Date/Time
Date(s) - 17/12/2019
All Day
Location
IGNCA Auditorium
Categories
6th Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Lecture on “Vision for New India”
About the Institute
The Viceregal Lodge or presently known as Indian Institute of Advanced Study is a cultural heritage in Shimla. Still the largest in size and marvelous in beauty compared to British time, this Scottish structure was built under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin between 1884 to 1888. It remained in use as the Viceregal Lodge till the Indian independence and later was handed over to Indian Government when it became the Presidential palace. In 1965 it was taken over by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, who established the Indian Institute of Advanced Study here. The building has been the seat of the imperial government from 1888 to 1947. Before the Indian partition many important conferences and meetings took place in this building leading to the Independence. Shimla Conference in 1945 and Shimla Cabinet Mission in 1946 were the landmark meetings held in this house. On 20th October 1965 this building was inaugurated by the second president of India Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan who is also the founder of Indian Institute of Advance study. The Institute was established with an aim to create “residential centre for a free and creative enquiry into fundamental themes and problems of life” and “to promote creative thought in areas which have deep human significance and to provide an environment suitable for academic research.” From then it is a premier research centre where Fellows do research on Humanities, Social Sciences & Life Sciences.
TAGORE CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURES & CIVILIZATION (TGSCC) AT IIAS.
To pay a tribute to the man of letters, Nobel Laureate, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, on his 150th birth anniversary, the Ministry of HRD, Government of India has set up a ‘Tagore Centre for the Study of Culture and Civilization’ (TCSCC) at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla. The objectives of the Centre include: to encourage the study of Tagore’s work; support translations of Tagore’s work into other Indian languages; promote comparative study of his work with poets, artists and writers in other parts of India and the world; study the elements of his Humanist philosophy and his cosmopolitanism; and explore his concerns regarding the relationship between science and society.
The Centre, as its name indicates, is not a Tagore Study Centre which aim at studying just Tagore’s works and thoughts though such a study is one of its important activities. Since the Centre is dedicated to celebrating the ecumenism of Tagore, it allow reflective and creative engagement with the human condition by exploring new idioms of art, poetry, and music. Thus, the Centre provides space to scholars as well as the practicing artists to signal Tagore’s deep engagement with culture and civilization founded on his belief in the oneness of our world. That is what enthused him to explore creatively the different sources that have gone into the making of many layers and facets of Indian culture and civilization. Tagore’s intellectual evolution and sensibility enabled him to assert the humanistic, moral, universal, liberal, and progressive tendencies and discard the narrow, obsolete, obscurantist and retrograde from within his own and from other traditions of thought.
The Tagore Centre seeks to advance the study of the elements of Tagore’s Humanist philosophy and his cosmopolitanism. The Centre was inaugurated by Shri Pranab Mukherjee the President of India on 24 May 2013 at Shimla. On this occasion he also delivered the First Rabindranath Tagore Lecture. It was an auspicious beginning that established the Tagore Centre on firm foundations.
The Second, Third, Fourth and Fifith Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Lectures were delivered at the Institute by Shri Gulzar Sahib, Shri Ratan Thiyam, Professor B.N. Goswamy and Professor Ramesh Chandra Shah respectively.
| S No | Speaker |
| 1. | Shri Pranab Mukherjee |
| 2. | Shri Gulzar Sahib |
| 3. | Shri RatanThiyam |
| 4. | Professor B N Goswamy |
| 5. | Professor Ramesh Chandra Shah |
The last Tagore Memorial Lecture was delivered by Padma Shri Ramesh Chandra Shah on “Rehabilitation of the Sacred.
Activities of the Centre:
· There will be four fellows in residence at the Centre every year. None of the fellows will be permanent and their term will be for a minimum of six months to a maximum of two years. They will enjoy facilities similar to those enjoyed by the fellows of IIAS. One of the fellows will be either a poet, or a writer, or an artist-in-residence as a tribute to Tagore’s multifaceted personality. Another will be a scholar from outside India. The fellows will be known as Tagore Fellows.
· There will be an annual International Seminar on some aspect of Tagore’s concerns. This will preferably not be of an exegetical nature but more an engagement with his substantial concerns as stated in the vision document.
· A study week on Tagore’s works would be organized every alternate year.
· An artist camp could perhaps be organized every alternate year.
· An annual Tagore Lecture would be organized.
Indian Institute of Advance study is organizing their Sixth Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Lecture on “Vision for New India” Tuesday, 17th December 2019 at IGNCA Auditorium, 11, Man Singh Road, Central Secretariat, New Delhi in the presence of Prof. Kapil Kapoor, Chairman, IIAS, Professor M Paranjape, Director, IIAS, Guest of Honour Shri Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, Col. (Dr) V K Tiwari, Secretary, IIAS.