Centre for India Studies

Neville Tuli

The inaugural exhibition o the

Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (TRIS),

titled SelfDiscovery via Rediscovering India presents the vast domain of India Studies through artworks, artefacts, archives and memorabilia from the Centre, founded by Neville Tuli.

The exhibition, on till March 30 at the India International Centre (IIC) Gallery at Max Mueller Marg focuses on Indian and world cinema, modern and contemporary fine and popular arts and crafts, photography, architectural heritage, animal welfare, ecological studies and social sciences. Hundreds of research materials and art works express the chaotic energy and rhythms of one of the world’s greatest civilisations where 6,000 years of history are still living and breathing in the contemporary.

After a three-decade-long pioneering journey, Tuli shares his knowledge, rooted in the arts and their related disciplines, made available to the world with the launch of the research centre and its website in the coming months.

India’s only pre-release 12-sheet film poster on display

The magnificent 12-sheet poster of Kranti, on display at the IIC Gallery by the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies is the only known 12sheeter pre-release Indian film poster with such high quality hand-painted art. Commissioned by director Manoj Kumar for the special pre-release publicity of Kranti in 1980-81 and designed by legendary artist Pandit Ram Kumar Sharma, the poster is unique especially for the absence of the film’s name and credits—an idea never used before or after Kranti by any filmmaker.

The film, scripted by iconic screenwriting duo, Salim-Javed and directed by Manoj Kumar, was a blockbuster at the box-office and marked the return of Dilip Kumar on silver screen after a long hiatus.

“Kranti’s very rare pre-launch 12-sheeter grand poster best epitomises the aesthetic delight of the fine-popular arts bridge which the very best of film art once represented,” elaborates Neville Tuli, the founder of TRIS, who acquired the work from an auction over 15 years ago.