SynTalk

Do you live with animals? Are your summers busy? Could a 1000 metres apart be several hours apart in the hills? How does that define culture? Could there be multiple places in one hill? Do you have a simple dream of having a kitchen with a granite sink? Are hill people traditionally more cohesive? What do hills do to States? How do/did sovereign Godlings rule their territories in the mountains? Have these Godlings (& their people) also been at war? What brought them together? Where did the clergy come from? Where did Raghunathji come to Kullu from? Did Shaivism and Vaishnavism have differing impacts on the Himalayan polity? Do change and continuity exist in tandem? How do the great traditions and the little traditions interact? Did the first British maps change us? Are the Himalayas the spine of the world? Did Radhanath Sikdar measure the Mount Everest? Did Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji connive with the French and the Russians to fight the British? When/why did the British give up on Tibet? Why make hill stations? Do shepherds have ‘places’ of worship? Why do sacred groves exist? Why do the hills evoke a spiritual response in us? Can hills and rivers vanish? &, is everything already lost? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from history & South Asia Studies (Prof. Sudipta Sen, UC Davis, Davis), and history & anthropology (Prof. Mahesh Sharma, Panjab University, Chandigarh). Listen in...