BIC TALKS

415. Why Doesn't Patriarchy Die?

This conversation will shift your understanding of power, and of possibility. In this session Rahila Gupta will examine how male dominance persists across radically different societies from theocracies to democracies, dictatorships to socialist states. Her co-authored book Planet Patriarchy asks what makes patriarchy so resilient, and where feminism is not just surviving but genuinely thriving. In conversation with Ashwini Jaisim, content strategist and editor, the session centres on a revelation: a little-known women's revolution in Rojava, Northeast Syria. Here, women are building a bottom-up democracy rooted in multi-ethnic inclusivity and ecological sustainability. It's a radical reimagining of power that challenges everything we think we know about governance and gender. Concluding with an audience Q&A, this session invites you to rethink power, resilience, and the possibilities of feminist futures, one where gender equality isn't an afterthought but the foundation. In this episode of BIC Talks, Rahila Gupta is in conversation with Ashwini Jaisim. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Dec 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.

414. Queer Journeys

Some histories vanish not by accident, but by design. In the wake of colonial rule, Forbidden Desire unspools a compelling narrative of how British imperial power erased India's far-reaching traditions of gender and sexual diversity. The book draws from feminist historiography, anthropology, South Asian queer theory, decolonial studies and the history of medicine and legislation to map the transformation of lives once lived in fluid, expressive spaces. Author Sindhu Rajasekaran invites us into archive after archive where nautch dancers, courtesans, trans and queer persons, ascetics and masculine women once existed beyond the binaries that later came to dominate. In conversation with Arundhati Ghosh, this discussion will trace how colonial authorities turned indigenous multiplicities into "criminals", folding ancient codes of desire into Victorian moral order: think of Section 377, the Contagious Diseases Act, and the Criminal Tribes Act. More than a simple critique, the evening offers a chance to reimagine our futures by reclaiming what we were taught to forget. In this episode of BIC Talks, Sindhu Rajasekaran is in conversation with Arundhati Ghosh. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Dec 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.

413. Election Commission – A Guardian of Democracy

At a moment when democratic legitimacy rests on public trust, the role of the Election Commission demands urgent, sober reflection. This Constitution Day session examines the institution at the heart of India's electoral democracy: one tasked with ensuring free and fair elections for over 900 million voters. Yet recent concerns over voter-roll preparation, election scheduling, enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, and responses to hate speech raise critical questions about its autonomy and constitutional resilience. Grounded in the original vision of an independent referee, the discussion considers whether today's political pressures and structural vulnerabilities call for renewed safeguards or a deeper reimagining of the Commission itself. An essential conversation for anyone seeking to understand how democratic institutions endure, and what it takes to protect them. In collaboration with: Daksh In this episode of BIC Talks, S Y Quraishi delivers a talk. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Nov 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.

412. The Women No Longer Wait

A wobbling world tries to find its axis: fabrics tear, lands splinter, loved ones vanish, names fade. This session intertwines conversation and poetry, inviting audiences into the bold, shimmering world of Arundhathi Subramaniam's luminous new collection. The session will trace the arc through the sacred and the feminine, culminating in this celebration of fierce, unruly womanhood. Sumbramaniam's collection takes us through shifting landscapes, following the strides of extraordinary women. Women who vault over borders, stroll naked through history, tilt sideways into the unexpected, and sometimes walk entirely upside down. They blur the boundaries between the mundane and the magical, the remembered and the imagined, revealing a world waiting quietly within the old one. Welcome a world that demands new ways of being, new acts of courage, new freedoms! In this episode of BIC Talks, Arundhathi Subramaniam takes us through her book and her process. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Nov 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.

411. Rediscovery of a Lost Gandhi

Meet Mohandas: experimenting, debating, and testing the ideas that would later define him as Mahatma. This conversation around The Dawn of Life, Prabhudas Gandhi's newly translated memoir, returns us to the ashram circles of South Africa, where Gandhi was still shaping the ideals that would one day define him. Translated into English for the first time by Hemang Ashwinkumar, recipient of the 2024–25 New India Foundation Translation Fellowship, the book revives a family archive both historical and deeply personal. Written by his young grandnephew who lived alongside him at Phoenix Settlement and Tolstoy Farm, the memoir offers an intimate portrait of shared labour and domestic routines, debates on diet and brahmacharya, experiments in simplicity, and the quiet discipline that shaped a philosophy. Here, Gandhi appears exacting yet tender, fallible yet searching, and alive in the small routines that forged his philosophy. In conversation with Nandini Nair of the New India Foundation, Hemang reflects on recovering overlooked histories and carrying a handwritten chronicle into the present; opening a rare window onto Gandhi in the making. The session will conclude with an audience Q&A. In collaboration with: The New India Foundation and Penguin In this episode of BIC Talks, Hemang Ashwinkumar is in a conversation with Nandini Nair. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Nov 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.