be held near the South Gate of Humayun’s Tomb

All entry will be ticketed (see note below for details)

Humayuns-Tomb

Az naksh o nigar dar o divar shikasteh

Asar padidast sanadid ‘ajam ra

From the images and designs of the broken walls and gates

Are seen the traces of the noblemen of ‘Ajam (Persia)

n  ‘Urfi (d. 1560)

This sh’er was used by Sayyad Ahmad Khan as the prelude to his magisterial book on the ruins of Delhi, the Asar-us-Sanadid (1847, 1854)

In Delhi we are surrounded by dar o divar shikasteh, the broken walls and gates of ruins and monuments, remainders (and reminders) of the city’s pre-modern past. A set of volumes that painstakingly documents these extant remains calls them the city’s “built heritage” – and a dominant understanding of these ruins sees them as Heritage. But the word itself seems to be little thought about in public discourse.

Heritage cannot be understood without the concept of inheritance. If we think of these buildings as heritage then what exactly is inherited through these buildings? And who is it that inherits? Is inheritance (and hence, Heritage) universal; or is it about individuals, families, communities?  These questions become crucial in a city where the traces of the past are often enmeshed in legal, political and commercial struggles. Struggles which are not ends in themselves, but which determine how we relate to the city’s past, inhabit its present, and imagine its future.

To think through the problematics of heritage and the city, we bring together a panel consisting of archaeologists, conservationists, historians, journalists and religious leaders; who will approach the issue of heritage through their own experiences and engagements with the city and its pasts. The discussion will take place near the Southern Gateway of the Humayun’s Tomb Complex.

Before the discussion, there will be a walk through the Humayun’s Tomb Complex, conducted by conservationists of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, who have been working on the restoration of the site for several years. The walk will  explain the ongoing work on conservation which is a part of an ASI-AKTC project.

Panelists:

Ratish Nanda,Project Director, Aga Khan Trust for Culture
AGK Menon, Urban Planner and Conservation consultant
KK Mohammad, Director, Delhi Circle, Archaeological Survey of India
Sunil Kumar, Professor of History, Delhi University
Farid Nizami, Naib Sajjadah, Dargah Hazrat Nizamuddin
Mayank Austen Soofi, Blogger, Writer and Journalist

Venue and Access:

The panel will be held in the South Gateway to Humayun’s Tomb. Access is through the conventional ticketed entry at the main gateway to the complex, and then walking into the Humayun’s Tomb enclosure through the western (standard) gate. Once inside the charbagh of the main tomb, the southern gateway is diagonally to your right, across the lawns.

As this is an ASI protected site, you will have to pay the entry fee to enter the site. While this is a nominal amount for South Asian citizens and Indian residents (10 rupees); it is a much higher charge for foreign visitors (250 rupees/5dollars). We apologize for this, and urge you to make the most of your money by coming in a couple of hours before the event and exploring the vast grounds of the complex and the many different structures present, and soaking in the January sun.

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A Walk in the Old City with Sohail Hashmi

November 13th, 2010 by Kavya

The Delhi Urban Platform invites you to-

A Walk in the Old City with Sohail Hashmi
Starting at the Chawri Bazar Metro Station at 8 a.m, 20th November, 2010
[Everybody must reach by 7.50- 7.55.]

We can have only 15 people on this walk: do write in to kavya@sarai.net as soon as possible if you’re interested and absolutely sure you can make it, and the first fifteen will be able to go along. Others can line up for the another walk with Sohail later. Do carry some money, since we will be eating a (sumptuous) breakfast.

The walk will try to cover one part of  Shahjahanabad, variously described as Old or Purani Dilli  or Dilli 6 – the last sobriquet  derives from the pin code of the area and was used derisively to describe the city that Shahjahan built and its residents and all that the experience of visiting the area entailed.

The walk will try to bring together a view of the life of this part of the city as it has existed, the major professions that are and were in practice here; you will get to see some interesting buildings, hear some anecdotes about the place, get an idea of how the city transformed and changed with the arrival of the colonialists and how it was gradually forgotten by the residents of its younger cousin that grew all around the earlier Delhis and other scattered settlements to the north and south of  Shahjahanabad.

We will walk down Chawri up to Jama Masjid. On the way we talk about Chawri Bazaar and the businesses that were conducted here, why a road is called Nai Sarak, what the have Marathas to do with this part of the city. If possible we will go up the stairs to see the mosque of Nawab Rukn-ud-Daulah.

From Chawri we turn right go through the scrap market and enter the Jama Masjid from the South Gate.

THE SMALL PRINT
1 Every one carries their shoes in their hands or in cloth/plastic bags. Bring your own carry bags
2 Do not wear bermudas, skirts, sleevless shirts etc unless you want to wear the ungainly robes that the management at Jama Masjid will make you wear to cover your body. The robes have to be hired at  20 rupees per piece.
3 Those wanting to take photographs  of the mosque will have to pay  200 rupees per camera. They try to charge for cell phone cameras also. Keep the cell phones out of sight.

We come out of Jama Masjid through the North Gate, go through the fireworks market, Dariba Kalan and Dareeba Khurd (Kinari Bazar), visit 9 Ghara-a listed heritage site that is fairly well preserved- and go on to Gali Paratheywali (you can have breakfast here) and come out at Kunwar ji Namkeen and hit Chandni Chowk.

At Chandni Chowk we can decide which route to take, and back to the Chandni Chowk Metro Station and back to whereever you came from.

Do write in if interested!
Starting at the Chawri Bazar Metro Station at 8 a.m, 20th November, 2010
[Everybody must reach by 7.50- 7.55.]

We can have only 15 people on this walk: do write in to kavya@sarai.net as soon as possible if you’re interested and absolutely sure you can make it, and the first fifteen will be able to go along. Others can line up for the another walk with Sohail later. Do carry some money, since we will be eating a (sumptuous) breakfast.

The walk will try to cover one part of  Shahjahanabad, variously described as Old or Purani Dilli  or Dilli 6 – the last sobriquet  derives from the pin code of the area and was used derisively to describe the city that Shahjahan built and its residents and all that the experience of visiting the area entailed.

The walk will try to bring together a view of the life of this part of the city as it has existed, the major professions that are and were in practice here; you will get to see some interesting buildings, hear some anecdotes about the place, get an idea of how the city transformed and changed with the arrival of the colonialists and how it was gradually forgotten by the residents of its younger cousin that grew all around the earlier Delhis and other scattered settlements to the north and south of  Shahjahanabad.

We will walk down Chawri up to Jama Masjid. On the way we talk about Chawri Bazaar and the businesses that were conducted here, why a road is called Nai Sarak, what the have Marathas to do with this part of the city. If possible we will go up the stairs to see the mosque of Nawab Rukn-ud-Daulah.

From Chawri we turn right go through the scrap market and enter the Jama Masjid from the South Gate.

THE SMALL PRINT
1 Every one carries their shoes in their hands or in cloth/plastic bags. Bring your own carry bags
2 Do not wear bermudas, skirts, sleevless shirts etc unless you want to wear the ungainly robes that the management at Jama Masjid will make you wear to cover your body. The robes have to be hired at  20 rupees per piece.
3 Those wanting to take photographs  of the mosque will have to pay  200 rupees per camera. They try to charge for cell phone cameras also. Keep the cell phones out of sight.

We come out of Jama Masjid through the North Gate, go through the fireworks market, Dariba Kalan and Dareeba Khurd (Kinari Bazar), visit 9 Ghara-a listed heritage site that is fairly well preserved- and go on to Gali Paratheywali (you can have breakfast here) and come out at Kunwar ji Namkeen and hit Chandni Chowk.

At Chandni Chowk we can decide which route to take, and back to the Chandni Chowk Metro Station and back to whereever you came from.

Do write in if interested!

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Dissent and Debate at a time of Rapid Change: Experiences from Indian Cities

October 22nd, 2010 by Kavya

The Delhi Urban Platform invites you to a panel discussion on:

Dissent and Debate at a time of Rapid Change: Experiences from Indian Cities

Oct 29th, 6 pm
Centre De Sciences Humaines Lawns, 2 Aurangzeb Road, New Delhi

In this panel we ask participants to consider the issues of debate and dissent in contemporary urban development particularly since economic liberalization, based on their long-standing scholarly engagement with the rapid change that Indian cities have experienced in the last two decades. The panel comes in light of the Commonwealth Games in Delhi – both a process of city building and a focus for increasing censure. It will bring together scholars from Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai to share their perspectives.

Traditionally and analytically, it has been suggested that the since economic liberalization, a dichotomous urban form has emerged, usually imagined as the eviction of poorer city residents to make way for newer forms of globalized urban development.

Given this, the panel seeks to ask:

- Whether this global template for urban upgradation/urban renewal has succeeded, and in what ways? Is the model entirely global?

- What is the role debate and dissent have played in its success and failure, and in the recent transformation of Indian cities?

- At what sites and spaces has any dissent and debate taken place, (for example within and outside of government, through politics, in the media)? To what effect?

- What are the forms and discourses that such debate and dissent are characterized by? Is there a model beyond debate and dissent that has emerged as an effective politics in the production of space?

- Finally and most significantly, how have governance strategies and policies either accommodated, co-opted or resisted efforts at debate, and in response to what kinds of urban actors?

We have with us as panelists:

1. Solomon Benjamin, Associate Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies

2. Véronique Dupont, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Research for Development, Paris

3. Diya Mehra, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi

4. Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal, Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of India and South Asia, Paris

5. Marie-Hélène Zérah, Senior Research Fellow, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi

Hoping very much to see you all at the discussion!

Delhi Urban Platform

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After the Urban Event: Delhi and Shanghai, 2010

October 4th, 2010 by Kavya
The Delhi Urban Platform invites you to:

After the Urban Event: Delhi and Shanghai, 2010

Mathura Road, Reprise, 2010/ Photo Credit: Priya Sen

Speakers
Ravi Sundaram
Jeffrey Wasserstorm
Rana Dasgupta

Location:
Seminar Room
CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi (Metro: Civil Lines)
Date: Monday, 18th October, 2010
Time: 6pm

In a few weeks, two large urban events, the Shanghai Expo and the Commonwealth Games in Delhi will come to a close. Spectacular events such as these are occasions for local and national elites to mobilise vast resources around massive urban transformations, they also make a case for global citizenship and recognition. Examples include the Durbar of 1911, which proclaimed Delhi as the capital city of the British empire, to the recent Expo which sought to announce Shanghai’s arrival in global capitalism. Urban events concentrate energies around the production of spectacular sites, hoping to mobilise city and national pride for a brief period of time. In turn, urban events also become sites for violent displacements of the poor, surveillance of migrant populations, and accumulation of local elites through massive infrastructure expansions. Equally events may produce images of chaos, greed and urban disasters like the Delhi Games, puncturing the spectacle before its commencement. A surplus of memories linger on in the city after the event, pride, shame, anger, laughter, pain.

We will meet on 18th October to reflect on the urban event in today’s Asia, placing the Shanghai and Delhi  events in a long term comparative grid.

Speaker Bios

Jeffrey Wasserstorm is a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (2009). most recently, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (2010). He is also the editor of the Journal of Asian Studies.

Rana Dasgupta is an author and essayist. His books include the recent Solo, and Tokyo Cancelled (2005). Solo won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Ravi Sundaram is one of the initiators of Sarai, and a Fellow at CSDS. He recently published Pirate Modernity, Delhi’s Media Urbanism.

Photo credit: Priya Sen/’Mathura Road, Reprise, 2010′

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Libraries and the City

September 4th, 2010 by Kavya
The Delhi Urban Platform invites you

to a discussion on
Libraries and the City

6 pm, 10th September, 2010
CSDS Library, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi-54

Imagine Paradise, like Jorge Luis Borges did, as some kind of library. And this sprawling Paradise of great big wooden shelves sky high that you have to manouevre like a silverfish trapped in bookspines. The Library Space is a realm of imagined realities, the space of lore and learning and shared knowledge, where you can roam free and be what you read. Ideas rippling with magical electricity, surprising you in explosive ways. A physical landscape and simultaneously an imagined one, of the mind but rendered with texture and organisation and meaning.

Do such spaces exist in great big cities like Delhi, where the quiet hum of a reading community can come together and access knowledge and gather to think? The library is now the bureaucratized machinery of catalogues and storage space. The lack of public libraries and libraries as public spaces proclaims an absence of a culture of an opening up of the library to the reader,the absence of a librarian who is not merely the taxonomist of dead cellulose, and the absence of books that are not only bought or owned, but savoured in circulation.

This Friday, the 10th of September, we invite librarians, publishers, readers and book lovers to to reflect on the role of libraries as a site of public gathering and learning in the city.

Join us for an conservation with:

Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Media practitioner, filmmaker, writer, and reader)

Sikander Changezi (Founder of a community library in Old Delhi)

Chiki Sarkar (Editor-in-chief of Random House India)

Avinash Jha (Librarian, CSDS)

Cordelia Jenkins (Journalist at Mint)

Anjana Chatthopadhyay (Director, Delhi Public Library)

Sheeba Cchachi ( Installation artist, photographer, activist, and writer)

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta as chair]

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Discussion on Ecology of Fragments

July 8th, 2010 by Kavya

The Delhi Urban Platform and the Goethe-Institut invite you to an open discussion-
Ecology of Fragments

6:00 P.M., 15th July 2010
Max Mueller Bhavan
3, Kasturba Gandhi Marg
Delhi- 110 001

The ecology of the city is changing rapidly in complex ways. It is impossible to capture this moment completely. In nature, as in human societies, altering any part of the ecology of an interdependent networked relationship impacts every other part in the system. In this process, many precious elements can ‘disappear,’ and become absent. They are apparent to us only as a ‘lack,’ or absence and gradually, over time. While nature evolves through a constant struggle and adaptation, with each micro niche being fragile and sustainable, there is no single predicted meta outcome, only a constant change. On the other hand, the change in our cities seems to be driven through imaginations which are fixed and pre-decided by capital and social power. Nothing else which could be termed human seems to matter anymore.

‘Absences,’ can be fragmented and dispersed, and not always visible. They are also markers of the forces behind the change. For example, has the concretisation of every green patch, lead to the disappearance of the house sparrow, or has the conservation of monuments meant that the city has no street performers any more? Will the river once cleaned, kill itself, or is the cleaner city leading more marginalized lives? Maybe it is time we think of ‘ecology’ not only in terms of ‘functionality’ (is a tree more useful than a building) and ‘aesthetics,’ (is a tree more beautiful than a building), but in terms of dominance and loss. Maybe this is what this moment is all about.

Speakers:
Ravi Agarwal: An Ecology of Fragments
Sohail Hashmi: Traditional water systems of Delhi
Anand Vivek Taneja: Monuments as living entities
Shashi Pandit: Wastepickers and new marginalisations in privatisation.
Manoj Mishra: The river as an eco-system, not merely a water channel.
(Chaired and moderated by Ravi Agarwal)

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Reporting Delhi: Media Journalism and the City

May 28th, 2010 by Kavya

The Delhi Urban Platform invites you to

Reporting Delhi: Media Journalism and the City

5:00 P.M., Saturday, 29th May 2010
Seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS

The last two decades have witnessed a fundamental transformation of the city, and previous modes of inhabiting and apprehending the urban experience in India. The contemporary city is characterized by a new visual landscape marked by the proliferation of visual signage, an increasingly dense media landscape composed of the internet, 24 hour news television, satellite TV, and a massive expansion of telecommunications. Accompanying this has also been an increasing sense of the urban as a fraught terrain. In the case of Delhi, – from bombs in marketplaces, to the everyday violence of demolition and construction, from pitched battles over resources and claims on city space, to the increasing policing and surveillance of everyday life by the state – the city seems to exist in a state of permanent crises. The media are inextricably enmeshed in this process. We witness an event almost before it occurs. From sting operations to the continual relay of images of a communal riot, the flooding of newspaper pages and TV screens of images of caught “terrorists” to the glitter of new spaces of leisure and consumption, the media actively produce the dread and exhilaration that accompany living in our cities.

This saturday we invite journalists Aanchal Bansal (city reporter for the Indian Express), Aman Sethi (who used to report on labour in Delhi for the Frontline magazine), Rahul Tripathi (crime reporter for the Times of India), Mihir Sharma, Pradip Saha (former editor Down to Earth magazine) and Manisha Sethi (teacher at Jamia and has closely followed media reporting on “terror”) to reflect on the role of journalistic practice as a site where the city is reported on, but also written into being. Join us for an open, and animated conservation with:

Mihir Sharma (The Indian Express)
Aman Sethi (The Hindu)
Aanchal Bansal (The Indian Express)
Pradeep Saha (Former Editor, Down to Earth)
Rahul Tripathi (The Times of India)
Manisha Sethi (Jamia Millia Islamia)

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Report: Image of the City

February 22nd, 2010 by Kavya

Guest post from a friend, Devika Narayan

I attended an intense and exciting discussion on Delhi where many people from different fields spoke.  The following is a patchwork of their words (more or less) . A total mishmash of voices, ideas and arguments. Hope it is some what coherent.

They talk repeatedly about Delhi and the loss of memory. The long, forgotten past which is erased from our collective memory. A pathological inability to recall the biographic journey that brought us to here. We advocate a sustained determined effort to unlock the gates of memory and end this distorting amnesia.

Indulge in guilty nostalgia. The Sarkari city of the 80s and the government bungalow, the open spaces and the fifty bird species in the garden. You become an easy intellectual target who is attacked for being a middle class romantic, longing for an invented past . But don’t dismiss nostalgia you say, drawing upon nostalgia as a technique of critiquing the present can be a useful exercise. However, while reconciling the experience of the endless centuries gone by with the chaotic present, one must also claim the future in a conscious way. The has been a lack of public debate when it comes imagining the future of Delhi. That is to say, debate about contemporary architecture, about housing, about alternative city plans are absent. We need to construct an imagination of the future in the most democratic and open way possible. City planning is not a technical process but is instead deeply political. We can not entrust the planning of the a city to ‘experts’ and ‘technicians’ whose objective is to mould cityscape as per the power of their will. We are trying to plan the poor out of existence-eliminating them from imaginings of the city, sweeping them off the map. Our city will never resemble a master plan. After all, how do you plan informality? Can you plan informality?

Read More...

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