A panel will reflect on the student years of Dr BR Ambedkar in New York to learn how those times went on to shape his worldview, and India's Constitution
The panel discussion has been organised to mark a centenary of Dr Ambedkar's graduation from Columbia University, New York
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THE year 2016 not only marks Dr BR Ambedkar's 60th death anniversary and 125th birth anniversary but also a centenary since he graduated from the Columbia University in New York (1913-1916). This Friday, to commemorate the occasion, Godrej India Culture Lab has organised a panel discussion in collaboration with The Columbia Global Centres, Mumbai. Titled New York And Mumbai In The Times Of Dr Ambedkar, the discussion explores the educational and intellectual spaces, forms of cultural expression, labour movements, and discourses of identity and inequality that were part of the urban milieu in his time.
"The event will be a reflection of his legacy and explore his ideas that were instrumental in making India an equal and free country, ideas that he wrote about so eloquently when he framed the country's Constitution, but we seem to have forgotten," says Parmesh Shahani, head, Godrej India Culture Lab.
The panel comprises Farah Jasmine Griffin (Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies at Columbia University), Robert Gooding-Williams (Professor of Philosophy and a faculty member of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University) and Anupama Rao (Associate Professor of History at Barnard College).
While Griffin will present her research on Jazz, gender, the Blues and public life on the culture of the Harlem Renaissance in Manhattan, Rao and Williams will share their work on key transformations associated with historical inequality and social justice in the US and India.