The Forum

The Forum at the India Israel Centre brings sustained intellectual attention to the questions that the comparative study of India and Israel rewards. Two states emerged from empire within a year of each other, each carrying old civilisational traditions into modern constitutional democracies, and each has spent its first three quarters of a century working out the relationship between inherited tradition and the practical demands of national politics.

The Forum's programme proceeds from a conviction that this comparison has been under-attempted, that it is sharper when conducted carefully than when conducted by analogy, and that the Indian and Israeli intellectual communities have much to learn from each other.

The Forum hosts convenings in the formats appropriate to the work. Closed-door roundtables under the Chatham House rule allow scholars and practitioners to speak frankly on questions where public attribution would constrain the conversation. Public lectures and dialogues bring the Forum's intellectual programme into wider circulation.