The International Research Division of the India International Centre (IIC) is convening an international conference, ‘Asia on the Move: Histories of Mobility and the Making of Asia’ on 22–24 February. This conference seeks to open up a new area in travel literature: journeys through Asia over the centuries, and the records of Asian travelers.
Ambassador Shyam Saran (India’s former Foreign Secretary), President IIC, addressing a selected media gathering here on Thursday noted that the conference is envisaged as opening up a conversation on how people of Asia have looked at themselves through history.
Historians and scholars of literature and art will share their insights on how the movement of preachers, scholars, nomads, merchants, musicians, painters and polyglots led to the diffusion of ideas, beliefs and ways of life across Asia, and stimulated economic growth and innovation in the arts.
Mobility—of people, products, techniques, symbols and stories—sustained networks of interaction through shifting political regimes. The adaptation of cultural influences to local needs made for plural societies and regional diversity, which will be part of the discussion.
“We will also discover figures rarely written about, like wandering musicians and diasporic traders,” K N Shrivastava, Director IIC, said in reference to the conference. The Conference brings together 18 scholars from five countries — Hungary, Russia, USA and Uzbekistan and India. Prof. Sanjay Subramanyam (Distinguished Professor & Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles), will deliver the Keynote Address on, ‘Port Cities and Mobility in Early Modern Asia’ on 23 February at the inaugural. Dr Karan Singh, former Union Minister, will deliver the Valedictory Address on 24 February. The conference convener is Prof. Gitanjali Surendran, Professor and Executive Director, Centre for Law and Humanities, Jindal Global Law School.
The six working sessions include the journeys of Buddhist texts and preachers to East and Southeast Asia and Russia; ethnographies and travelogues by Al-Biruni, Ibn Battuta and the Portuguese Fernao Mendes Pinto; diasporic traders in Malabar, Balkh and Bokhara; itinerant musicians at courts of Kabul and Kashmir; painters who migrated from Persia to the Deccan and from Zangskar to Bhutan; and modern quests to retrace ‘roots and routes’ that led to the Hungarian Csoma de Korosi’s discovery of Tibetan civilization, Nicholas Roerich’s trans-Himalayan expedition, and Rahul Sankrityayan’s pursuit of ghummakkari.
On 22 February N.N. Vohra, Life Trustee of IIC, will inaugurate an exhibition, ‘Traveling Relics: Spreading the Word of Buddha’, curated by Prof. Himanshu Prabha Ray and Prof. Gitanjali Surendran at IIC. Using archival photographs and newspaper clippings, this will show the significance of relics of the Buddha in religious practice from Mauryan times, and how their meaning shifted with the emergence of archaeological studies, Buddhist activism and relic diplomacy. The exhibition will remain open for public viewing till 7 March 2024.
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