Darjeeling — Heading toward 100th day of indefinite strike in Darjeeling Hills, Salesian College organized 8th Verzotto Memorial Lecture, 19 & 20 September 2017 at Sonada, Darjeeling and at its Siliguri Campus in North Bengal.
`. Author of best seller Debrahmanising History: Dominance and Resistance in India Society (2005) which has gone into 11 extensively revised editions, Prof. Braj Ranjan Mani, Independent Scholar and Author spoke on “Making Sense of Contemporary India.”
In his opening remark Dr Mani posed the question “With one million billionaires and one billion hungry people in India what has gone wrong with Indian society, the world’s largest democracy?“
In his effort to answer the question and make sense of contemporary India Dr Mani critiqued “existing knowledge, power, and social relationships, at the same time renewing the debate on fundamental issues to help audience ask the right questions and seek answers outside the old and failed frameworks.”
The audience in both Sonada and Siliguri campuses consisted of faculty and senior students, as well as faculty from neighboring colleges and institutions.
During the course of his presentation Dr Mani brought to light the hidden agenda and curriculum uncovering the dominant canons and constructs that distort the vision for a more humane and egalitarian India.
Raj Ranjan Mani is the author most recently published book Knowledge and Power: A Discourse fro Transformation (2014). One of India’s unconventional scholar-activists, Dr Mani was former a journalist with The Times of India, a Fellow of the India Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and worked for a while as Dr Ambedkar Chair-Professor at NISWASS, Bhubaneswar, before deciding to work autonomously.
Italian born Fr Joseph Verzotto (1927-2009) was on the faculty of Philosophy at Salesian College Sonada from 1963-1989. Besides teaching (ethics, metaphysics, psychology, epistemology and Indian philosophy) he was also the librarian, a counselor, a postman, and di reprography, fund raising, and philanthropy. He was a biographer, literary essayist, film critique, a translator, religious instructor and an available friend to the many students who had the privilege of having known him, interacted with him and lived with him. END

Published On : MattersIndia.com