The Centre de Sciences Humaines is pleased to invite you to the CSH Seminar

by

Gyan PRAKASH

(Princeton University)

on

The Emergency and the Many Meanings of Freedom

Followed by a discussion with Rajeev Bhargava (Director, Parekh Institute of Indian Thought – CSDS)

On

Monday, 13 January 2025, from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm IST

At

Centre de Sciences Humaines

IFI-CSH conference room (ground floor)

2 Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Road, New Delhi – 110011

To register: Please fill out the Registration Form 

Abstract:

Throughout modern history, incarceration has served as the nursery for introspections and ruminations on life and politics. This talk explores if imprisonment during the Emergency also sparked reflections on the meanings on freedom. It focuses on the Socialist leaders and couple Madhu and Pramila Dandawate, who were imprisoned separately in Bangalore and Yerawada jails during 1975-1977. I ask if the experience of being placed behind bars stimulated them to introspect on the meanings of freedom not only in terms of institutions, not simply as matters of legal and political status but something more profound?  How did their deeper introspection on the meanings of freedom deal with the demands of political liberalism and party politics? I ask these questions on the basis of the hundreds of letters they exchanged during their time of incarceration.

Speaker:

Prof. Gyan Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University. His field of research concerns urban modernity, the colonial genealogies of modernity, and problems of postcolonial thought and politics. Prakash is the author of Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (1990), Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (1999), Mumbai Fables (2010) and most recently of Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point (2018). He also co-authored Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (2002), edited several volumes, including After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements (1995), The Spaces of the Modern City (2008), Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City (2010), and co-edited Utopia/Dystopia: Historical Conditions of Possibility (2010). Prakash was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective until its dissolution in 2008. He further served as the director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University from 2003 to 2008, during which time he oversaw programs on “Cities: Space, Society, and History” and “Utopia/Dystopia: Historical Conditions of Possibility.” His Mumbai Fables has been adapted for a film, Bombay Velvet (2015), for which he wrote the original story and cowrote the screenplay.

For more info contact:

joel[dot]cabalion[at]csh-delhi[dot]com

laurence[dot]gautier[at]csh-delhi[dot]com

CSH Seminars are in hybrid mode. Please pre-register for offline and online registration before Monday, 13 January, 2:00 p.m. IST.

To attend at the venue: Please note the room capacity is limited. Seats will be reserved on a first-come first-served basis. Kindly bring ID proof to be granted access to the venue.