BIC TALKS

As global power dynamics continue to shift, the Indo-Pacific sits at the heart of a rapidly evolving strategic and economic landscape. In this timely and wide-ranging session, Peter Varghese, former Australian Foreign Secretary and High Commissioner to India, offers a perspective shaped by decades of diplomacy and deep engagement with the region. His address will explore the complex forces redefining the Indo-Pacific: from the sharpening rivalry between the US and China, to China’s expanding influence and the evolving policy direction in Washington. The session will also examine how key regional players (India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia) are shaping their own responses to these pressures, and what this means for the broader security of the region. Alongside geopolitics, the conversation will turn to trade tensions, economic nationalism, and the slowing pace of globalization; factors that now cast long shadows over our economic future. Can traditional regional institutions hold, or will more agile, interest-based minilateral groups take their place? In this episode of BIC Talks, Peter Varghese will be in conversation with Latha Reddy, Nitin Pai, and Ranjan Mathai. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

How do we honour truths without exploitation or erasure? This panel discussion will explore how the chapter of Partition is remembered, who holds the responsibility of preserving its stories, and what it means to give them an honest voice. Through literature, oral testimony, archives, or immersive media, each speaker has engaged with histories marked by silence, trauma, and survival. In this session, they will reflect on the choices they have made: to amplify certain voices, to tell different stories with care, and to avoid reducing complex truths into simplified narratives. At the heart of this conversation is a shared responsibility; not only as writers, educators, or artists, but as individuals shaped by inherited memory. As Partition fades from lived memory, this panel asks how the stories we carry today might shape the understanding of future generations, and the ways they remember, question, and imagine. In collaboration with: Rereeti In this episode of BIC Talks, Urvashi Butalia and Soni Wadhwa will be in conversation with Tejshvi Jain. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Scholars of international relations, political thought, and India’s diplomatic history continue to debate the meaning and relevance of non-alignment in India’s foreign policy today. The origins of these debates lie in Jawaharlal Nehru’s articulation of non-alignment at the height of the Cold War, a concept both resolute and ambiguous. In this talk, Dr. Swapna Kona Nayudu will draw on her acclaimed book, The Nehru Years: An International History of Indian Non-Alignment (Cambridge University Press UK, Juggernaut Books India), to explore how India’s approach to international affairs and the United Nations now understood in summary as non-alignment. Based on meticulous archival research in multiple languages, her work uncovers India’s diplomatic and peacekeeping contributions in pivotal global events such as the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution, and the Congo Crisis. Tracing the evolution of non-alignment from Nehru’s time to the present, Dr. Kona Nayudu will examine its contested meaning and its influence on India’s position as the only non-aligned founding member of the UN. In this episode of BIC Talks, Dr. Kona Nayudu will be in conversation with Jahnavi Phalkey. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Jul 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Journalism. Politics. Justice. One fateful evening in 2017, journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot outside her Bangalore home. Her death sent shockwaves across the country. But the story didn’t end there. This evening with journalist and author Rollo Romig, as he explores in his powerful new book, I Am on the Hit List, offers new insights into the life and assassination of Gauri Lankesh. In conversation with artist Pushpamala N and writer-activist Shivsundar, Romig shares the years of reporting and investigating that led him deep into the world Gauri inhabited. Through hidden archives, political undercurrents, and voices from the ground, Romig uncovers a chilling rise in hate and extremism. From Bangalore’s storied publishing lanes to secretive religious enclaves, this conversation offers a rare and moving look at India’s shifting democratic landscape. Pull up a chair. Because remembering is resistance, and this is a story that needs to be heard. In this episode of BIC Talks, Rollo Romig and Shivasundar will be in conversation with Pushpamala N. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Jul 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Mumbai in the seventies and eighties was a city of sharp contrasts: glamour and gang wars, chaos and control. At the heart of it all was Assistant Commissioner of Police (Retd) Madhukar B. Zende, a sharp-minded officer with a knack for catching the city’s most elusive criminals. Best known for arresting the infamous serial killer Charles Sobhraj, aka the Serpent, Zende’s career spanned decades of high-stakes policing. His new book, Mumbai’s Most Wanted, is a rich and gritty chronicle of life on the force. From the mysterious murder of Shanta Devi to the capture of criminal kingpins like Arun Gawli, Karim Lala, Haji Mastan and Babu Reshim, his stories unfold like scenes from a noir thriller (except every word is true). There are riots, manhunts, and moments of doubt as well as unexpected grace. This conversation is a rare look into a city in flux and a man who walked its fault lines, chasing justice in a time of smoke-filled bars, typewriters, and quick decisions. In this episode of BIC Talks, Madhukar Zende will be in conversation with Raghu Karnad. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Jul 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.