"India/Europe: Strategies for Reciprocal Knowledge" A conference organised by The International Transcultura Institute and The Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels Friday 24th November 2006, 9:30 – 17:15

In the framework of the India Festival, this extraordinary session of Transcultura offers an opportunity to reflect on India's position in the world and to foster a dialogue between cultures without itself taking sides.

India stands for a rich and unique cultural heritage, as well as for a multiplicity of languages, cultures and religions. Will globalisation bring about a fertile exchange between Europe and India? The debate has already been launched during the last Transcultura conference "Reciprocal knowledge - Cultures of knowledge", which took place in several Indian cities (Goa, Pondicherry and Delhi) in October 2005. This exchange focused on the redefinition of the cultural domination of the West in the face of new emerging economic powers such as India and China. Transcultura now continues this dialogue in Europe.

In order to better understand the relationship between Europe and India, we first have to understand the key concepts that link Europe to India and vice-versa. The purpose of this conference is to define the strategies for reciprocal knowledge between Europe and India, as well as their role in the making of a harmonious world order.

The purpose of this exchange is to gain reciprocal knowledge about cultures, whether one's own or another's, through simultaneously presenting a familiar culture to an observer's gaze while participating as an observer of other, possibly less-familiar cultures. This mutual observation fosters cultural comprehension and opens up multi-layered avenues of access to the cultures engaging in this type of an exchange, thus sidestepping the usual, and repetitive, re-assessment of Western cultural domination.

As part of the India Festival, some thirty researchers from all round the world are getting together around the table in front of a select audience. Together, they will look at the diversity of expressions and the different models of reciprocal knowledge in order to propose an alternative to the "clash of civilisations". This exchange has as its aim the recognition of the processes of identity construction that are unique to each culture and the redefinition of our involvement as citizens in this regard.

The conference will take the shape of a debate gathered round three panels: India in the middle, Europe on one side and the other geographical and cultural areas (Asia, Africa and the Middle East) on the other side. Three key concepts, as well as three thematic clusters within which they will be discussed, have been identified. The key concepts are reciprocal knowledge, order and disorder, harmony in a globalising world. The thematic clusters are broadly around Culture and Language, History and Society and the Political Economy of relations between nations.

The researchers will start by exploring the words and concepts linked to reciprocal knowledge. For instance: which are the models of cultural representation used in Europe and in India? How does Europe 'dream' about India? How does India ‘dream’ about Europe? Then, they will consider the key concepts of reciprocal knowledge in the areas of aesthetics, ethics, social sciences and political philosophy. Finally, they will reassess existing political models and scenarios of the new world order, in particular in the context of the emerging globalised world.