The World Humanities Report (WHR), coordinated by the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI) and the International Council of Philosophy and the Human Sciences (CIPSH), in collaboration with UNESCO, has now been released. Professor Bishnu Mohapatra, Director, Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of Politics, SIAS, Krea University is the World Humanities Report (WHR) regional team leader for India and South Asia.
The World Humanities Report (WHR) presents diverse ways in which the humanities enable us to understand social realities and human entanglements in different regions of the world. In collaboration with UNESCO, the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI) and the International Council of Philosophy and the Human Sciences (CIPSH) coordinate the making of this report. Eight core research groups organised regionally (Africa, the Americas, the Arab Region, Australia, Europe, Mainland China, Russia, and India /South Asia) contribute to the fashioning of this report.
On an invitation by CHCI, Professor Bishnu Mohapatra anchored the India /South Asia report. With the help of thirteen critical essays and twelve short video conversations, the India/South Asia report depicts the humanities’ active presence in plural locations, diverse forms, and multiple tongues. Several people were involved in the making of this report, including twenty-nine scholars/researchers drawn from universities, research institutions, and civil society organisations connected to vast swathes of academic disciplines such as history, literary studies, social anthropology, social theory, aesthetics and performance studies, feminist studies, philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics, and musicology.
The report is by no means exhaustive. Its central objective is gestural, which points out how the humanities, despite resource and status-deficits, have enabled critical interrogation of social practices in India and South Asia.
Read the Report here.