Indian achievers deliberate on prejudices at Detour India Fest 2017

BOSTON MA: Indian achievers from cultural, social, entertainment and political backdrops gathered under one roof to talk about their path-breaking journeys and their take on issues concerning India, at the Boston University's Detour India Fest 2017. The Fest, aimed at celebrating the immense diversity of India, was organised from November 10-11 on the Charles River Campus here.
The fest aims to deliberate on the pre-existing prejudices against the Indian community in the United States by bringing together brilliant speakers to talk about their journey of detouring from the conventional path and advocate the importance of the evolving Indian culture.
Lawyer Kapil Sibal, filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, former cricketer Ajay Jadeja, AIB comedian Rohan Joshi, Miss India 2014 Nina Davuluri, Senior Vice President of Bank of America Anu Chitrapu, Ibibo founder Ashish Kashyap, and founder of Crossover Basketball and Scholars Academy Shaun Jayachandran, were among the prominent speakers at the event.
"This event enabled us to understand the lives of these celebrities way beyond what is shown on TV. Rohan Joshi was kind enough to get us food from India as a way of remembering home for us", said Devika Gholap, Co-Founder of the conference.
The conference began with former Miss America Nina Davuluri's keynote speech on the Cultural Sensitivity in the US. Nina spoke about her struggles of establishing identity as an Indo-American Miss America, and opened up about her lasting struggles of reaching out to the targeted audience in the US itself. A similar thematic conversation took place right after with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra in his talk show with host BU professor Shilpa Parnami. Mehra added very intriguing and witty anecdotes from his advertising career and his very first big screen project with Amitabh Bachchan.
The conference then took a turn to the business minds in India with a panel discussion on the innovation and entrepreneurship in the Indian ecosystem. The discussion involved former Ibibo founder Ashish Kashyap, Vice President of Bank of America- Anu Chitrapu, and Shaun Jayachandran, founder of Crossover Basketball and Scholars Academy.
While Shaun Jayachandran spoke about the difficulties of being an entrepreneur and starting something of his own, Anu Chitrapu added to this struggle and spoke about persistent gender bias and lack of representation of women in this field.
Kapil Sibal, who deliberated on the topic of the history of ethical intolerance and its effect on the immigration policies globally said "ethnic intolerance is not a new concept and had been prevalent since the evolution of humankind." On being asked about any similarities between India's way of tackling the Rohingya muslims problem and the US's way of handling Mexican immigration he mentioned the push and pull phenomena of immigration that differentiates the two situations.
Ajay Jadeja, on the other hand, talked about the prevalent issue of academics over sports in India and also went on to discuss the world integration of cricket with league matches like IPL where cricketers from other nations come to play for Indian teams.
The event concluded with a power-packed keynote speech by Rohan Joshi filled with wit, intellect, and comments on the social and political environment, which on one hand increase the growth of comedy in India while on the other place censorship on the same prosperity of humor.