The Nehru Centre, London is a cultural centre located at the South Audley Street, London. Its goal is to promote cultural exchange between India and the United Kingdom. It is named after Jawaharlal Nehru.
The Nehru Centre was founded in 1992. Since its inception it has striven to facilitate and deepen cultural dialogue between India and UK by encouraging visits of prominent Indian artists to UK and prominent artists from UK to India.
The Nehru Centre is headed by a director, who is also a ranking diplomat at the High Commission of India, London. Many illustrious Indians have headed the Nehru Centre as directors. Gopalkrishna Gandhi was its first director. [1] Indian playwright Girish Karnad, writer-diplomat Pavan Varma once headed the Nehru Centre, London as directors. [2] Poet-diplomat Abhay K has d been appointed as the director of the Nehru Centre. [3] From October 2019, bestselling award-winning author, Amish Tripathi, has taken over as Director. Amish has been ranked among the top 100 celebrities in India by Forbes magazine consistently, and has also been ranked among the most powerful Indians by India Today magazine in 2019. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
It is regarded as a flagship cultural centre of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) abroad. [10]
Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat, author and statesman who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was second only to Mahatma Gandhi in leading the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Upon India's independence from Britain in 1947, he served as the country's first prime minister for 16 years. Nehru championed parliamentary democracy, secularism, science and technology during the 1950s, powerfully influencing India's arc as a modern nation. In international affairs, he is well-known as one of the Founders of the Non-aligned Movement and, concomitantly, for steering India clear of the two blocs of the Cold War. A coveted author, the books he wrote in prison, such as Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), An Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946), have been read and deliberated upon around the world.
Devdas Mohandas Gandhi was the fourth and youngest son of Mahatma Gandhi. He was born in the Colony of Natal and came to India with his parents as a grown man. He became active in his father's movement, spending many terms in jail. He also became a prominent journalist, serving as editor of Hindustan Times. He was also the first pracharak of the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha (DBHPS), established by Mohandas Gandhi in Tamil Nadu in 1918. The purpose of the Sabha was to propagate Hindi in southern India.
Girish Karnad was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi films. His rise as a playwright in the 1960s marked the coming of age of modern Indian playwriting in Kannada, just as Badal Sarkar did in Bengali, Vijay Tendulkar in Marathi, and Mohan Rakesh in Hindi. He was a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour conferred in India.
Gopalkrishna Devadas Gandhi is a former administrator and diplomat who served as the 22nd Governor of West Bengal serving from 2004 to 2009. He is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). As a former IAS officer he served as Secretary to the President of India and as High Commissioner to South Africa and Sri Lanka, among other administrative and diplomatic posts. He was the United Progressive Alliance nominee for Vice President of India 2017 elections and lost with 244 votes against NDA candidate Venkaiah Naidu, who got 516 votes.
Chitrapur Saraswats are a small Konkani-speaking community of Hindu Brahmins in India. They are traditionally found along the Kanara coast and call themselves Bhanaps in the Konkani language.
Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith is a public university located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. Established in 10 February 1921 as Kashi Vidyapith and later renamed, it is administered under the state legislature of the government of Uttar Pradesh. It got University status in 1974 as Deemed to be University and State University status in 2009 by The Uttar Pradesh State Universities (Amendment) Act, 2008. The university has more than 400+ affiliated colleges spread over six districts. It is one of the largest state universities in Uttar Pradesh, with hundreds of thousands of students, both rural and urban. It offers a range of professional and academic courses in arts, science, commerce, agriculture science, law, computing and management.
Pupul Jayakar was an Indian cultural activist and writer, best known for her work on the revival of traditional and village arts, handlooms, and handicrafts in post-independence India. According to The New York Times, she was known as "India's 'czarina of culture'", and founded arts festivals that promoted Indian arts in France, Japan, and the United States. She was a friend and biographer to both the Nehru-Gandhi family and J Krishnamurti. Jayakar had a close relationship with three prime ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi, and she was a close friend of Indira Gandhi. She served as cultural adviser to the latter two, confirming her preeminence in cultural matters.
Divyanka Tripathi Dahiya is an Indian television actress. She is known for playing the double roles of Vidya Pratapsingh and Divya Shukla in Zee TV's Banoo Main Teri Dulhann and Dr. Ishita Bhalla in Star Plus's Yeh Hai Mohabbatein. In 2017, participated in the dance reality show Nach Baliye 8 and emerged as the winner. In 2021, she participated at Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi 11 as a contestant where she emerged as the runner-up.
Arvind Gaur is an Indian theatre director, actor trainer, social activist, street theatre worker and story teller. He is known for socially and politically relevant plays in India. Gaur's plays are contemporary and thought-provoking, connecting intimate personal spheres of existence to larger social political issues. His work deals with Internet censorship, communalism, caste issues, feudalism, domestic violence, crimes of state, politics of power, violence, injustice, social discrimination, marginalisation, and racism. Arvind is the founder of Asmita, which is a theatre group in Delhi.
The Nehru–Gandhi family is an Indian political family that has occupied a prominent place in the politics of India. The involvement of the family has traditionally revolved around the Indian National Congress, as various members have traditionally led the party. Three members of the family—Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi—have served as the prime minister of India, while several others have been members of parliament (MP).
The Prince is a 1996 Indian Malayalam-language gangster film scripted and directed by Suresh Krissna, starring Mohanlal and Prema. Dialogues were written by T. A. Razzaq. The film marked the accomplished Tamil director, Krishna's debut in Malayalam cinema and Prakash Raj. The music was scored by Deva. The film was dubbed and released in Tamil as Mahaan.
Amish Tripathi is an author, former diplomat and broadcaster from India. He is among the fastest-selling authors in Indian publishing history, known best for The Shiva Trilogy and Ram Chandra Series.
Pushpesh Pant is an Indian academic, food critic and historian. He retired as a Professor of International relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. He is one of India's leading experts on International Relations as well as Indian cuisine, and as a columnist has written for a number of major publications like Forbes, Open, Outlook, Times of India and The Tribune.
Pavan K. Varma is an Indian diplomat, politician, and author who served as an ambassador to Bhutan and Cyprus.
The Gandhi family is the family of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi; Mahatma meaning "high souled" or "venerable" in Sanskrit; the particular term 'Mahatma' was accorded Mohandas Gandhi for the first time while he was still in South Africa, and not commonly heard as titular for any other civil figure even of similarly rarefied stature or living or posthumous presence.
Raghu Karnad is an Indian journalist and writer, and a recipient of the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a 2022-'23 fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. His book, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for a writer in English in 2016, and shortlisted for the Hessell-Tiltman Prize in the same year. His articles and essays have won international awards including the Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize in 2008, the Press Institute of India National Award for Reporting on the Victims of Armed Conflict in 2008, and a prize from the inaugural Financial Times-Bodley Head Essay Competition in 2012.
Tridip Suhrud is an Indian writer, political scientist, cultural historian and translator from Gujarat, India.
Subur Parthasarathy, born Subur Mugaseth, was an Indian educator and legislator. She was the first principal at Ethiraj College for Women, and served in the upper house of the Indian Parliament from 1960 to 1966.
The Kalinga Literary Festival, also known as KLF, is an International literary festival which takes place annually in the Indian city Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Rashmi Ranjan Parida is the founder director of the festival. The festival confers KLF Book Awards and three literary awards, which are Kalinga Literary Award, Kalinga International Literary Award, Kalinga Karubaki Award, annually to the noted Indian writers.