icpr newsletter 3 (1-7) - Indian Council of Philosophical Research

Professor K.R. Rao making his presentation.recent violent incidents in India with specialreference to identity politics. He spoke of groupidentity and how identity movement leads toidentity violence. He also discussed the implicationsand ramifications of such violence and theirdifferent causes besides dealing with the psychologicalstructure of violence as well as theGandhian ways of arresting violence. He concludedhis speech by pointing out how individualvalue is efficacious in containing violence at thelevels of the individual, group and society.Professor Pramod Tandon in his PresidentialAddress gave an exposition of the concept ofviolence and of the different ways in which we canaddress this problem. The Chief Guest of thefunction was Shri Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary, HisExcellency the Governor of Meghalaya, who in hisbrilliant exposition gave the causes of identityviolence in a pluralistic set up like the one we havein this country. He pointed out the problems at agross-root level and referred to the fact that unlessthe economic needs of the people are taken care ofand equality is inculcated in the people's minds,violence cannot be meaningfully arrested. Quotingfrom a large number of contemporary authorities,His Excellency pointed out that there is an urgentneed to discuss this problem so that we may be ableto address the issues in the different regions of thiscountry ridden with identity violence. The InauguralFunction came to an end with a Vote of Thanksproposed by Professor G. Mishra, Member-Secretary, ICPR.The Workshop was topically divided into fivesessions. The First Session, held on March 21,2009, was on “Plurality Linguistic, Cultural andReligious and National Identity.” ProfessorMrinal Miri chaired this session during which fourProfessor Mrinal Miri, Director of the Seminar withDr. Azghar Ali Engineerpapers were presented. In this session, the highlightswere on pluralism and its effect on identitypolitics. Professor Gautam Biswas, Professor S.S.Rama Rao Pappu, Professor Rajesh Dev andProfessor Asghar Ali Engineer presented theirpapers and they evoked a good lot of discussionamong the participants.The broad topic of the Second Session was “Violence,Terrorism and Threat to National Life.”Professor G. Mishra chaired this session. Dealingwith various aspects of the theme of the session,Professor Madhuri Sondhi, Shri J.K. Tripathi andProfessor C.V. Raghavulu spoke on differentaspects of the topics evoking good participation.The Third Session of the Workshop held on 22ndMarch, 2009 was devoted to “Tribal India” and waschaired by Professor A.C. Bhagbati. ProfessorSujata Miri, Professor Ranju Dhamala, ProfessorPrasenjit Biswas, Professor T. Subba and ProfessorUdayan Mishra presented their papers discussingvarious aspects of Tribal India and Identity Politicswith special reference to North-Eastern states.The Fourth Session of the Workshop was devotedfor discussing “Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru andAmbedkar” and their contribution to the efforts ofachieving National Integration. The session waschaired by Professor S.S. Rama Rao Pappu. Therewere three papers presented by Professor MakrandParanjape, Professor Bindu Puri and Shri B.Venketeswara Rao. The well-known participants inthis session shed light on different aspects of thecontemporary thinking concerning NationalIntegration.The Fifth Session of the Workshop held on March23, 2009 was devoted to “Global Economic Unityand Cultural Autonomy; and Democracy, Individ-10