In case you missed it: Raj Rewal and Rahul Mehrotra recently stopped by the Mittal Institute to discuss Rewal’s past architectural work in India and around the world. This podcast — an excerpt from their discussion — delves into the theme of the “Timeless Rasa.”
In the past, conservation studies in India have mainly focused on architectural preservation efforts to protect and maintain designated monuments. In many ways, this is the legacy of the former colonial regime, which enacted stringent preservation laws and laid the academic foundation for the predominant mode of conservation we now see in modern-day India. This is exemplified in the manner in which state agencies, advocacy groups, and academics have dealt with archaeological sites, as plots entirely removed from their urban contexts.
This week, the Visiting Artist Fellows’ Fall 2019 exhibit, Exploring Identity Through a Contemporary South Asian Lens, opened at the Mittal Institute. Available for viewing through November 26, photographer Sagar Chhetri and sculptor Sakshi Gupta unveiled their artistic interpretations of life, time, and the human condition to a rapt audience. The 8-week Visiting Artist research program provides a vital platform for an exchange of perspectives and knowledge, linking Cambridge and South Asia through shared stories and new understandings and providing artists from South Asia the opportunity to use Harvard’s resources to perform research that will inform their art practice.
This September, the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University partnered with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Museum in Mumbai to hold a workshop exploring how museums could potentially create an expanded culture of civic life that represents and nurtures the diverse and plural sensibilities of those with whom they share space.
If you missed our recent event, Voting for Strongmen: Nationalist and Populist Leadership in Brazil and India, check out this podcast to see what Professors Patrick Heller, Bruno Carvalho, and Rachel Brulé have to say about what nationalist and populist leadership means for Brazil, India, and the global political system at large.
We recently sat down with Sakshi Gupta, an accomplished sculptor and mixed media artist from India and one of the Mittal Institute’s new Visiting Artist Fellows for Fall 2019. Her series, At the Still Point of the Turning World, explores the human condition, transformation, and the momentariness of life, time, and eternity by turning found objects into something new.
With my grant from the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, I spent eight fruitful weeks abroad, studying the how and the why of the limited set of historic designations in Kolkata. My daily activities were structured around site visits, photographic and written documentation of spatial practices and cultural phenomena, investigative interviews with scholars and professionals in the field of conservation, theoretical readings, and archival work. I spent the first six weeks in Kolkata trying to better understand the city’s spatiality and how many Kolkatan’s livelihoods and daily activities engage with the hybridization of the old and the new.
Who will benefit from big health data in India? And who will be harmed? Whom will the data leave behind? We’re at an extraordinarily important time in India where digital health is concerned, and given the infrastructure, internet connectivity, and the sheer number of computer and data scientists available, India is positioned to change the way healthcare delivery has been imagined anywhere in the world. In this podcast, Dr. Satchit Balsari, Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Fellow at Harvard FXB, and Rahul Matthan, Partner with Trilegal in India, discuss the digitization of the health ecosystem in India.
In India, subaltern groups must resort to the universalizing vocabulary of citizenship in order to stake claims for redistribution and recognition. But on what basis do they do this — especially under severe coercion? This week, Alf Nilsen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pretoria, uncovered the answers to this question by investigating movement patterns in the Bhil heartland of western India, where Adivasi communities have organized and mobilized against the tyranny of the local state.
Around the world, numerous nations have witnessed a resurgence of strongman politics — and with it, many governments are beginning to bypass democratic norms and embrace more populist ideals. We spoke with Rachel Brulé, Assistant Professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, to learn more about what nationalist leadership means for India, and its potential effects on political representation throughout the nation.
The World Health Organization estimates that over 1.4 million children in the world are blind, and “approximately three-quarters of the world’s blind children live in the poorest regions of Africa and Asia.” In India, only 40 percent of the 23,000 primary healthcare centers have the capacity to provide refractive services that could eliminate preventable blindness in children. Since 2005, Project Prakash has been working at the very grassroots of India, connecting hundreds of villages to the most sophisticated eye care available and building awareness about treatable and preventable blindness.
Working with the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Harvard doctoral student Sonali Dhingra has brought to life a collection of South Asian paintings and sculptures from across the Indian subcontinent, provided by private collectors Carol (alumna of Wellesley College, ’79) and John Rutherford. This fall, the Rutherford Collection will be on display at the Davis Museum from September 12 to December 15, 2019.