Sunoh Station

Topping off the polarities list is a brief recollection of the discussion on the chasm between science and the humanities begun by CP Snow. Prof Raghavendra Gadagkar saw the Einstein Tagore exchanges as a metaphor for taking these further, making the observation that disciplines have become ever more esoteric and no more prerogatives remain with science as, he recalls, had been suggested by Snow.

Looking outside of the sciences, outside of the east-west or science versus art dichotomies, Prof Amrita Shah, visiting faculty at the centre for contemporary studies at the Indian institute of science, writer and former journalist ,looks at the political undercurrents of Tagore’s multifaceted engagements with the public sphere, within India and across the world. The Tagore family was deeply involved in artistic pursuits and provided cultural leadership at a time when it was crucial to create an Indian personality that defended its self respect in response to the humiliation of colonial rule. Tagore made it his life’s mission to quest for a basis for unity with the world. Being wary of the violence that accompanied political oppositions, Tagore held on to his identity as a poet throughout his life. In looking for a non political basis for world unity Tagore initiated projects in education, lectured abroad, and carried on long correspondences with interlocutors from Germany, England and Japan. Some of these we

It is a fact of history that while being an important contributor to the idea of wave –particle duality, Einstein found it hard to accept the formalism of the uncertainty principle which introduced the idea of probability into the system. As a historical aside, professor Vijay Chandru, adjunct visiting professor of interdisciplinary sciences in bio engineering and cyber physical systems at the Indian Institute of Science, points to the developments in the background of an edifice for mathematics erected by Russell and Whitehead. There is the suggestion that familiarity with this work may have been responsible for the aura of certainty in some of Einstein’s early assertions on subjects not falling in the domain of science proper. It is also curious, that the company of Gödel at Princeton, who showed up holes in the Russell-Whitehead claim that mathematics was a complete system, brings Einstein to a mellower position with respect to the deterministic possibilities of mathematics and opening out to the idea of p

The legendary exchanges between Einstein and Tagore, part conversations organised by Einstein’s son in law, Dmitri Marianov and part through letters, were brought to life at the Bangalore International center. In addition to the transcripts and text, and tone and diction that performers evoked, the discussants identified several polarities, each throwing light on one or more aspects of the intellectual history of that very important epoch of world history, both scientific and political. Is there reality beyond human consciousness? Is the causal world pervaded by the rules of chance? Is beauty a natural affect or is it a matter of convention? While these are the main undercurrents among the Einstein - Tagore exchanges, the Einstein-Bohr exchanges and later, Einstein-Gödel talks appear in the foreground, as well. This is a 4 part series on the Einstein Tagore conversations brought to you by the Center for Contemporary Studies at Indian Institute of Science. Professor Raghevendra Gadagkar, founder chair of the c

In about a month’s time, add a few days, the BJP will complete three years in office at the centre. Three years is long enough for hidden agenda to assume concrete form. In taking stock, former finance minister P Chidambaram lists the things that have gone awry for the people of this country. In a dispassionate tone – shorn of political rhetoric - he identifies the single emotion that has come to grip people of India: fear. This is the emotion that is being stoked by storm troopers of the state. In executing a unilateral cultural text, these storm troopers are telling the people what to eat, what to talk, whom to marry and how to behave. How does one respond to a context like this? We especially want to thank Fr Richard Rego at St. Joseph's College Autonomous, Bangalore for accommodating Sunoh and enabling this podcast.

In the last three months, many economists have spoken on India’s experiment with demonetisation. Listen to this comment by Dr. Muhammed Yunus, the Bangladeshi Nobel laureate who has worked for the longest period with the informal economy. This was during an interactive session at the Synergia Foundation recently. The full podcast of his session at Synergia is available on the Sunoh Station channel. Music: Mr. Bitterness And The Guilty Pleasures "Balance of Power"

This is an inaugural podcast of the Synergia Foundation and we present Bangladeshi Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammed Yunus. Dr. Yunus spoke and interacted with an invited audience in Bangalore at the foundation office, and as one would expect, spoke about the Grameen Bank that he founded, and his lifetime work with micro credit. But there was one other issue that was a recurring subject of his talk, and something about which he spoke with deep concern, and urgency. It was about unequal distribution of wealth and its concentration in the hands of very few individuals. The 'Banker of the Poor', as Dr. Yunus is popularly known, revealed an astonishing statistic. He said, as of today, about eight people own more wealth than the bottom fifty per cent of the world. He wondered if this humungous inequality had led to the rise of the alternative right or alt right across the globe? Because the alt right essentially exploits the frustration and poverty of the masses. In the same breath he spoke about the world’s rigged fina

Harini Nagendra speaks to Sunoh on her latest book, Nature in the City, in which she traces the natural history of Bangalore and dispels many myths surrounding the name of Bengaluru.

What’s happening in Kashmir? That’s the question everybody’s asking. Murtaza Shibli, a writer and journalist, has sent us this ground report on why violence and unrest in the valley, following the encounter killing of Burhan Muzzafar Wani, a 22-year-old militant commander with Hijbul Mujahideen, has not abated. In this uncluttered narrative, he explains the wide social media reach Wani had among Kashmiri youth; the record turnout for his memorial service, something without a precedence in recent Kashmiri memory, which has stupefied everybody including security forces; the lives lost since the evening of July 8; the pellet gun injuries that have blinded hundreds of youth; the AAZADI slogans that have incessantly rented the air, and importantly, the attack on his parental home in Brijbehara, after he wrote an opinion piece criticising Chief Minister Mehabooba Mufti.

We spoke to Albert Lichtblau at the oral history conference in Bangalore. He is from Vienna, Austria, and has followed the life of a working class Jewish family that fled to Kenya. He also shares with us an uplifting tale of a concentration camp survivor. Here he is in conversation with M K Shankar, Cofounder of Sunoh.