This presentation will examine the role of music festival organisers as “postcolonial custodians” fostering communal amity through classical music in newly created India and Pakistan. Focused on musical life in the region of Punjab that saw the greatest volume of migration and cataclysm during the violent upheaval of Partition in 1947, I offer a new perspective on regional cultural activity during the 1950s and 1960s in South Asia.

Freedom of speech and expression is a critical indicator of the health of any society and guarantee of such freedom is integral to democracy. Yet, does a legal or constitutional guarantee necessarily translate into lived experience? One of the ways to measure freedoms is to examine the treatment meted by the State to literary and cultural dissent and resistance. In this session, we examine the status of free speech and expression in Mughal India by focussing on the treatment of dissenting and irreverent poets.

Democracy is one of the founding values of the European Union (EU) and a guiding principle in its external relations. In the course of the Eastern enlargement, the Union emerged as one of the major democracy promoters. However, the assaults on democratic institutions in some EU member states have undermined the assumption about the positive impact of EU membership on democratic consolidation and sparked a lively discussion whether the Union can safeguard democracy.