Art/Culture

By IANS, New Delhi : Kannada, Telugu, Sanskrit and Tamil are the four classical languages of India, Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni informed the Rajya Sabha Tuesday. Soni said the government has not taken any view in classifying Malayalam as another classical language as they have not received any representation from the Kerala government. She said Kannada and Telugu were notified as classical languages Oct 31 after the proposal was cleared by a committee formed by the culture ministry.

By IANS Kolkata : Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen, who has been staying under tight security in New Delhi after she was bundled out of Kolkata following riots over her stay in India, Monday said she would die as a writer unless she could return to the city. "I am not a rightist. I am rather a leftist and I always have believed in equality of all - men, women, poor and rich. I miss Kolkata and I would die as a writer if I am not allowed to stay there," Nasreen told the Bengali news channel Choubish Ghanta (24-hour) over phone from New Delhi.

By IANS, London : Delhi is now firmly on the world art map with auctioneer Sotheby's deciding to provoke buyer interest in India's capital for its future London auctions. A step in this direction is Sotheby's putting up a pre-auction show of select works of famous artist and sculptor Damien Hirst at Delhi's Oberoi Hotel next Thursday. Next month's London auction of his works is already making waves after Hirst decided to offer 223 new works directly to the public, bypassing the artist's usual dealer and gallery. The works are estimated to be worth more than £65 million.

By Xinhua, Ankara : Two ancient piers belonging to the first centry A.D. have been discovered by archaeologists in the ancient city of Aphrodisias in western Turkey, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported Thursday. The nearly 2,000 year-old piers were discovered by a team of archaeologists led by Roland Smith, a professor of the Oxford University, during their excavations in the ancient city located near Karacasu town in Aydin province.

New Delhi : Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said the country is deeply concerned at the "blatant violation" of right to freedom...

By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS, New Delhi : Thirty-three rare paintings, all classical 19th and 20th century Russian winter landscapes by leading artists, have stepped out of the Russian Museum at St.Petersburg for the first time in the archive's 115-year-old history for a show in the Indian capital. Coinciding with the visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, "Russian Winter" will be thrown open Friday at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture (RCSC).

By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS, New Delhi : Come Aug 22, and the sprawling exhibition hub in the heart of the Indian capital will resemble Basel, a small town in Switzerland which has been hosting the world's biggest art fair for the last 38 years. More than 200 stakeholders, including 34 galleries, in the art industry will come together at the "India Art Summit 2008" at the Pragati Maidan fairground to showcase 400 works of art and interact with a new segment of investors for three days.

By M. Rajaque Rahman The Maharashtra government's decision to tag students of traditional madrasas as 'out-of-school' has put madrasa reforms back on the national discourse....

By Vikas Datta, Gifted novelists have never been confined to a specific genre, or even to a form of literature - for they are adroit in weaving magic with words, using them in sentences of matchless prose or evoking their aesthetic and rhythmic aspects in verse. But somehow their poetic contribution is always overshadowed by their prose corpus. Sir Walter Scott, Hans Christian Andersen, Thomas Hardy, right down to Michael Ondaatje, Alice Walker, Russell Banks, John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, Erica Jong and their ilk are not exactly more famous as poets. But there was one who strode both spheres with aplomb - and Rudyard Kipling's art was recognised by conferment of the Nobel Prize for Literature - the first ever to an English writer.

By IANS, Dhaka : A book on Tajuddin Ahmed, who headed the government-in-exile in 1971, has revived memories of Bangladesh's freedom movement and raised questions whether the country has been able to determine its direction and political identity. Ahmed's colleague and eminent jurist Kamal Hossain has hailed him as one of the leading figures of that era who envisioned a democratic and secular Bangladesh and worked for it. Hossain said democratic and secular values demonstrated by leaders like Ahmed tremendously helped the constitution committee frame the 1972 constitution.

New Delhi : India's three former foreign secretaries will felicitate Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama by speaking on his work at an...

By IANS, New Delhi: Jamia Milia Islamia, one of India's oldest universities, is set to host the third edition of the Arab Film Festival from Monday.

By IANS New Delhi : It's a painting on wood of a traditional Rajasthani haveli, instantly recognisable by those familiar with the miniature school of Indian art. But there's a difference - a depiction of the world on top of the house.

By IANS, Singapore: The five winners of a short film contest that saw participation of over 100 young filmmakers from about 30 countries will be honoured here May 17.

By Arun Kumar

IANS

Washington : Writer-director Shonali Bose says her award-winning Indian film "Amu" brings to light what she calls the "suppressed history of genocide" after the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.