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Winter Institute 2005 |
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Urban Knowledge, Language and the Research Process |
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The PUKAR Winter Institute, 2005 was held between the 6th -9th of January 2005, in the Convocation Hall of the University of Mumbai in partnership with the Department of Communication and Journalism, University of Mumbai. It featured various panel discussions and presentations. ‘Literary City’, the panel discussion of the first day, organized in collaboration with KATHA, exemplified the focus of the Institute. Award winning short-story writers from different languages, who have located their stories in Mumbai, got together to read excerpts from their stories and share their idea of the city as reflected in them. The session covered a range of languages from Malayalam to Marathi and the discussion opened up to the audience, the various ways the city can be viewed, particularly through the prism of multilingual literature. The highlight of the second day was a talk by Tejaswini Niranjana, ‘Masculinity and Linguistic Nationalism in Bangalore/Karnataka’, that focused on the crisis created by the kidnapping of Kannada film icon, Rajkumar by Veerappan and placed it within the conjunction of linguistic nationalism and masculinity. Using audio-visual clippings Dr. Niranjana argued that Rajkumar’s kidnapping created a crisis in Kannada identity and proved to be a moment for its reconfiguration. Linguistic politics intertwined with regional politics (particularly the rivalry over the Cauvery water between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka) and its embodiment in Veerappan (a Tamil) and the kidnapping of Rajkumar formed an entry point to understand the politics of language, identity and its morphology. |
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The issues of language and the complexity it assumes in the urban context were addressed, particularly with reference to Mumbai in, ‘The City Reported: Representations of Mumbai in the Media’ which brought together leading journalists like Kalpana Sharma (The Hindu), Kumar Ketkar (Lok Satta) and Shishir Joshi (Aaj Tak). Comparing notes, the journalists referred to the existence of multiple public spheres in the city, informed by language and mirrored in the media.
A discussion on ‘Language and Cinema’ with Rachel Dwyer, Faisal Devji and Abhay Sardesai explored the history of Urdu and its relationship with the Hindi film industry. Perhaps the most important component of the institute was the interactive process that was generated by each presentation. The audience was extremely participatory and their keenness to grapple with the issues discussed was evident in presentations they made on the fourth and concluding day, at the PUKAR office. Some of them indicated a desire to carry forward their association with PUKAR beyond the Winter Institute. |
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