By Amit Roy
THE Financial Times (FT) Weekend Digital Festival spring edition last Thursday (18) to last Saturday (20), was like eating a bag of cashew nuts. I thought I would just watch one session, then one more, and one more…
The sessions I watched included: “Cancel culture: Creeping censorship or overblown myth?” with Lionel Shriver and Nilanjana Roy; Nikki Bedi discussing “The Value of Cultural Exchange: Arts without borders” with actor Simon McBurney and musician Nitin Sawhney; Professor Rana Mitter of Oxford address the question, “As the Chinese Communist party celebrates its 100th birthday, what next for the rising superpower?”; and the author of Empireland, Satham Sanghera, engage in “Talking about empire”. Photographer Sir Don McCullin spoke of his love affair with India; while Sir Simon Schama and Bonnie Greer tackled “Meghan, Harry, the Firm and the Fourth Estate”.
Perhaps the session I found most moving was the interview on vaccines FT science editor Clive Cookson did with “the pioneers behind BioNtech-Pfizer, Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin, on their world-changing work”. The Turkish-origin married couple said they would be happy if their example encouraged other immigrants to take up science.
Indira GandhiTF/AFP/Getty Images
Rao with HH Arvind Singh Mewar of Udaipur at an IJA event in 2014Eastern Eye
