Describing India-- People's Movements and Knowledge Production

A talk by Prof. Ganesh Devy (co-hosted by MMLL and the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement)

Date: October 9th

Time: 5-6.30pm

Venue: Newnham College, Barbara White Room  

Describing India-- People's Movements and Knowledge Production

The lecture will outline three democratic popular movements towards a greater knowledge of India spread over the last three decades deeply impacting Anthropology, Sociology-linguistics and History. The method of knowledge production in all three movements was common. They followed the principle of  collective action by scholars and stakeholders as a means of knowledge production.

The first movement was for rights and justice  for a large number of nomadic communities,  branded as 'criminal tribes'.( known as Denotified and Nomadic Tribes--DNTs)

The second movement relates to bringing back in discourse over 1500 'Mother Tongues'  not really dead but wiped out in Government's statistical records.

The third movement emerged out of concerns for a partisan and tendentious representation of India's past for the last 12000 years.

All three movements were initiated and led by Ganesh Devy. They resulted in production of about a 100 printed books.

Ganesh Devy, Obaid Siddiqi Chair Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences--Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, and Professor of Eminence at the Somaiya University, Bombay, will present an analysis of the three movements and his observations on the the links between knowledge production and social action.

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Ganesh Devy writes in three languages, Marathi, Gujarati and English. His published books include, After Amnesia 1992), Of Many Heroes ( 1997), Painted Words ( 2003) ,  A Nomad Called Thief ( 2007), The Being of Bhasha (2014)  The question of Silence ( 2016), The Crisis in Knowledge and Education ( 2018) Mahabharata: The Epic and the Nation (2022) and co-edited The Indians: Histories of a Civilization (2023).