Voice and Noise - 01

Though Silence is the best tool, but I choose to ...

I would like to share my thoughts on the one day lecture series organised by 'Manthan Samvaad - 2018' on 2nd October at Shilpakala Vedika, Hyderabad. There were distinguished lecturers from Emeritos persons in their respective fields, Justice A.P. Shah, Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Amit Chandra, Daniel Fernandes, Dr. Tejal Kanitkar, and Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar.

URL Link: https://www.manthansamvaad.com/

I enter the venue 30 min before by then it was almost 80% of them were around. By and large there were around 2500 person attended today's lecture series, that shows the significance and impact MANTHAN SAMVAAD - 2018 have among the people in the city. The day began with soothing light music and grand opening by the Justice AP Shah. 

Justice A.P. Shah, lecture documented the political insignificance of 'one nation: one culture' from different dimensions. He started his talk by highlighting the threats which are ahead in the near failure. India is know for inclusive lifestyle and secular religious belief but in the recent past these diversities are under huge risk. He highlighted few reasons for such negative trend which shooks the core of our belief 'Unity in Diversity'. 'Nationalism, Hindu Rashtra, One country and One Culture' are the few tools which the unruly rulers using against us. It is high time to fight against such immoral acts which would question basic human rights and fundamental of human rights of our constitution. Ruling right wing, curtail the freedom of the minorities and  marginalised in terms of culture, religion, caste, gender. He quoted different recent incident across the country 'writers were attached, cow lynching, religious clashes, and lot more'. Through this discourse, they are trying to create a 'OTHER' in this society. It is high time to be clear and aware about such biased and communalistic discrimination against the society and harmony of this nation. His talk was data driven, from 2010 there were around 63% cases filed against 'cow lynching' among those, 61% cases after May 2014. He said, "Hatred is their appetite and violence are their main course" of communal and extremist political wing, it is time to voice out and rise in massie. 

The second talk, was roughly about the 'Charity, NGO and Nation Building' by Mr. Amit Chandra . His talk revolved around, how can we give back to the society? He discussed about the materialistic pleasure and wishes we are carrying throughout our life and endup living in vain without enjoying the minimum we could have. He answered an intriguing question brilliantly, Why do the western society give more as charity compare to Asia and specifically India? To which he interestingly said,  In their country their connection to their respective country, city, village, school and college so they do more for their upliftment but we have very less connect to those place and disconnect from our root which could be one of the reasons among the several other. He also discussed a good manager should hire an employee who is smarter and better than us so that they perform better than expected. 

The third talk, was by Dr. Shashi Tharoor about his book 'Why I am an Hindu'. This talk was more a self proclaim about his book and highlighted the misrepresentation of right wing hindu ideology. He tried to bring few rational reasons for several questions against the right wing's deliberate misunderstanding of Hinduism. He also tried to distinguish between 'Hinduism and Hindutva'. 

The day ends with the reverberating lecture by Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar (PhD Researcher, JNU) on the existing political hypocrisy in the present day politics (It was in Hindi, I can just get the gist of the lecture not the deep of it). He looked calm and clear but his lecture was terrifying in terms of idea generation and culmination. He started his lecture by greeting Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri's birth anniversary.  He sarcastically compare and highlighted, what have happened in New Delhi this morning, where peasants were lynched by the police personnel, ironically when the country is celebrating 'non-violence day' in remembrance of Father of our nation.  In addition, he also discussed about how the social media have take away the social life from most individuals. This lecture has received roar of applause and standing ovation from the audience after an hour long lecture and question and answer session. His lecture gets deep intensified as he started to list out the several attacks by the ruling party on the nation in the name of developmental schemes, hidurastra and building nationalism.  In this juncture, he also discussed about the ‘post-truth era’ where the idea of ‘truth’ itself under huge threat. 

URL Link: https://www.firstpost.com/india/police-halt-farmers-march-at-delhi-up-border-using-water-cannons-tear-gas-shells-protesters-break-barricades-5300741.html

The notable  feature of this lecture by Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar have pulled the audience from different walks of life from corporate to caterers (who came for serving), software engineer to the security (who was on duty listen to this lecture), students to statesmen, who all  entrenched, enjoyed and energized by his vibrant political speech. To be precise voice of a common was spread out loud and bold.   

To sum-up, though it was unintentional but the whole lecture series were about misrepresentation of the nation and manufactured histories by the malnutrition political figures across and especially from the ruling party. 

Loud and Bold