THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF MUMBAI 
The Literary Club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai

introduces Aditya Chatterjee 
who will deliver excerpts from his new book “The Evolution of Our Gods”
Tuesday 18th March 2025 at 5.00 p.m.

 
The Literary Club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai is delighted to introduce Aditya Chatterjee, who will deliver excerpts from his new book “The Evolution of Our Gods” on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, at 5.00 p.m. at the Society’s Durbar Hall. The event will start by unveiling the book to members of the Society and other visitors.
 
Mr Chatterjee’s presentation, through images of extant idols of deities, will focus on how different Brahminical Hindu religious ideas emerged centuries ago and continued to evolve till these reached their current state. Mr Chatterjee will also share how the basic understanding, religious beliefs, and iconography regarding Brahminical Hindu Gods and Goddesses have been influenced by philosophies that are both indigenous and of foreign origin. 
 
In the prologue of The Evolution of Our Gods, the author recounts how the shared history of this subcontinent has always fascinated him. He is overwhelmed and riveted by how this land has witnessed myriad cross-currents of cultural influence over many millennia, and how these continuous flows of influence have repeatedly moulded, re-shaped and even completely altered belief systems.
 
Aditya Chatterjee is a communications specialist with a cumulative work experience of over 30 years. He started his career as a business journalist, working for important media houses such as The Financial Express, Business Standard, and The Times of India. He currently serves as Vice-President – Content at Adfactors PR, the country’s largest PR consultancy. He is a former senior journalist with The Times of India.
 
There will be a Q & A session at the end.
 
Tea will be served at 4.30 p.m. 

-  Prof. Mangala Sirdeshpande, Hon. Secretary Asiatic Society of Mumbai 
- Meenal Kshirsagar, Vice President of the Society &  Chairperson - ASM LitClub

THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF MUMBAI
The Mumbai Research Centre
Presents Bombay Booked - 11: MUSES OVER MUMBAI
Murzban F. Shroff will be in conversation with Sidharth Bhatia
Friday, 7th March 2025 at 5.00 p.m.

The Mumbai Research Centre of The Asiatic Society of Mumbai presents Bombay Booked - 11: MUSES OVER MUMBAI, a new story collection from Commonwealth Prize-shortlisted author and seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Murzban F. Shroff. He will be in conversation with Sidharth Bhatia, Founder Editor of The Wire.

Friday, 7th March 2025 from 5 p.m. at the Durbar Hall, The Asiatic Society of Mumbai. Please join us for Tea at 4:30 p.m.

Muses Over Mumbai is a collection of 17 stories addressing issues such as the veg-non-veg divide, terrorism, caste and communal prejudice, class snobbery, corporate greed, and environmental destruction. Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie praises these stories for highlighting Mumbai's spirit against its darker aspects.

Murzban F. Shroff, a Mumbai-based writer, has published fiction in over 75 literary journals in the U.S. and UK. He has received multiple awards and nominations, including the Bacopa Review Fiction Award and seven Pushcart Prize nominations. His works include "Breathless in Bombay" and "Waiting for Jonathan Koshy." Shroff's India collection of stories, "Third Eye Rising," was listed among Esquire's Best Books of 2021. He is a frequent speaker at international literary festivals and universities.

- Prof. Mangala Sirdeshpande, Hon. Secretary Asiatic Society of Mumbai
- Dr. Shehernaz Nalwalla, Vice President of the Society & Chairperson – MRC

THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF MUMBAI
The Literary Club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai
Book Launch and Discussion Programme
presents the book “The Other Mohan in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire”
by author Amrita Shah
Wednesday, 5th March 2025 at 5.00 p.m.

The Literary Club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai takes pleasure in inviting you to the presentation of the book “The Other Mohan in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire” by the author Amrita Shah on Wednesday, 5th March 2025 at 5.00 p.m. in the Durbar Hall of the Society.

Part travelogue, part memoir, part family history and imbued with rigorous scholarship, “The Other Mohan in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire,” published by Harper Collins, is an original path breaking work, where Amrita Shah takes the reader into an era of unprecedented global mobility. Traders and professionals who followed indentured workers to Mauritius and South Africa were called ‘passenger’ Indians. A celebrated Indian passenger, Mohandas Gandhi went to Natal in 1893. A decade later, an undistinguished Indian passenger, the author’s great grandfather Mohanlal Killavala arrived in Natal. As a child growing up in India, the author was fascinated by the mystery surrounding her ancestor’s journey. Why had he gone there? What was the name of the woman he met along the way, who gave birth to her grandmother? And did he know Gandhi? There were no clues at home, no reminiscences, no letters, documents, memorabilia, not even a photograph. She embarked on a search for her wandering forefather with limited expectations but doors opened serendipitously and a paper trail emerged, strewn in archives across South Africa, Mauritius, the UK and India, providing answers but also revealing the immense value of researching a small man’s history.

Amrita Shah is a writer, journalist and independent scholar, she has been a member of our Society over many years. Her wonderfully engaging book sets on record for the first time a sweeping social and business history of the Indian diaspora in the Indian Ocean. The author relates an intensely personal story intertwined with the history of the British Empire.
Please join us for this talk which promises to be both scholarly and fascinating.

Tea will be served at 4.30 pm

- Prof. Mangala Sirdeshpande, Hon. Secretary Asiatic Society of Mumbai
- Meenal Kshirsagar, Vice President of the Society & Chairperson - ASM LitClub

THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF MUMBAI
The Literary Club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai
Book Launch and Discussion Programme
Marathi Book - पेरिप्लस ऑफ हिंदुस्थान (हिंदुस्थानची प्रदक्षिणा)
Tuesday 25th February 2025 at 4.30 p.m.

The Literary Club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai takes pleasure in inviting you to a book launch and discussion programme on a book in Marathi ‘पेरिप्लस ऑफ हिन्दुस्थान (हिन्दुस्थानची प्रदक्षिणा)’ by Sunanda Bhosekar, a Life Member of our Society on Tuesday 25th February 2025 at 4.30 p.m. in the Durbar Hall of the Society.

– The book, “The Periplus. of Hindustan,” is an expansive review of the perception of India by some foreign travellers like Megasthenes, Ibn Batuta, Alberuni, Ralph Fitch, Thomas Roe, to name just a few. A well-researched book and one of its kind, it gives a vivid picture of the history, geography, civilization, culture, customs and traditions in India for almost 2000 years from the period from B.C. 302 to C.E. 1681.

The book is an outcome of a column written by Sunanda Bhosekar in the Marathi daily Praha in the year 2011. Further research was undertaken by the author from 2018-2019, this has been a continuous process of in -depth study since then.

Sunanda Bhosekar has done her Master’s Degree in Political Science and History from the University of Mumbai. She has a keen interest in travel, archaeology, history, various cultures and political thought. Sunanda pursued her career in the field of Finance at the Reserve Bank of India from 1980 to 2018. A poet by heart, she has to her credit three poetry collections – 'अनोळखी प्रदेशात,' 'रे गोपाळा' and 'गळ्यावरचा निळा डाग.' She has contributed many articles and columns in various Marathi newspapers and periodicals. Her career as a writer has been growing continuously while she was in the RBI but now it has taken centre stage since she is aspiring to become both an intellectual writer and a sensitive poet.

The programme will be presided over by Shri Kumar Ketkar, writer, senior journalist and a member of the Rajya Sabha till recently.

- Prof. Mangala Sirdeshpande , Hon. Secretary Asiatic Society of Mumbai
- Meenal Kshirsagar, Vice President of the Society & Chairperson - ASM LitClub

THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF MUMBAI

The Literary Club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai
Discussion around the autobiographical book
“Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” by Salman Rushdie
Monday 20th January at 5 p.m.

The Literary Club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai takes pleasure in inviting you and your friends to a discussion around the autobiographical book “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” published (April 2024) by Salman Rushdie on Monday 20th January 2025, at 5.00 p.m. in the Durbar Hall of the Society.

All are invited to join us for this discussion.

- Prof. Mangala Sirdeshpande, Hon. Secretary, Asiatic Society of Mumbai
- Meenal Kshirsagar, Vice President of the Society & Chairperson - ASM LitClub

Dear friends,

Dr Aroon Tikekar Centre for Advanced Studies takes pleasure in inviting you and your friends to the annual programme of the Centre to award the Tikekar Memorial Fellowship and join us to listen to the chief guest and keynote speaker Dr. Prachi Deshpande.

The programme will be held on Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 5:30 PM in the Durbar Hall of The Asiatic Society of Mumbai.

Dr. Prachi Deshpande, is a historian and, Professor in History at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata. She is a recipient of prestigious awards and recognitions, including the Infosys Prize 2020, an annual award by Infosys Science Foundation. Her book ‘Creative Past’ was published in Y2007 and ‘Scripts of Power: Writing, Language, Practices, and Cultural History in Western India’ was published in Y2023.

Title of her Talk: “’Script’ing the History of Language.”
 

ABSTRACT: Usually, we think of language history in two ways: a chronological story of its literature from the earliest text to the present, or the way it evolved within a language family over centuries. Scripts are usually seen as technical instruments for writing language, or as symbols of identity. Can a focus on the relationship between scripts, language, and writing, give us insights into how, where, and by whom a language was used, and how people thought about language in different ways? In this talk she will focus on the cursive Modi script, which was used to write business documents in Marathi for several centuries, to chart a history of Marathi usage and users over the last few hundred years. Through the example of Modi and Marathi, she will talk about changing attitudes and practices of language in Maharashtra and beyond, such as literacy and orality, documentation and archiving, multilinguality, and linguistic identity. 

In keeping with the tradition of the annual programme of the Centre, the seventh Tikekar Memorial Fellow 2025, Mr. Aslam Saiyad, co-founder of Hallu Hallu, documentary photographer and environmentalist, will present a synopsis of his work done. It will be followed by Mr. Elloit Cardozo briefly introducing the work he proposes to do as a Fellow 2026.

You are requested to join us for tea at 5 PM at the venue.  

- Mr. Vilas Dhavale, Chairperson, Dr. Aroon Tikekar Centre for Advanced Studies, ASM
- Prof. Mangala Sirdeshpande, Hon. Secretary, The Asiatic Society of Mumbai