India’s Minister for Corporate Affairs Speaks at TCD Glucksman Symposium
Posted on: 25 June 2010
‘Perspectives on India and the West: Politics, Religion and Art’ was the theme of the 8th Lewis Glucksman Memorial Symposium organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub at Trinity College on June 23rd last. The symposium featured three experts in the fields of Indian politics, religion and art who in their talks highlighted the longstanding connections between India and the West. India’s Minister for Corporate Affairs, Shri Salman Khurshid, closed the symposium with a presentation on the experience of minorities in India and the west.
The speakers included Professor Gauri Viswanathan, Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University whose talk, entitled ‘Colonialism’s Shadow world: Blavatsky and the Geopolitics of Secret Knowledge’, examined notions of colonialism and secrecy in 19th century India using the backdrop of the Russian occultist H. P. Blavatsky who exposed the British culture of secrecy and reserve as a front for restricting the flow of information from the British state to India. Aside from holding numerous visiting chairs such as the Beckman Professorship at Berkeley, Viswanathan has published widely on education, religion, and culture; nineteenth-century British and colonial cultural studies; and the history of modern disciplines.
Charles Horton, curator and Head of Collections at Dublin’s Chester Beatty Library, has nearly 30 years experience in working for libraries and specialist historical collections in Ireland. His talk, entitled ‘Changed Perceptions: Western Collectors of Mughal Art’, examined the formation of the Chester Beatty collection of Indian Mughal paintings housed in Dublin Castle and its uses today. During the 18th and 19th centuries there was little European interest in Indian art and collectors usually only collected individual examples of art. Alfred Chester Beatty was the exception and he emerged as a great collector of Indian Mughal painting eventually bequeathing it to the people of Ireland.
Francis X. Clooney, S.J. Parkman of the Harvard Divinity School is Parkman Professor of Divinity and Director of the Centre for the Study of World Religions. His talk entitled, ‘After Post-Colonialism: the Rediscovery of Hinduism’, discussed how the religious traditions of India have been misrepresented and over simplified by Western scholars both in the past and today. In order to do full justice to India’s enduring religiosity and its global significance scholars should be more forthright in academic and interreligious conversations.
TCD Librarian and College Archivist, Robin Adams points out highlights of the current library exhibition on the Irish presence in India to India’s Minister for Corporate Affairs, Shri Salman Khurshid and his wife, Louise.
An exhibition on the Irish presence in India, ‘Nabobs, Soldiers & Imperial Service: the Irish in India’, is currently running in the Long Room of Trinity College until October next showcasing the long-standing connection Ireland has with India as part of the British presence there, living and working in the subcontinent as soldiers, administrators and missionaries.
The Lewis Glucksman Symposium is a bi-annual public event organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub, TCD’s arts and humanities research institute; it brings together eminent academics, authors and artists to speak on matters of public interest.
About the Trinity Long Room Hub:
The Trinity Long Room Hub is a research institute which aims to foster and develop world-leading research in the arts and humanities at TCD. The Hub is funded by the Irish Government through the Higher Education Authority under the PRTLI IV programme.
The Trinity Long Room Hub aims to cultivate and facilitate a new generation of researchers through the fuller exploitation of the College’s outstanding research collections. The Hub initiative will enable scholars to access the College’s Library’s rich resources of materials and collections. The LRH will stimulate individual and collaborative research in existing and new disciplines. For further details click on: http://www.tcd.ie/longroomhub/
