Amartya Sen will be speaking on what Bengal”s history tells us about living with multiple identities.
Not a free lecture i”m afraid - £10 at the British Museum today at 6:30 p.m.
“Bengal has arguably the longest history of engagement between East and West, stretching back over several centuries of settlement, with Calcutta once the capital city of the British in India. For Bengalis, the British were just one chapter in a long history of cultural exchange and accommodation. That history has seen a cultural heritage shared across faiths (in particular, Hinduism and Islam) and then split, in the twentieth century, across two nations: India and Bangladesh. How does this story of multiple identities - of faith, nation, culture - shed light on the challenges of globalisation in the twenty-first century as many Bengalis migrate across the sub-continent and across the globe? How do those diaspora identities, whether in Tower Hamlets or Delhi, refashion their past and what insights can history can offer for the increasing primacy of religious identity?“
Part of the Voices of Bengal season at the British Museum
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