Ladies and gentlemen, let me welcome all of you on behalf of the Sri Lanka Consulate General in Mumbai to the first edition of our ‘Book Talk’ series.
I am Priyanga Wickramasinghe, Consul General of Sri Lanka in Mumbai
Let me briefly explain the rationale for this series. We believe that diplomacy is not only about how international relations are conducted in the formal and conventional sense. It is also about how modes of culture that may vary from creative literature to academic texts, films to theatre and visual arts more generally could become a more creative avenue for conversations in a world that is becoming increasingly stressful.
But the books that we discuss here will necessarily have a global or South Asian reach towards which there would be a tangible Sri Lankan contribution.
For instance, Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes that will be the focus of our conversation has been edited by Renny Thomas, from India and Sasanka Perera from Sri Lanka. Among the 30 essays that deals with a variety of ideas, four are from Sri Lanka focused on the Sinhala language.
Other languages represented in the book include, Sanskrit, Tamil, English, Hindi, Urdu, Assamese, Nepali, Sinhala, Hebrew Malayalam, Arabic Malayalam and a number of advasi languages or words that have become important in Dalit discourses. But all these are part South Asian discourses that clearly generate ideas within the contexts in which they are used.
Beyond this, it offers an interesting means to imagine South Asia that does not depend on geographic, physical or international borders. Instead, the volume looks at keywords from South Asia’s languages that cut across these borders over time.
My understanding is that the editors and the individual contributors wanted to see how words, concepts and attitudes from South Asia could contribute towards theorizing social sciences and humanities in our region. I will leave it to the panelists to discuss this in detail. But clearly, they are attempting to offer a leading role in thinking to scholars in this region rather than always banking on the west to come up with conceptual categories for disciplines as they evolve in the region.
As we proceed with the series, let me flag the kind of works that we might be interested in. For instance, we can think of the book, A Critical History of Women’s Health in Modern Sri Lanka by Darshi Thoradeniya from University of Colombo and Home Across Borders: An Ethnography of Sri Lankan Immigrants in Australia by Jagath Bandara Pathirage from the same university.
Both are published and distributed globally. It is our belief, despite the focus on Sri Lanka, such scholarship offers much space for comparative readings across cultures and socio-political borders. While I only referred to two academic texts, our interest is also focused on fiction and poetry, published in English and available globally that can speak to the world.
Let me now introduce very briefly our panelists for today.
Dr Renny Thomas, one of the coeditors of the volume under discussion today is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal
Dr Pankaj Sekhsaria is a Writer and Associate Professor of Science & Technology Studies at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas in IIT Bombay. He is also one of the contributors to this volume.
Dr Himanshu Burte is Associate Professor at Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies, IIT Bombay
I would now like to invite Dr Renny Thomas to take over and initiate the proceedings. He will begin with an introduction to what the volume has attempted to achieve and will invite the other speakers to reflect on what the volume means to them as a contributor or as reader.
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