India focus of ‘town and gown’ fest in Cambridge University

LONDON Town and gown – each symbolising non-academic and academic communities in university towns such as Cambridge and Oxford – have not always had the best of relations, but the two are shortly coming together for an Open Cambridge event, with India in focus.

Town and gown in university towns in Britain and the US have often figured in news discourse for conflict and clashes over issues such as space, traffic and drunken behaviour - it has often been “town versus gown” instead of “town and gown”.

But this year's Open Cambridge festival on September 8 and 9 is one of those occasions when “town and gown” are coming together, including the city council, the Cambridge Mosque and the Anglia Ruskin University (also based in Cambridge).

The event includes the univer- sity’s India Unboxed programme, which is billed as a journey of discovery through the hidden histories, spaces, objects, ideas and people that have connected Cambridge and India.

Several Indians have studied at Cambridge, some of whom have gone on to hold high office. These include mathematician S Ramanujan, Dorabji Tata, Jawaharlal Nehru, Manmohan Singh, astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar and Amartya Sen.

From stories of some of the earliest Indian students in Cambridge and of local revolutionaries, the programme will highlight the city from new perspectives.

Malavika Anderson, who leads on the India Unboxed programme, said: “We wanted to look at the ways Cambridge and India have interacted. This could be through ground-breaking research but also through very personal stories of Indian students and residents finding their way in Cambridge”.