The Hindu : New Delhi News : Returning to common roots

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Thursday, Jan 03, 2008
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Returning to common roots

Prashant Pandey

International conference tracing parallels in aborigines

Coming Together: Cross-cultural perspective is the theme of the four-day conference going on at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi.

NEW DELHI: The Aborigines of Australia, the first nationals of Canada and the Adivasi of India may be living continents apart but they have several parallels. To understand these parallels in a cross-cultural perspective on a global scale, a four-day international conference, ‘Chotro’ (meaning coming together in Bhil language), began at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts here on Wednesday.

More than 120 delegates from 24 nations will be presenting and discussing almost 150 papers dealing with various aspects of the indigenous people over four days.

A rarity

Opening the conference, IGNCA president Chinmaya Gharekhan said: “Rarely has an attempt been made to bring together opinion leaders from the communities, experts and academic commentators, creative writers and artists hailing from or dealing with these communities on a common platform for listening to one another and creating a discourse that will cut across national boundaries, insular identities, language barriers and variant histories. ‘Chotro’ is such an attempt”.

IGNCA Member-secretary K. K. Chakravarty said ‘Chotro’ was a platform to bring together communities of the world to try and deal with the ongoing biological, molecular, genetic and cultural reductionism. The focus of the conference is the rich oral traditions of the jan jatis and their cultural history from their persepective. Among the countries taking part are Australia, Belgium, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Apart from IGNCA, the conference has been put together by the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, the European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies.

Some of the topics on which papers would be presented are ‘The aesthetics of the marginalised’, ‘The aesthetics of the voiceless’, ‘Creative expression of Nomadic communities in Western India’, ‘Making Memory, Making Poetry’.

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