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One of Indian cinema’s most fearless voices, Nana Patekar (1951-2026) was a rare actor who brought his characteristic intensity to every role that he portrayed. Working across diverse genres ranging from action to comedy, he carved a niche for himself in both Marathi and Hindi cinema. Before Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! (1988) brought him acclaim and much deserved recognition, he made his film debut with Muzaffar Ali’s film about urban migration, Gaman (1978). A film which proved transformational, was Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s crime-thriller Parinda (1989), which brought him stardom and his first Filmfare Award. His portrayal of Anna Seth as an unstable, unsettling yet oddly vulnerable man redefined the Hindi film gangster. Making his directorial debut with the hard-hitting film Prahaar (1991), he wrote the film’s screenplay and dialogues, as well as played the lead role of a retired Army commando. Through his five-decade long career, he essayed a range of roles with ease in films like Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992), Tirangaa (1993), Krantiveer (1994), Agni Sakshi (1996), Agni Sakshi (1996), Ab Tak Chhappan (2004), Apaharan (2005), Welcome (2007), Raajneeti (2010), and many others. Along with being a consummate actor, Patekar’s Marathi identity and his love for his birth state of Maharashtra, was an integral part of him. His on-screen persona of being rooted in the soil of Maharshtra was translated into his off-screen work for farmers and drought-hit communities, along with other social work initiatives.

On Gandhi Jayanti, 2 October, we invite you to read “Gandhi through the eye of the artist” in The Hindu, written by Neville Tuli, Founder & Trustee of the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies. Article link: www.thehindu.com/society/gandhi-through-the-eye-of-the-artist/article71526987.ece For more detailed context regarding the artworks and their creators, visit our website www.tuliresearchcentre.org where readers can learn more about the artworks and explore our pioneering efforts in building the first undergraduate curricula for Contemporary India Studies.

"A poster calls for food and work. A drawing records the human cost of famine. A painting bursts with colour and the energy of folk theatre. Chittaprosad made room for all of these. During the Bengal famine of 1943-44, he travelled and visually recorded the plight of those he encountered. His drawings appeared in political publications and were later brought together in Hungry Bengal. Working with pen and ink and linocut, he made images that could be printed and seen well beyond a gallery. In this video, Neville Tuli asks us to look beyond the familiar label of “political artist”. Chittaprosad's commitment to people runs through his work, but so do satire, tenderness and a restless curiosity about what an image can do. Look at the exuberance of his paintings and the urgency of his prints. Both belong to the same artist.

India’s energy and rhythm lives within her colours, forms, lines, textures, and stories. Art is that glorious way of seeing and reading India as a vibrant continuum of ideas, emotions, experiences and the beyond. Today on his birthday, we remember M.F. Husain, a key figure in the history of modern Indian art and India, whose restless imagination helped to transform the visual language of modern India. Maqbool Fida Husain (17th September 1915, Pandharpur) began his career by painting cinema hoardings and designing children’s furniture and toys in Bombay. As a member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, brought in by his dear friend and early mentor - Francis Newton Souza - he stood at a unique juncture as part of the first generation of post-Independence modernists. Curious and restless by nature, Husain drew inspiration from everything - epics, village life, cities, horses, women, music, cinema, the political life of the nation. His swift lines and bold compositions, along with his recurring motifs, made his work instantly recognisable. His creativity extended to filmmaking, with “Through the Eyes of a Painter” receiving the Golden Bear for Short Film at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1967. Awarded the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Vibhushan, and nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1986, Husain remained a graphic storyteller and visual documenter of the changing landscape of his time. On his birth anniversary, Tuli Research Centre for India Studies pays tribute to the artist and the remarkable life behind the art. In this reel, Neville Tuli briefly shares his first discussion with M.F. Husain in October 1993, offering a personal glimpse into an encounter with one of modern India’s most distinctive artists.

The beautiful “Udein Jab Jab Zulfein Teri” from B.R. Chopra's Naya Daur (1957) feels open‑ended, almost timeless, because it draws from folklore and the rhythms of village life. In this clip, Ravikant, Professor, CSDS, examines the folk‑inflected melody of the duet by Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle, with Sahir Ludhianvi's lyrics and O.P. Nayyar's music. On the surface, the song is a romantic number between the main leads, Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala but the song sits inside a film whose central fear is that of people losing their jobs when machines arrive. Ravikant likens this anxiety with the current state of affairs wherein the threat of AI looms large in our lives. Against that backdrop, this song becomes more than just a romantic number. It becomes an expression of people's power and dignity, a celebration of the community that is sustained by labour and solidarity. This discussion was part of the series 'Deconstructing the Film Song: A Musical Glue for Nation-Building,' presented by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S) as part of the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival.

V. Shantaram's film about prisoners, reform and second chances, Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957), gives us the bhajan “Aye Maalik Tere Bande Ham,” which transcended the film to become an integral part of school prayers. Composed by Vasant Desai in a simple, hummable Bhairavi, with Bharat Vyas's lyrics carrying a strong moral core, the song exists in two versions, as a male chorus building a community of voices, and Lata Mangeshkar's solo, where her voice carries a frailty the male version never attempts. Presented here is a glimpse from the session 'Deconstructing the Film Song: A Musical Glue for Nation-Building,' in which Shikha Jhingan, Associate Professor, Cinema Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, examines the two versions of the song, the community built through its chorus, and Shantaram's German Expressionist play of light and darkness that accompanies the lyrics of the song. Together, these elements explain why the song remains woven into everyday Indian life. This session was part of the series 'Deconstructing the Film Song: A Musical Glue for Nation-Building,' presented by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S.) as part of the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival.

When does a gathering become a force capable of changing history? In Demonstrators, Krishna Reddy captures the energy of student protest through a dense field of rising forms. Figures emerge with arms raised, their bodies gathering into the rhythm of a crowd. Layered colours and deeply worked lines evoke movement, tension and solidarity. Reddy created the work in Paris in 1968, amid student demonstrations, university occupations and workers' strikes. He witnessed people questioning authority and demanding political, social and cultural freedom. Many also consider this protest and the ideas associated with it as a pivotal moment to help further define the birth of postmodernism. This experience shaped his image of a crowd entering public space and asserting its collective voice. A pioneering modern printmaker, Reddy helped develop viscosity printing at Atelier 17, enabling several colours to be printed from a single plate. In Demonstrators, colours meet, surfaces resist and forms rise from the plate, mirroring the pressure of protest. The exhibition also presents Reddy's 1968-69 Demonstrators in synthetic resin, translating raised arms and closely gathered bodies into sculptural form. Together, the works explore the shared energy of protest across printmaking and sculpture. Within SWARAJ: Revisualising India's Political History, these works extend self-rule beyond national independence. Swaraj lives in the courage to question authority, participate in public life and imagine a more equitable society. Demonstrators reminds us that political change can begin when individual convictions gather into a shared demand for transformation. Artwork 1: Demonstrators Artist: Krishna Reddy Medium: Coloured engraving on paper Date: 1968 Artwork 2: Demonstrators Artist: Krishna Reddy Medium: Synthetic Resin Date: 1968-69

Madan Mahatta's photographs of 36 architectural models belong to a period when India was giving physical form to the ambitions of a newly independent nation. From the 1950s through the 1980s, new universities, research centres, government offices, housing and cultural institutions were being planned across the country. Architects experimented with new materials, technologies and forms, while models became an important means of developing and presenting ideas before construction. Born in Srinagar in 1932, Mahatta came from the Mahatta family of photographers and studied photography at the Guildford School of Art and Crafts in England. Returning to India in 1954, he worked from the family's New Delhi studio, Mahatta & Co., developing a practice spanning commercial, industrial, architectural and documentary photography. From the 1950s onwards, Mahatta photographed architects including Habib Rahman, Achyut P. Kanvinde, Joseph Allen Stein, Charles Correa, Raj Rewal, Kuldip Singh, Ram Sharma, Ranjit Sabhiki and Jasbir Sawhney. Their work reflects the changing vocabulary of post-Independence Indian architecture, from International Modernism and functionalism to Brutalism, Structural Expressionism and Critical Regionalism. The 36 models bring this architectural imagination into focus, revealing how architects explored massing, structure, circulation, geometry, landscape and the relationship between building and city. Alongside his photographs of completed buildings, Mahatta's model photography preserves architecture at the stage of conception, when ideas were still being tested and given form.

How did Sudhir Patwardhan bring marginalised lives within the modern city into public view? In “Overbridge” (1981) four people coincide upon a pedestrian bridge. This wonderfully large pencil drawing preceded Patwardhan's oil painting of the same title. Two men walk with their arms across each other's shoulders, suggesting that very Indian form of camaraderie within every city. A solitary man faces us Kafkaesque like, while a veiled woman at the edge appears marked by illness, possibly leprosy, and exclusion. Patwardhan observes them as they truly are, as stoic rather than heroic subjects. Created amid social and economic change, Overbridge reflects urban alienation and marginalisation. Subaltern Studies was also taking shape, bringing lives excluded from dominant histories into focus. Patwardhan similarly gives overlooked urban subjects visibility and dignity. Trained as a doctor, Patwardhan works as a radiologist in Thane alongside his self-taught artistic practice. Encounters with commuters, labourers and patients shape his urban realism, a genuinely empathic expression of our people and their daily grind endured with grace and resilience, but not romanticised. Within SWARAJ: Revisualising India's Political History Exhibition, the drawing asks how freedom is experienced at society's margins, placing dignity, recognition and companionship at the heart of Swaraj. Artwork: Overbridge (1981), Pencil Drawing on paper Artist: Sudhir Patwardhan

The Indian Emergency (1975-77) was a 21-month period during which Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government suspended civil liberties, censored the press and concentrated extraordinary power in the executive. Declared on the night of 25 June 1975, it followed a period of political unrest, economic difficulties and growing opposition to the Congress government. On the eve of the Emergency, leaders including Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L. K. Advani, George Fernandes and Charan Singh were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act. When elections were finally announced in January 1977, the opposition united as the Janata Party. Its victory in the subsequent election brought the first non-Congress government to power at the Centre, making the Emergency a lasting reminder of both the fragility of democratic institutions and the power of political resistance. Seen here are images of: 1: Morarji Desai, Jayaprakash Narayan with Mahatma Gandhi and the message of secular India 2: Vivan Sundaram's Famous Mrs. G (1974) 3: The cover image of Asia's Voice Himmat magazine, Oct 1977 4: Poster of Kissa Kursee Ka (1978)

Salt was an everyday necessity, yet under British rule Indians were prohibited from freely producing or collecting it and were required to pay a tax on it. Gandhi chose salt because its injustice was understood and felt in everyday life. On 12 March 1930, Gandhi and seventy-eight volunteers left Sabarmati Ashram and walked nearly 390 kilometres to Dandi. On 6 April, Gandhi defied the Salt Law by producing salt from seawater, turning an essential commodity into an act of civil disobedience. The action sparked protests across India. People followed suit, while also boycotting foreign-made cloth and liquor, picketing shops and refusing certain taxes. Women, students, youth, merchants, workers and peasants participated in unprecedented numbers, joining processions, making salt, picketing and courting arrest. Their involvement brought the freedom struggle into homes, markets and public spaces. This album of 247 photographs captures the movement's mass character, documenting the crowds, processions and acts of resistance that took the freedom struggle beyond its prominent leaders and into the lives of ordinary people. The British responded with arrests and repression, but civil disobedience continued through 1932. The colonial salt tax was finally abolished in 1946. Today, salt itself remains exempt from GST. From an everyday necessity to a powerful symbol of resistance, salt became one of the defining symbols of India's freedom struggle.

Few frames in Indian cinema signify the quiet devastation as the beam of light in "Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam" from Guru Dutt's Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959). In 'Deconstructing the Film Song: A Musical Glue for Nation-Building,' panelists Antara Mondal, Ravikant, Madan Gopal Singh, Juhi Sakhlani, and Neville Tuli, trace the visual language of the song and how the quiet cruelty of time runs through both Kaifi Azmi's lyrics and VK Murthy's cinematography. The discussion moves between close readings of the song, its emotional architecture and its enduring presence in popular memory. This session was presented by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S.) as part of the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival.

"Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai" from Guru Dutt's magnum opus Pyaasa (1957), penned by Sahir Ludhianvi, composed by S.D. Burman, and sung by Mohammed Rafi, moves between a deeply personal outcry and a broader socio-political reflection on a world driven by greed and compromise. Ravikant traces the significance of the poet as protagonist across Hindi cinema of the 1950s to 1970s. A figure who carries within himself the tensions between artistic integrity and social pressure, between idealism and disillusionment. Antara Nanda Mondal examines how Guru Dutt's films return repeatedly to a critique of the commodification of art, asking what happens to the artist in a society that measures everything by its material worth. In this song from Pyaasa, that critique finds its most devastating expression. This segment is part of T.R.I.S.' workshop series "A Musical Glue for Nation-Building: Deconstructing the Film Song," featuring Madan Gopal Singh, Ravikant, Antara Nanda Mondal, Juhi Saklani, and Neville Tuli, presented by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S.) at the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival.

Pyaasa, released in 1957, hurled a question at a then newly independent India, "Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par Wo Kahan Hai," and it still hasn't found an answer. This reel is a window into a conversation on Guru Dutt's cinema and the poetry of Sahir Ludhianvi, the lyricist whose words gave the song its unflinching social conscience, set to S.D. Burman's music and sung by Mohammed Rafi. Featuring Madan Gopal Singh, Antara Mondal, Ravikant, Juhi Saklani, and Neville Tuli, the discussion moves between close readings of the song, the emotional architecture built by Guru Dutt through fusing the image and lyrics together, and what it takes to make a song outlast its film. This session was part of the series 'Deconstructing the Film Song: A Musical Glue for Nation-Building,' presented by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S.) as part of the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival.

"Babuji Dheere Chalna" from Guru Dutt's Aar Paar (1954), composed by O.P. Nayyar and sung by Geeta Dutt, is among one of the most popular songs of Hindi cinema. The conversation among the panelists reveals precisely what makes it stand the test of time. Antara Nanda Mondal points out that the song, through Shyama's performance, reveals a great deal about how society perceives women who live at the fringes, figures who are seen but rarely understood on their own terms. Ravikant notes that many of the artists involved in creating this new cinematic vocabulary were autodidacts, learning as they went and building a musical language through instincts and experimentation rather than formal training. Madan Gopal Singh deconstructs the song's formal structure, identifying the two distinct rhythmic patterns running simultaneously. The stanza and the refrain are clearly differentiated, held apart and brought together through a bridge that gives the song its peculiar tension and momentum. This segment is part of T.R.I.S.' workshop series "A Musical Glue for Nation-Building - Deconstructing the Film Song,"" featuring Madan Gopal Singh, Ravikant, Antara Nanda Mondal, Juhi Saklani, and Neville Tuli, presented by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S.) at the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival.

Guru Dutt's cinema blended poetic storytelling with visual brilliance tackling the themes of love, identity, an artist's struggle and social disillusionement. This session explores the nuances of his craft through four of his most enduring songs: "Babuji Dheere Chalna" (Aar Paar, 1954), "Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par" (Pyaasa, 1957), "Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye" (Pyaasa, 1957), and "Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam" (Kaagaz Ke Phool, 1959). While discussing "Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par", Juhi Saklani juxtaposes the grandeur of the Indian national anthem and its celebratory descriptions of the nation's landscapes: "Panjaba-Sindha-Gujrata-Maharata- Dravida-Utkala-Vanga, Vindhya-Himachala-Yamuna-Ganga" with the grim reality that Sahir Ludhianvi's lyrics lay bare through: "Ye kooche ye neelam-ghar dilkashi ke... ye sadiyon se bekhauf, sehmi si galiyan." Where the anthem sees glory, the song sees streets centuries-old in their exhaustion, people living at the margins of the very nation being celebrated. Ravikant adds that Sahir poses a direct and piercing question to the powers that be, holding a newly independent government accountable to the promises it made to its most vulnerable citizens. Reflecting on "Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam," Madan Gopal Singh observes that it is perhaps the only song in Indian cinema where the process of making the song itself becomes a part of what we see on the screen. In "Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye," Antara Nanda Mondal reads the line "Ye mahalon, ye takhton, ye taajon ki duniya" ("this world of palaces, thrones, and crowns") as an allusion to British rule, suggesting that Guru Dutt saw colonial hierarchies continuing to shape post-Independence India. On "Babuji Dheere Chalna," Antara Nanda Mondal argues that the song offers a remarkably nuanced portrait of a woman living on the fringes of society. In a single sequence, it reveals how such women are often looked at, desired, and judged, yet rarely understood on their own terms. This segment is part of T.R.I.S.' workshop series "A Musical Glue for Nation-Building: Deconstructing the Film Song," featuring Madan Gopal Singh, Ravikant, Antara Nanda Mondal, Juhi Saklani, and Neville Tuli, presented by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S.) at the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival.

"What does 𝗦𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗷 truly mean? Is freedom achieved at a single historic moment or period, or must self-rule be continually imagined, questioned and renewed? India's journey towards Swaraj was shaped not by one voice or one path, but through reform and resistance, revolution and non-violence, political thought, public protest, art, print, photography, cinema and the collective will of its people. The Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S.) presents 𝗦𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗝: 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮'𝘀 𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆, a pioneering exhibition curated by Neville Tuli. Bringing together rare artworks, prints, photographs, books, film publicity art, political propaganda and visual-textual-audio archives, SWARAJ traces India's complex journey towards political self-rule and self-discovery. From early European coastal encounters, the Bengal Renaissance and the First War of Independence in 1857 to the rise of Bharat Mata, the Tiranga, Gandhiji's inspired satyagraha, civil disobedience and mass mobilisation, the exhibition explores how the idea of India was envisioned, contested and transformed. It journeys through revolutionary movements and non-violence, subaltern uprisings, the Partition, the Constitution, the integration of the Princely States, the Emergency, wars, civic dissent and people's protests. It also foregrounds the vital role of artists, photographers, publishers, newspapers, journals, cartoons and cinema in recording and shaping the nation's political consciousness. SWARAJ invites us to encounter history not as something distant or settled, but as a daily living inheritance that continues to influence who we are and how we understand freedom, identity, and ourselves today. Watch the video for a glimpse into this expansive visual journey, and follow the exhibition as it revisualises India's political history through art, image, text and sound.

"Jeena Yahan Marna Yahan" from Mera Naam Joker (1970) was penned by Shailendra, composed by Shankar-Jaikishan, and sung by Mukesh. The song is situated at the philosophical heart of Raj Kapoor's most personal and ambitious film. The film was a commercial disaster on release, and as Neville Tuli notes, both the song and the film found the audiences' acknowledgement only years later. Filmmaker-Lyricist Amit Khanna reveals a lesser-known detail about its making: the song was shot in Delhi at the Gemini Circus, but it had become extremely difficult to gather all the stars, who by that point had become huge in their own careers, at one point of time. The scenes featuring them were shot solo and then later assembled in Bombay to be inserted into the song sequence. Ravikant, Professor, CSDS (The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), reads the song as both a philosophical and a deeply materialistic reflection on existence. There is a continuity in the persona that may take rebirth, he argues, but it is not the same person who returns. The world itself is one's heaven and hell simultaneously, and that, he suggests, is why we return to this song whenever life demands reflection. This clip is from the workshop "A Musical Glue for Nation-Building: Deconstructing the Film Song," conducted by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (T.R.I.S.) at the 7th Self-Discovery via Rediscovering India Festival, featuring Madan Gopal Singh, Amit Khanna, Ravikant, Juhi Saklani, and Neville Tuli.