Hyderabad: A new India bustles with productive activities that essentially derive their energy from its age-old wisdom, speakers noted at the day-long ‘Bharata Uvaca – A Civilisation Speaks’ organised by Shankarananda Kalakshetra and Natyarambha under the ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’.
Architect Kalpana Ramesh, whose activism earned Hyderabad back its step-wells, said, “we must learn more about how wells that are as old as a thousand years are still active.”
Author Shefali Vaidya, in her presentation recalled how Bharat’s legacy in making high-quality clothes traced back to even the Harappan civilization 3,000 years before Christ.
The series of eleven TED-style talks was interspersed with a performance talk by Anupama Kylash and an instrumental concert by Arabhi group. Capping up Bharata Uvaca was Dr Ananda’s classical dance production ‘Tales from the Bull and the Tiger’, lacing Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi.
The other speakers were engineer-turned-litigator J. Sai Deepak (India That Is Bharat), political analyst, Shantanu Gupta (The Ramayana School), art historian Chitra Madhavan (Temples — Treasure Troves of a Civilisation) and foreign affairs expert Gautam Chikermane (India: The Rise of a Rajasic Nation).
Also, the line-up of speakers included personal finance writer Monika Halan (Reclaiming the Abundance of Artha), activist-commentator Anuraag Saxena (Kartavya Bhava — From Whining to Winning), VidyaKshetra founder Muneet Diman (Dharmic Education for an AI World) and television anchor Anand Narasimhan (Civilisational Roots Integral to the Concept of Nationhood).