Towards Bikaner

On 14 December 1995 in the Sala del Cenacolo of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament in Rome, the official presentation of the Tessitori and Rajasthan international conference was held. After addresses of welcome by Giovanni Pelizzo, chair of the Provincial Authority of Udine, Adriano Degano, chair of the Fogolar Furlan in Rome and Gaetano Zucconi, ambassador of Italy in India, there were speeches by the following contributors: Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli (Accademia dei Lincei), Butshikan Singh (Embassy of India in Italy), Giuliano Boccali (Venetian Academy for Indian Studies) and Fausto Freschi (Società  Indologica «Luigi Pio Tessitori»").

The Tessitori and Rajasthan international conference, organized by the Società  Indologica «Luigi Pio Tessitori» in collaboration with the Venetian Academy for Indian Studies in Venice, the Italian Institute of Culture in New Delhi and the Birla Science Centre in Hyderabad, took place at Bikaner in the hall of the Lallgarh Palace Hotel from 21 to 23 February 1996 and focused on topics in the fields of philology, linguistics, Bardic literature, ancient history and archaeology. The conference aimed to bring to a wider public new considerations into Tessitori’s background, the motivations of his cultural and social inclinations, the significance of his ideas, and, especially, his relationship with contemporary society throughout the course of his short and very intense life.

The following were members of the Organizing Committee: Fausto Freschi (Società  Indologica «Luigi Pio Tessitori»); Antonio Rigopoulos (Società  Indologica «Luigi Pio Tessitori»); Giuliano Boccali (Venetian Academy for Indian Studies); Gian Giuseppe Filippi (Venetian Academy for Indian Studies); B. G. Sidharth (Birla Science Centre); Ravi Kiron (Birla Science Centre); and Colette Caillat (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).