About the  Dr Ashok Da. Ranade Memorial Trust  By Anjum Rajabali https://youtu.be/q58emTQwgoY  the trust has been created in the name of Dr. Ashoke Da Ranade  who barely needs an introduction. Large body of work that he has left behind. And yet it is very difficult to introduce such a multi-dimensional, multi-talented personality. He is primarily remembered as one of the finest minds in the field of musicology and music scholarship the world over, when he was regarded as one of the finest external musicologists of his time.

The range of subjects that he studied and excelled in as a scholar is unbelievably large --from music to dance to theater. Literature, criticism, mythology, Yoga, and several others which he which he found stimulating.
over and above that he was a composer and a musician himself a vocalist. He has 24 books to his credit. He has left behind a huge amount of knowledge for all of us to gain by. and yet there was so much more that he had planned to do could do before death stole him from us 3 abruptly 12 years ago.

Introducing Prof Pankaj Chandra:   https://youtu.be/BBSds1clnbU
Dr Aneesh Pradhan: Professor Pankaj Chandra is the Vice Chancellor of Ahmedabad University. He was the Director of the IIM Bangalore and Professor of Operations & Technology Management at IIM Ahmedabad. He has been a full time tenured faculty at McGill University and IIM Ahmedabad and a visiting professor at various universities overseas.  He has served on several committees of Government of India and currently serves on policy committees related to the New Education Policy as well on international Supply Chain Resilience.

Professor Chandra’s research and teaching interests include Manufacturing Management, Supply Chain Coordination, Building Technological Capabilities, and higher education policy. His recent book titled ‘Building Universities that Matter’ studies issues of Governance, Change & Institution Building in Indian Universities. He is involved in building a liberal arts driven research University and within it, a School of Performing and Visual Arts.

  12th ADR Memorial Lecture:  Integrating Arts: Building  Education towards Freedom  https://youtu.be/hRabhojJW5I 
 
Why does any society want its people to be educated? And what is the role of arts within it? In this day and age of technology, the big question that one grapples with is whether education is making you think and how does one learn to think. We believe that by integrating arts, one is able to view the world more comprehensively, bring extended emotion into education, and build skills that are more diverse to address complex questions. The talk will explore this world of how art is presented in a liberal arts framework and what stands in its way in today’s India.

Q & A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCJADGeLiLI

Questions raised in the chat box.
raginipasricha:    Artists across the world are protesting against multiple injustices and are being killed, incarcerated and banned for doing so by oppressive regimes. Their despair and oppression are very visible.  Is arts education or even interdisciplinary practice being promoted in India today and if freedom is to be taught as a cherished value, is the political system today supportive of it and financing it? Or are we talking at cross purposes? Social problem solving and pragmatism don’t go hand in hand. Academicians who work with sub altern movements are being called anti nationals and imprisoned
Stan Lobo:   Your words "if freedom is to be taught as a cherished value" is the question. Quoting our forefathers is the best way to  escape responsibility what we need to do 'NOW'.  We have some of the best thinkers on education in the form of Gandhi, Ambedkar, JK, Tagore.the question still remains : what have we done to Education system in India today inspite of having the best thoughts and intentions? What are the systemic changes, questioning those holding position of power in education, holding Educationists accountable for what needs to be done ?
 
At the end Chaitanya Kunte of the ADR Archives, Pune gave the vote of thanks

for Lectures upto now: Go to playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO579_0r1kCSHNo429aJWxOgci7LdRabX 

How The New Censors Muzzle A Million People!
   https://freespeechcollective.in/how-the-new-censors-muzzle-a-million-people/ November 27, 2023  NewsClick, a relatively small outfit, was somehow perceived to be a ‘problem’. Perhaps the problem was not so much NewsClick as the range of movements it covers. Just prior to the government’s unwelcome attention, NewsClick had covered the farmers’ movement quite thoroughly, coverage that drew significant viewership, and not just in India...

The Indian people are quite often mistaken to be passive. They do not rise up in revolt periodically against the terrible burden of oppression that they carry; this is a criticism commonly levelled against them. Yet, this mass of ‘passive’ people routed Mrs Gandhi in 1977 and asserted the primacy of Indian democracy...

Of course, the government and its cohorts are anxious to control the large number of individuals using social media; to do this, they have to come up with measures different from what sufficed during the earlier Emergency.

In other words, a technological change has taken place which makes the task of muzzling the press rather different from what it used to be. If you want to muzzle a million or more people, you cannot use the Emergency instrument, which was direct censorship...from “Keeping Up the Good Fight: From the Emergency to the Present Day” 

What are the new censors — official and unofficial —to do? They make an example of a few to create a chilling effect.

Kapil Sibal Writes : We Are Witnessing Undeclared Emergency & Courts Are Silent Kapil Sibal, Senior Advocate 27 Nov 2023 https://www.livelaw.in/articles/kapil-sibal-writes-we-are-witnessing-undeclared-emergency-courts-are-silent-243104  & https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2023/nov/26/courts-are-on-trial-in-undeclared-emergency-2636427.amp

We are watching in disbelief the way institutional independence is being jeopardised. Citizens who choose to oppose policies and diktats of this government are being targeted. ‘Jail not bail’ seems to have become the norm in certain ‘sensitive’ cases where individuals are critical of the government and its policies. They include journalists, students, academics and those working at the grassroots and espousing the cause of the underprivileged and the marginalised.

it is of great concern that basic principles of law are jettisoned to deny people liberty. How does a judge justify admitting evidence statements made to a police officer and using these to convict the accused? Students are languishing in jail under draconian provisions of law merely because they chose to stand up and be counted, opposing the government and its policies. Journalists and students are being prosecuted under the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act through investigating processes which are clearly highly suspect. Provisions of the Gangsters Act are misused to exploit the victims.

Kapil Sibal ने लिखा लेखा, BJP और SC से भी पूछ लिए सवाल, जानें बड़ी बातें   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElM89ks9jOA

The 3rd of October 2023: the day that changed the lives of more than 80 citizens of India, including mine https://www.adaniwatch.org/the_3rd_of_october_2023_the_day_that_changed_the_lives_of_more_than_80_citizens_of_india_including_mine Paranjoy Guha Thakurta Nov 28, 2023

Among the articles and videos on Adani published by NewsClick are one on how the changes in shipping policies helped the group, another on how rules were tweaked to enable it to become the biggest private operator of airports in India, and yet another on how a judge of the Supreme Court had given a series of rulings in favour of the conglomerate before he retired. For the last-mentioned article in the series of three articles, a ‘gag’ order was issued against this writer, his co-author, and representatives of the portal. Coincidentally, the day the order was issued I had interviewed Australian activist Ben Pennings, who had won a legal battle against Adani in Australia – read Geoff Law’s article on him here...

Among the persons who received unexpected visitors that morning, were not just popular anchors on NewsClick’s YouTube channel, such as Abhisar Sharma, Urmilesh (he uses one name), Bhasha Singh, Aunindyo Chakravarty and Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay (who has written several books, including an unauthorised biography of Prime Minister Narendra Modi).

One of the worst aspects of the police action was that at least 300 personal electronic devices (cellular phones, laptops, hard drives and pen drives) and other belongings (such as passports and property documents) of more than 80 individuals were seized and have remained in the custody of the Special Cell since 3 October. This is a way of depriving journalists of their livelihood. The Supreme Court has asked the Indian government to frame a set of guidelines on seizure of personal electronic devices by the first week of December.

‘It is dangerous all powers are with the agencies

The faux anti-imperialism of denying anti-Uighur atrocities  https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/14/the-faux-anti-imperialism-of-denying-anti-uighur 14 May 2021

Why are some Western ‘anti-imperialists’ determined to whitewash China’s well-documented crimes against the Uighurs? the Uighurs are wronged four times over: by China’s oppression, by American imperialist cooptation, by left-wing denialism, and by Muslim leaders’ dereliction.

In contrast to this fickle and self-serving “solidarity” from American political leaders, scholars and human rights organisations have long been consistent in exposing and opposing China’s persecutory policies against the Uighurs, even when conflicting with the American empire’s realpolitik. https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/192000/asa170501992en.pdf ( detention without trial and long prison sentences for Uighurs, Kazakhs and members of other ethnic groups; long prison terms after unfair trials, e.g. those handed down to Uighur prisoners after the demonstrations in Baren county in April 1990; reported extrajudicial killings and detentions after the Baren incident; and the extensive use of the death penalty in Xinjiang.)

For the Trump administration, the Uighur’s plight was yet another card to play in its China-bashing, along with Hong Kong and COVID-19...

The current onslaught against the Uighurs is the continuation of a long history of settler colonisation, political domination, resource extraction, and geopolitical exploitation – now conducted, since 9/11, under the aegis of a “people’s war on terror.”

Far from being a recently-manufactured artefact of American manipulation, as the Grayzone and other denialists suggest, Uighur opposition to Chinese state rule is as old as the imposition of this rule itself. Independent Uighur states were declared in 1865, 1933, and 1944. By reducing the Uighurs to little more than Great Power pawns, with no autonomous politics or liberation aspirations of their own, some “anti-imperialists” reproduce the imperial hegemony they rail against.

(NB by WA university!)Grayzone is propagansappda (on the left fringe); not credible news. It has also consistently denied/white-washed Chinese repression (genocide?) of Uyghur Muslims

Cricket Mata Ki Jai: Jingoism Lost in Ahmedabad on Sunday https://thewire.in/sport/cricket-mata-ki-jai-jingoism-lost-in-ahmedabad-on-sunday That India lost in the final was karmic payback for the BCCI’s sins against the game, and also for the Ahmedabad crowd’s unwillingness to be sporting and civilised...

most cricket fans worldwide are thoroughly sick – fed up, pissed off – about India’s bully-boy dominance of world cricket. I don’t mean sporting dominance, which neutral fans can live with (as was the case with the West Indians of the Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards era, or Brazilian football in the time of Pelé). It’s the wholesale takeover by the BCCI of cricket’s financing, values, and calendar, giving them a grip over the game that is stronger, more ruthless and vice-like, more absolute and remorseless, more self-serving and mercantilist, than that once exercised by the game’s original overlords in England (who might, at some level, have been forgiven their assertion of ownership over cricket because they did, in fact, give us the game).

The BCCI has warped cricket, distorted it, making it so India-centric that other proud nations – some with better pedigrees than India’s – have been reduced to bit-part players, mendicants, petitioners for match-time. Everything is now about India: the crowds, the songs, the scheduling, the pitches, the money

Voices for an Israel-Palestine Confederation   https://www.aftoleksi.gr/2023/11/04/voices-for-an-israel-palestine-confederation/

Since the very beginning there were voices within Jewish and Palestinian peoples that opposed the creation of nation-states, proposing instead the formation of an Israeli-Palestinian confederacy – movements like the Jewish Labor Bund and Arab-Palestinian intellectuals like Al-Khalidi. They proposed the cantonisation of the region so that both people can be allowed peaceful coexistence. Later on, this secular and democratic vision was further developed by the council-socialist organization Matzpen, whose members supported the form of regional union, consisted of cantons that allow for self-determination of each ethnic group, rather than one or two homogenic Nation-State(s).

And although nowadays such voices are further marginalized by jihadists and far-right zionists, you can still hear advocates for a coexistence-based resolution of the conflict

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsllT0uh-OE&ab_channel=AllNaz1sAreN0nces

https://jacobin.com/2023/11/kurd-gaza-war-israel-response-democracy-middle-east-coexistence/

Is there a need to go beyond the "hegemonic" sustainability narratives, including the UNSDGs?
Now along with "sustainability", terms like "resilience" and "regeneration"
are being used.

Some effort to distinguish --

"Sustainability, Resilience, Regeneration – What’s the Difference?"
https://www.regenerationjournal.org/sustainability-resilience-regeneration-whats-the-difference/

A New Class Consciousness https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-new-class-consciousness/Andrew Elrod   For all the friendly feelings toward organized labor in the United States today, a new workers’ movement remains incipient.