Warning: Parameter 1 to serendipity_replaceSmartyVars() expected to be a reference, value given in /home/blogknowledgemus/public_html/bundled-libs/Smarty/libs/Smarty_Compiler.class.php on line 258

Continue reading "Kumbh Mela 2013 - Tours Organised by Knowledge Must"

Warning: Parameter 1 to serendipity_replaceSmartyVars() expected to be a reference, value given in /home/blogknowledgemus/public_html/bundled-libs/Smarty/libs/Smarty_Compiler.class.php on line 258

Continue reading "101 Things to Do While in Delhi"

Warning: Parameter 1 to serendipity_replaceSmartyVars() expected to be a reference, value given in /home/blogknowledgemus/public_html/bundled-libs/Smarty/libs/Smarty_Compiler.class.php on line 258

Continue reading "Delhi Walla: An Interview with Mayank Austen Soofi"

Warning: Parameter 1 to serendipity_replaceSmartyVars() expected to be a reference, value given in /home/blogknowledgemus/public_html/bundled-libs/Smarty/libs/Smarty_Compiler.class.php on line 258

Continue reading "Shahpur Jat - Knowledge Must's New Home in Delhi "

As a result of stronger ties between Germany and India, cultural relations between the two countries have found new impetus drawn from a longer tradition of German-Indo cultural exchange. Foreign cultural policy experiences multiple incentives and support on both sides, which makes it useful to establish sustainable structures of cultural dialogue. However, a number of factors could be listed to shed light on the still asymmetrical nature that marks cultural relations between India and Germany. Among them are: different conceptions of foreign cultural policy, different stages of the respective art industry and cultural infrastructure, a historically determined imbalance of financial and infrastructural resources and the sheer ignorance in the way both countries have perceived the other.

Continue reading "Tradition and Departure - Cultural Relations between India and Germany"

This is not an average travel narrative, replete with the wonders of a world that is truly wondrous: a jazzy world that, yet, has a large, welcoming heart. This is, perhaps, not an image run-of-the-mill Hollywood WW2/spy-flicks generate, immersed, as they seem to be, in anachronistic assumptions and the resultant antipathies. But, it is clear to this writer, Germany and Berlin define the new Gross European Cool, framed in terms of “Multi-Kulti” (multiculturalism, in colloquial German) and a Kalkbrennerian Zeitgeist.

Continue reading "Under a Northern Sky: Feeling “ich bin ein Berliner”"

The Urs celebrations of the great Muslim Sufi saint Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti at Ajmer are famous all over the world - not only among Sufis or other Muslims. Sufism (also referred to as tasawwuf) is the inner, mystical dimension of Islam, which focuses on direct knowledge of God and the experience of mystical union or direct communication with ultimate reality. One can hardly overemphasise the importance of Sufi Islam as the key channel for Hindu-Muslim interaction in South Asia throughout the centuries, which resulted in an extremely fruitful cross-fertilisation of ideas, thoughts, sciences, and arts – and there is no place in South Asia where this is more evident than in Rajasthan’s Ajmer and even more so during the Urs festivities.

Continue reading "Urs at Ajmer: Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti Rules"