Introduction
The Indian Liberals Project (www.indianliberals.in) is managed by the Centre for Civil Society, New Delhi and supported by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, South Asia. Launched in 2015, indianliberals.in remains India’s only online digital portal offering an exhaustive and comprehensive archive of resources on the liberal thought traditions in India. The digital archive continues to take India’s liberal histories to a growing audience of scholars, researchers and keen readers.Along with digitized original and rare collections from India’s more and lesser known liberal giants, the archive also holds audio-visual content.
We continue to strive to curate and digitize content in multiple languages, with the archive already holding translated texts from Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali. The digital archive today holds nearly 1 lakh digitized pages.
The Indian Liberals Annual Lecture
The Indian Liberals Annual Lecture was started in November 2021 to have the ideals of classical liberalism be highlighted by contemporary voices in India. Delivered by an eminent liberal philosopher, historian, thinker, or economist, the objective of the Indian Liberals Lecture is to educate and disseminate liberal understandings of India’s past as well as its implications on the advancement of liberalism today. The objective is to highlight the importance of liberal values such as freedom of expression, free enterprise, rule of law, constitutionalism, participatory democracy, religious freedom and all other human liberties. The Lecture is part of our efforts to increase interest in the necessity of liberal thought in maintaining India’s vibrant democratic ethos.
The first Indian Liberals annual lecture was delivered on the 27th of November 2021 by Ms Sagarika Ghosh, noted author and journalist, who spoke on The Case for Individual Liberty. The second Indian Liberals annual lecture was delivered on the 27th of November 2022 by Dr Jayaprakash Narayan, ex-IAS (Andhra Cadre), politician, and activist on The Scope for Political Liberalism in India.
In 2023, Mr Gurcharan Das, noted author, commentator, and public intellectual would deliver the Indian Liberals Annual Lecture 2023 on "The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal".
Duration
The Indian Liberals Lecture is scheduled to be for 60 minutes which includes a tentative 45 minutes of the Speaker's key address followed by a 15 minute Q&A session with the audience.
Date & Time: 4th September (Monday), 2023, 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Venue: India International Centre, 40, Max Mueller Marg, Lodhi Gardens, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi, 110003
