For the first time, ICCR will celebrate World Culture Day on Monday with a memorial lecture to be delivered by Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj.
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), which is entrusted to work for cultivating India’s “soft power diplomacy”, has taken several new initiatives to explore and spread the cultural message of India with several countries across the globe.
The ICCR has around 78 Chairs and 37 Cultural Centres across the globe in countries like Egypt, Germany, Mauritius, Indonesia, Russia, Sri Lanka, China, Mexico, Hungary, and South Korea, among other nations. They have been organising several programmes of classical dance, music, yoga and other art forms across several countries from time to time to spread the cultural knowledge of India across the globe.
The organisation also hosts several dance troupes, artistes, and even educationists from several parts of the world as part of its exchange programme throughout the year. For the first time, ICCR will celebrate World Culture Day on Monday with a memorial lecture to be delivered by Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj on “Soft Power Diplomacy: Strength of India”.
The ICCR will also be hosting the Africa Festival from 24-25 May to showcase the cultural richness of Africa in India. The festival will host nine African countries participating in the festival. Countries like Egypt will be sending their folk dance troupe to showcase the folk dance of their country, while an Ethiopian National Theatre Traditional band will be playing at the event. A Bujora dance troupe from Tanzania will also be performing. A Balembo Musical troupe from Sudan would also be performing during the two-day festival that will be held in the national capital.
Dr Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, president of ICCR, said, “India enjoys popular goodwill the world over. It is felt that this needs to be further consolidated by adopting a more focused approach for spreading the understanding about Indian culture, Indian civilisation, and the people of India. In order to achieve this and propagate innovations taking place in the academic, art and cultural sphere in India, ICCR has undertaken several new initiatives.”
“To achieve the greater objective of ICCR, more effective articulation of the idea of India and the values inherent to it is needed and it can be done in two ways: firstly, through greater engagement with global academic fraternity and opinion makers, and secondly, through showcasing all facets of India’s rich cultural life and its manifestations through various kinds of art forms, including the folk arts.” Dr Sahasrabuddhe added.
The council is engaging with universities in various countries that have departments like Sanskrit, Hindi, Indology and education in yoga. This year, the council will be organising a two-day seminar in New York on International Yoga Day to spread comprehensive understanding of yoga through a philosophical, spiritual and wellness approach. Apart from this, the ICCR also has plans to celebrate the 150 years of the speech that was delivered by Swami Vivekananda at Chicago.
The ICCR has been engaging with several countries every year and according to Riva Ganguly Das, Director General of ICCR, “ICCR is such an organisation where everyday some or the other programme keeps going on somewhere or the other in the world.” The council hosted 53 international cultural groups in India to participate in various festivals organised by the council. While a festival called, “Confluence – Festival of India in Australia” was organised at Sydney Opera House in Sydney, in September 2016, a Mini India Festival was also organised in Iran from 20-25 May last year.
The ICCR also held nine major conferences in India and abroad, including countries like China, Mongolia and in cities like New Delhi and Kolkata. The ICCR had also sponsored 166 groups to 88 countries from 19 Indian states to participate in various prestigious international festivals and events.