"Rahul Sankrityayan’s Revolutionary Relocations" a talk by Dr. Maya Joshi at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 28th January 2014

Time : 3:00 pm

Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)

Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info :  Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'

Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Seminar on ‘Rahul Sankrityayan’s Revolutionary Relocations’ by Dr. Maya Joshi, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.

Abstract : This paper grows out of a sustained fascination and engagement with the life and work of Rahul Sankrityayan as an extraordinary figure from modern India who needs to be read more widely and deeply. This polymath (1893-1963) lived through some of the most powerful moments of contemporary history. In his eventful life, he was a ceaseless wanderer both physically, through some of the remotest parts of India and Asia (and only occasionally Europe) and intellectually, through a largely autodidactic course charted in the choppy seas of literatures, languages, religion, philosophy and politics, as they played out in India, but also globally. He wrote and translated incessantly and left behind a rich oeuvre of writings that range from fiction to philosophy, from autobiography to monumental historiography. This paper traces the shifting and evolving contours of his personal journey, engaging with his location vis a vis questions of centre and periphery, the local and the global, especially as it intersects with choices pertaining to religion and politics. His search for an ever-evolving idea of liberation, especially as understood via Buddha and Marx, informs this presentation in particular. Further, for Sankrityayan, India as a nation was an emergent entity whose fortunes and future he engaged with in ways urgently political, while also re-envisioning its past as a civilization. This makes his life and work complex and compelling.    

Speaker : Dr. Maya Joshi is Associate Professor at the Faculty of English, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. Her doctoral research was interdisciplinary, using bilingual materials. It examined, via the genre of the autobiography, cross-cultural encounters at the beginning of the 20th century in India against the backdrop of the Indian national movement, especially Gandhi. She has been part of the Fulbright Faculty Exchange Programme with Kenyon College, Ohio in 2002, an Associate at IIAS, Shimla from 2004-6, and a Charles Wallace Trust Awardee for conducting archival research related to her Ph.D. Most recently, in Fall 2013, she lectured at Smith, Amherst, Williams, Middlebury and Haverford Colleges on her research work. Amongst her publications are an edited critical volume on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, on Ladakh’s Bakula Rinpoche, an edited volume on the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti and his contributions to philosophical thought on Pramana, as well as research articles on Rahul Sankrityayan. In pursuance of her interest in Buddhism, she has been working closely for over a decade with Tibet House, Delhi, as Chief Editor of their Bulletin and organizing academic conferences on aspects of Buddhist history and philosophy. Rahul Sankrityayan’s many facets have been an ongoing research interest beyond the purview of her Ph.D. which engaged primarily with his five volume autobiography, MeriJeevanYatra.

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