[Asia_news] HRC Seminar Tuesday 17 October, Dr Tridip Suhrud, HRC Visiting Fellow

[Judy Buchanan]

Dear Greg
Please distribute to the Asia List. Thank you.
Judy Buchanan


Humanities Research Centre Seminar

Between Experiment and Sadhana: Towards an Understanding of 
Gandhiji's Observances
Dr Tridip Suhrud
Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communications 
Technology, Near Indroda Circle, HRC Visiting Fellow

Tuesday, 17 October, 2006 at 4.00pm
Theatrette, Old Canberra House, ANU

The attempt here is to explore the relationship between an 
'experiment' and 'Sadhana' (usually understood as spiritual practice) 
through Gandhiji's life and thought. Gandhiji decided to call his 
autobiography "An Experiment with Truth." The question is what is 
experiment with Truth? How does one do so?

Related to it is the question of the communicability of religious and 
spiritual experiences. Is it possible to communicate to others what 
is known only to oneself and one's Maker?

These questions are explored through Gandhiji's practise of fasting, 
its relationship to Brahmacharya (often translated in the limited 
sense of celibacy or chastity), prayer and the nature of the Ashram 
communities that he established.

Tridip Suhrud works on the life and thought of Mahatma Gandhiji. He 
has completed the translation from Gujarati into English of a four 
volume, 2400 page biography of Gandhiji written by Narayan Desai, My 
Life Is My Message. He has translated and compiled a biography of 
Harilal Gandhi; Harilal Gandhi: A Life'. He is a series editor, with 
Ashis Nandy and Thomas Weber, on a new series called Gandhi Studies.
He is deeply interested in the theory and practice of translation and 
has translated from English works of Ashis Nandy, Ganesh Devy and 
Paulo Freire into Gujarati and translated Gujarati novelist Suresh 
Joshi into English.

Tridip Suhrud is a political commentator and writes regularly for 
newspapers in his native language Gujarati. His earlier work was on 
the autobiographical tradition in India and the Nineteenth-Century 
Social Reform movement in colonial India. This work is about to be 
published as 'Writing Life: Three Gujarati Thinkers'.

He is working on a social history of Gandhiji's fasts called 'Emptied 
of All But Love' and compiling Gandhiji's dialogues with Srimad 
Rajchandra titled; 'The Ascetic and The Mahatma'.

For more information please contact Judy Buchanan:
T: 6125 2700; E: 
<mailto:administration.hrc at anu.edu.au>administration.hrc at anu.edu.au; 
W: http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc

All Welcome
This lecture is free and open to the public. Parking vouchers are 
available upon request.

ANU COLLEGE OF ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES