Indic Academy and Rashtram School of Public Leadership are pleased to bring to you a discussion on ‘Cultural Leadership – The Source Code For Indic Renaissance’. Sh. Hari Kiran, Founder, Indic Academy & NICE, will be joined by Raghava Krishna, Associate Dean – Academics, Rashtram and Dr Pankaj Saxena, Associate Professor, Rashtram as they discuss the compelling need for Cultural Leadership and present a vision for how it can be achieved. Join us on Monday, 4 January, 2021 at 6:30PM by registering below:
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Commenting on the launch, Hari Kiran, Founder – Indic Academy & NICE:
“After incubating and launching NICE (Network of Cultural Enterprises) (www.niceorg.in) for cultural entrepreneurship we are now pleased to partner with Rashtram to launch India’s first “Center for Cultural Leadership”.
From the experience and insights gained through our continuous focus on execution and rapid prototyping of ideas, we have developed an original approach to our purpose of building a global Indic renaissance, what we call as a “Six Dimensional” framework. This unique and robust strategy is now the foundation upon which all our actions are planned.
We are now seeking to imbibe this approach at an individual level to public intellectuals across the country and nurture them as “Six Dimensional Cultural Leaders”. Our hope is such cultural leaders would create extraordinary impact given the integral thinking they will be able to apply to their field work. We already have a city wise network of volunteers, which we hope to recast into a constituency wise regime.
Our collaboration with Rashtram is but a natural outcome given their focus on Public Leadership. In a short period of time, they have emerged as an institution to reckon with blending contemporary thought with ancient wisdom with consistent academic rigour in all their offerings. We share the same set of values and look forward to working with their highly committed team.
Raghava Krishna, Asoociate Dean – Rashtram reflected on the need for this Center:
“At Rashtram, we believe that it is time for public policy to be grounded in an Indic metaphysics. Indic knowledge systems synthesized with global paradigms hold the key to resolve the grand challenges of our times. Our mission therefore is to produce ‘Self-Aware’ and ‘Civilizationally Assured’ Public Leadership for India.
We are working on crafting the curriculum and pedagogy for transformative leadership development programs rooted in Indic systems of thought. Through our work, we hope to advance a new model of education in humanities and social sciences that can eventually provide an alternative for what goes as liberal arts education in India today.
Cultural Leadership is at the core of our mission and we are honored to partner with Indic Academy to build a ‘Center for Cultural Leadership’. The assertive vision of moving from protection and preservation to an actual promotion of Indic culture as an aspirational idea for the world requires a new breed of leaders who embody this in letter and spirit. Sri Hari Kiran’s framework of 6-dimensional leaders who straddle the complexities of a globalized world, while being rooted in the Indic ethos offers a model that we wish to take to the world. This partnership enables Rashtram to collaborate with best minds committed to herald an Indic renaissance and we will make it count.
Our next generation should be proud of their civilizational inheritance and approach the world with the ‘critical reserve’ that our rishis inspired us to cultivate – We dedicate the work of this center in the service of this purpose.”
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Full Summary:
“If an object in nature is beautified by the discrimination of man, it is Culture.” – D.V. Gundappa
In the Indian tradition, we see the idea of ‘purusharta sadhana’ as the vision for a full life. Desire, beauty, virtue, reason – Everything is accorded a relevant place but a premium is placed on elevating the consciousness of the individual. Our civilizational genius is in the embodiment and embedding of the deep cosmological truths into the very fabric of everyday life. The ‘great traditions’ were nourished by and in many cases emanated from the wisdom of the lived experiences. This spawned a dynamic, multi-sided culture, springing forth as a spontaneous expression of a people, immersed in every dimension of life.
The culture was self-organizing, self-evolving and self-correcting – A living entity that was in harmony with nature gave us the loftiest flights of human imagination and creative expression. The ‘flow’ state was achieved on a civilizational scale in this land, until it was interrupted – twice.
After the colonial rule where a conscious and systematic destruction of indigenous knowledge systems and practices took place, independent India needed a political intervention to help nurture and revive its culture and traditions. Sadly, no such efforts were made nor even the need to make such interventions was recognized, leading to a post – colonial India continuing to be colonized albeit in its thought.In recent times, while the political class continues its indifference, there has been a spurt of initiatives undertaken by various activists’ keen on revival of Indic civilizational thought. Almost all of them have focused on a specific domain based on their individual proclivity and passion.
While such specialized initiatives have begun to make a noticeable difference, there is an emergent need for general Hello activists who seek to work across domains and causes across the cultural landscape. Generalists who can act as ‘cultural designers’ by seamlessly fusing multiple contexts while keeping the strategic picture in mind can complement the specialists who are invariably focused on a particular discipline.
The Indic Academy-Rashtram ‘Center for Cultural Leadership’ is being established with a vision to pioneer and anchor this work on Cultural Leadership. We aim to produce original models of thought and embodied leadership action . The center would be a creative hub engaging in a multi and trans disciplinary study of culture, happiness, meaning and the role of leadership in securing these. The center would draw from various Indian and global philosophical streams, art and aesthetics, cultural anthropology, popular culture, media, psychology to define a new discipline of ‘Cultural Leadership’ in the Indian context.
Join us on 4 January 2021 at 6:30 PM as we discuss the compelling need for Cultural Leadership and our vision for how this center will work towards addressing this need.
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