India as a nation is blessed with a long and fascinating history of heritage, culture, and spirituality. The cultural markers of India right from religion, languages, occupation, food, music, dance, symbols, and so on have in them a deep history and tradition, some of them yet to be unraveled.
        
        The course was designed for students/Indian audience to have a brief insight into the aesthetic, cultural, and spiritual aspects of India, understanding the intricacies of “unity in diversity”, the multifarious customs followed in India both in the urban, rural and tribal contexts which would be quite revealing while weaving through the social web of India.
        
        Topics covered and the resource persons for the course were:
        
        Civilizational heritage of India : Mr. Ramesh Venkatraman
        Traditional art forms of India : Dr. Raghavendra Rao Kulkarni
        Traditional Indian vocations/occupations : Dr. Udaykumar
        India through its villages and tribes : Dr Shahida Ansari / Dr. M R Seetharam
        Conservation of Heritage sites: Your way or my way : Dr. Nizamuddin Taher
        
        Expressions:
        
        “Coming from real life experiences of restoring our heritage the sessions in the course felt very real and not just bookish at all. The idea of involving community and achieving maximum benefit from minimal resources is very commendable” – Pranjali Kanade , Participant
        
        “I am interested in pursuing the intermediate or advance level courses. In the course, I found two topics namely; Traditional Occupations of India and Conservation of Heritage Sites to be more interesting ones which I wish to work for in future”. - Alok Kumar Mishra , Participant
        
        
        There were 33 participants enrolling themselves for Batch-2 of this basic course on Understanding India, who received it with enthusiastic interaction with the resource persons , sharing their opinions and insights as well.