New Delhi: The India Arab Cultural Centre (IACC) at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) organized a special lecture titled “Understanding Culture” alongside a felicitation program in the Centre’s Conference Hall. The event brought together academics, faculty members, research scholars, and students for an afternoon of intellectual engagement.
Prof. A. K. Ramakrishnan, former Chairperson of the Centre for West Asian Studies at JNU, delivered the keynote lecture. He explained that understanding culture provides a framework for examining societies critically and comparatively. It encourages exploration of how historical experiences, social institutions, beliefs, and artistic expressions shape human behavior and collective identity.
Prof. Ramakrishnan drew attention to the long history of India-Arab interaction as evidence of culture’s role as a connecting force between societies. He noted that commercial contacts across the Indian Ocean were accompanied by exchanges involving language, literature, religion, architecture, science, education, food, and artistic traditions.
The event also featured Prof. M. H. Ilias of MG University, Kerala, and former Director of IACC at JMI, who interacted with students on the subject of visual culture, with particular focus on Islamic society. He examined how images, objects, spaces, symbols, and visual practices shape the way people perceive and understand society. Modern and contemporary societies have expanded the meaning of visual culture through photography, cinema, television, graphic design, architecture, advertising, social media, and digital art, he said. Contemporary artists, he added, negotiate questions of identity, modernity, heritage, migration, gender, globalization, conflict, and cultural memory.
Dr. Md. Aftab Ahmad, Director of the Centre, felicitated Prof. Ilias for his academic contributions to IACC during his tenure at Jamia. Dr. Abdulla NC moderated the proceedings.
Dr. Ahsan Raza delivered the vote of thanks, expressing gratitude to the speakers and guests. He also acknowledged the presence of faculty members from various centres and departments, along with research scholars and students.
