Indian National Trust for Art and
Cultural Heritage (INTACH)
cordially invites you for
a talk on
Sittannavasal Paintings
..a proposal for
preserving the site
By
Prof S. Swaminathan
On Thursday, March 13th,
at 5.30 PM
At
‘SPACES’
1, Eliots Beach Road,
Besant Nagar, Chennai-600 090
----
About the Speaker:
Professor S.Swaminathan, taught
mechanical engineering at IIT-Delhi for more than three decades, and attempted
a number of experiments in teaching. With his view that the thrust of the
science and technology establishment should be towards helping the ‘poorest of
the poor’, his R & D activities were primarily in this direction. He
believes that technology must be human-centered and that there exists a
cultural route to development. Realising that Indian youth have an inadequate
understanding of our heritage, and consequently lack a sense of identity,
Swaminathan attempted acquainting the students with various aspects of culture,
Indian music, Sanskrit, ancient Tamil literature, Tamil prosody, development of
scripts, Gandhian philosophy, etc.
After retirement, Swaminathan
continues to pursue his passion of creating interest and spreading awareness
about our art, culture and heritage, especially among the youth. His vast
canvas of interest and knowledge encompass the paintings of Ajanta, the Pallava
art at Mamallapuram, story of writing, oral tradition of Sanskrit, temple arts
and the heritage of Pudukkottai. He has also written a coffee-table book
documenting the Mamallapuram monuments.
Dear to his heart is the compilation
of a cultural atlas of Tamilnadu. This is an attempt to record the cultural and
social history of every village in this vast country, for which he has designed
suitable procedures and formats. He is among the founders of Tamil Heritage
Trust, which is an attempt to raise an army of ‘foot soldiers of heritage’.
He lives in Chennai and his id is sswami99@gmail.com
About the Topic:
Swaminathan helped setting up a
centre for arts and culture, called Sudharsanam in Pudukkottai, his native
place, with the twin-aim of documenting the heritage of the district and
offering an opportunity to the youth to appreciate their culture. During this
period he has proposed a method of preserving the priceless paintings in the
Jaina cave at Sittannavasal, by setting up a heritage complex incorporating a
recreated cave shrine.
The talk is about the monuments of
Sittannavasal and his decade-old proposal for preserving the paintings of
Sittannavasal.