A Report from the India Ideas Conclave
- In Dispatch
- 07:23 PM, Nov 27, 2015
- Kalpesh Chavda
The India Ideas Conclave 2015 was the second edition of the conclave organized by India Foundation. ‘India Foundation’s vision is to be a premier think tank that can help understand the Indian civilizational influence on our contemporary society.’ The event was attended by many bright minds; some of whom are self-professed right winger and others who do not associate themselves with any ideology.
November 15
India Ideas Conclave was a three day conclave that started on the evening of 15th Nov. Jayant Sinha, representing India Foundation, introduced the speakers for the evening including Goa’s Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar. The event was started with an address from Goa’s Chief Minister, followed by Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar, Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay and Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.
This was followed by Swarajya Awards. Choices of the recipients of the awards were interesting and intelligent.
- Dr. Arvind Panagariya received the Dr. B R Shenoy award. Dr. B R Shenoy was the earliest proponent of market economics when it was fashionable to be a socialist. With the stature and the body of work of Dr. Panagariya, I cannot think of anybody else for the inaugural award.
- Sajjad Lone was awarded the Dr. S P Mukherjee award. Now this choice of award was controversial as many would wonder ‘has Sajjad Lone ceased to be a separatist?’ Amar Govindarajan, co-founder of Kovai Media that runs Swarajya Magazine, in an informal chat gave a very crisp answer ‘Sajjad Lone accepted an award named after S P Mukherjee, what it say?’
- Joe D Cruz received the Ustad Bismillah Khan Award for culture.
- The ‘Robin Hood Army’ received the Sree Narayan Guru Award for Social work. Even though some would disapprove of the name ‘Robin hood’, what matters here is the work done by these youngsters. The compassion to serve downtrodden of our society is much more important than anything else.
The award Ceremony was followed by the address of the key note speaker Jaggi Vasudev. This was followed by a wonderful interaction between MJ Akbar and Jaggi Vasudev. Sadhguru talked about human development and various tools available due to technological advance. He also emphasized the need to develop that tools that will evolve inner wellbeing.
November 16
The first Session was chaired by Jayant Sinha with panelists being Jay Panda and Jayaprakash Narayan who discussed New Age politics. Jay Panda talked about the need for direct election to the Rajya Sabha, while making the point about veto power enjoyed by those who lost elections. JP Narayan also talked about how it is difficult to maintain idealism in politics.
The second Session was on Kashmiriyat, Jamhooriyat and Insaniyat. J & K CM delivered a speech following by brief interactive session with General Ata Hasnain. Mufti sounded genuine in whatever he had to say. In his speech he didn’t talk about the return of Kashmiri Pandits, however while responding to one of the questions from the audience he said it’s his dream to bring Kashmiri Pandit back home. HE played to the gallery and made right noised in favor of PM Modi and BJP’s intent with respect to J & K.
At lunch time there was an interactive session by Vamsee Juluri on Changing Media narrative. It was quite an interactive discussion, and highlighted many points along with some raised on the social media about biased Mainstream media.
The post lunch session was on Indic economics chaired by Sanjeev Sanyal with Ruben Abraham and Hindol Sengupta on the panel. During the discussion Sanjeev highlighted the role of the Indian economy in the global GDP and India’s glorious maritime history. Ruben Abraham told story about world’s oldest mosque in Kerala, Cheraman Juma Masjid. Ruben highlighted that socialism and Marxism are western imports; India has great history of entrepreneurship. The panel also agreed that India’s history is great and it doesn’t need flying chariots. Hindol Sengupta was at his humorous best. He narrated a story of how a Gujarati businessman was instrumental in India’s first strike against Delhi emperor. While talking about nanny state, Sanjeev Sanyal highlighted how real history behind Asoka was never taught to us. He followed up this brief remark by an excellent article.
Tarek Fatah, a Canadian author and columnist was one of the panel members in the panel chaired by Swapan Dasgupta. This included other panel members such as Daniel Pipes and Sadanand Dhume. The topic was the rise of radicalism. Daniel highlighted that there are three major radicalizations that the world has seen in recent past i.e. Fascism, communism and Islamism. He went on saying that two have been defeated while Islamism is yet to be defeated. Tarek Fatah made many important points, a detailed account of his speech is done in this post. Sadanand Dhume was calm & talked about his experiences in Indonesia. He highlighted that it would be wrong to say that Islamist radicalization has nothing to do with Islam at the same time it would be wrong to say that entire Muslim population is the problem.
November 17
The first session on last day of the conclave was about RSS and its cultural agenda chaired by Seshadri Chari with Shri Dattatreya Hosabale. Shri Dattatreya emphasized that RSS believes in unity and not uniformity. Homogeneity is neither the goal of RSS nor it is desirable.
The second session of the day was chaired by Shankar Sharan with panel members Tavleen Singh, Madhu Kishwar, Patrick French and Amish Tripathi on the topic of literary battle civilizational ideas and Pen warriors. Madhu sounded more like cultural right and Tavleen was representing economic right. Patrick French reminded us about the tradition of India’s tolerance while talking about award returnees. He made an important point that Award returnees deserve respect. During Q & A session many from the audience disagreed with Tavleen Singh when she commented on credentials of scholarship on the right. Amish highlighted the importance of the pen warrior and the lasting impression it creates on people’s mind.
The next session was on the subject of Semitism chaired by Come Carpentier with the panel of Tufail Ahmed, Kanchan Gupta and Sultan Shahin. Both Tufail and Sultan were critical of the role played by Madarassas. You can check details of Tufail’s speech here and here Kanchan Gupta talked about validity of the Muslim personal law board, the need to reform and the state’s role to push for Uniform Civil Code.
The next session was chaired by Subhash Kashyap with David Frawley as one of the panel members. The subject of the discussion was Mother Earth, Mother Nature and eastern wisdom. The Last session of the day was with Nirmala Sitharaman. Both these sessions I was not able to attend because of my travel commitments.
Summary
In my opinion this was a great forum to know many great minds. I hope more people are invited on such forums so that eco systems can grow. I would appeal the organizers to at least broadcast the sessions live on YouTube. While many of us complain that there is no keen interest by BJP or others in RSS to create an ecosystem. I would say people should pick up activities which they feel will add values to Indic civilization ecosystems. Shramdaan, Misson Parijat, March4India, myind.net, Swarajya, opindia all are private initiatives with great success. In the end I would have to say that it was three satisfactory days, I would look forward to the 2016 Conclave eagerly.
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