These podcasts were recorded during a screening of Gulabi Gang an award-winning documentary film about rural woman’s activism in India followed by a discussion with Nivedita Menon the director of the film.
The negative aspect of the idea of change moves us to sadness. It oppresses us to think that the richest forms and the finest manifestations of life must perish in history, and that we walk amidst the ruins of excellence. History cuts us off from the noblest of our interests: the passions have destroyed them for they are transient.
It seems that all must perish and nothing endures. Every traveller has experienced this melancholy. Who has stood among the ruins of Carthage, Palmyra, Persepolis, or Rome without being moved to reflect on the transience of empires and men, to mourn the loss of the rich and vigorous life of bygone ages? It is not a sorrow like that which we experience at the graves of those dear to us, when we lament our personal losses and the transience of our own aspirations: it is rather a disinterested sorrow at the downfall of the brilliant cultures of the past. (Hegel)[1] Read more…
On 12th May, 2014, India completed a six-week long voting process that mark a culmination of the ‘Biggest Elections in Human History’ involving 814 million voters casting their vote in 9,30,000 polling booths.
As the Exit Polls define the headlines in India, a day-long review of the 16TH Indian Lok Sabha Elections is being organised by the Centre for South Asian Studies through discussions, film screenings, and debates led by staff and students from University of Edinburgh, Heriot Watt, Edinburgh Napier University and Queen Margaret University.
A ‘Future’ is an agreed contract for the sale or purchase of an asset, currency or commodity at a future date. This financial instrument came about to provide a kind of insurance to the producers so that they did not go out of business when there might be a poor harvest, for example. After intense lobbying, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission relaxed the rules surrounding the market in 1999. Read more…
We Are Kin are a collective of artists who have a collective vision; to create works which move the soul. Pandora is their debut album deep in melody and sound. The album is a journey, a story following a character through the decisions he makes that affects others lives in tandem with a being created with the sole purpose of protecting humanity itself. Read more…
