By — Dilip Guha
IGNITION, a conversational event series presented by the Shiv Nadar Foundation and curated by Shoma Chaudhury, Co-founder, Lucid Lines, was held at the Hyatt Regency, New Delhi, on Sunday 11th Oct 2026. It brought together a jurist, two filmmakers and three former ambassadors to examine the questions shaping India, through candid conversations on the right to protest, the purpose of storytelling in the age of AI, and India’s stakes in West Asia
IGNITION is an exciting, eclectic, monthly live on-stage conversation series that celebrates the power of people; maps fascinating canvases of creativity, courage, and challenge; and provides keys to different worlds. IGNITION typically has 500-700 people at every edition. It is a by-invitation-only event and draws a wonderful, discerning, intellectually engaged audience — a mix of entrepreneurs, industrialists, corporates, artists, writers, lawyers, doctors, and professionals from every field.
Its canvas ranges from the urgently public to the intimately personal. Over the last year, it brought together a compelling array of speakers: from actors and directors like Jaideep Ahlawat, Manoj Bajpayee, Rajkumar Rao, Farhan Akhtar to musicians like Shubha Mudgal historians Manu Pillai, Vikram Sampath, William Dalrymple, career diplomats like TCA Raghavan, PS Raghavan, Talmiz Ahmad, Pavan Varma, Pankaj Saran; former Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Madan Lokur political leaders Smriti Irani, PTR Thiagarajan and Geopolitical experts Manoj Kewalramani, Brahma Chellaney.
Senior advocate and five-time Member of Parliament Abhishek Singhvi argued that the law doesn’t give authorities the power to ban a protest before it begins, and that action can be taken only if violence occurs. “There is absolutely no power for an anticipatory, supposedly preventive blanket ban on peaceable protest,” he said, adding, “to cause no inconvenience is the antithesis of protest.”
Singhvi said the government banned the protest before it even began, and the law gives no power to do that. If people turn violent, action can be taken then. He pointed to people being stopped, metro stations closed, trains cancelled and the internet shut down. Some say protests trouble other people. Singhvi said every protest causes some trouble, and a protest that troubles no one is not a protest. In his words: “To cause no inconvenience is the antithesis of protest.”
“There is absolutely no power for an anticipatory, supposedly preventive blanket ban on peaceful protest.”
“To cause no inconvenience is the antithesis of protest,” he added.
On Tata Sons, Singhvi said the structure in which charitable trusts hold about 66% of the company deserves protection. He also said the board should not have proceeded with a recent decision without the consent of trust-nominated directors, as the company’s rules require.
Filmmakers Nikkhil Advani and Shakun Batra reflected on storytelling in an era of AI and box-office pressure. Advani said he made Revolutionaries to tell the story of freedom fighters who used force, and noted that many viewers aged 18 to 24 that he has interacted with did not know who Gandhi, Nehru or Patel were. “We’ve lost why we are making cinema, why we want to tell stories,” he said, and on AI: “I think great filmmaking is only mistakes.”
Batra spoke about writing characters without judgment. “We are living in a certainty economy. Everybody’s selling certainty,” he observed. He welcomed AI’s potential to let filmmakers outside Mumbai make films, but stressed, “At the end of the day, the audience needs to be told something meaningful for them to watch it.”
In Kapoor & Sons, he wanted viewers to get to know and like the gay character first. That way, being gay is one part of him, not all of who he is. He said he was afraid the film would not be accepted, the same fear the character feels.
In Lust Stories 3, a couple going through a divorce has not dealt with its grief. Intimacy becomes the way they say what they cannot say in words, like anger and jealousy. He said the body can hold on to what the mind cannot handle.
He said the world is selling certainty, but he finds people who are most interesting when they’re fine with not knowing. He is unsure what makes someone an artist when a machine can make a shot in minutes. He likes that AI may let people outside Bombay make films, but says the story must still matter to the audience. In his words, “We are living in a certainty economy. Everybody’s selling certainty.” “People will be able to make movies like people make music now. Laptops, no orchestra.”
He said Hindi cinema has started to give women characters real power in the last ten years. But he said some films called “feminist” are just lip service. He likes women characters who are not there only to support the male lead. “The most interesting people to me are people who are comfortable with uncertainty.”
Former ambassadors Navtej Sarna, Talmiz Ahmad and T.C.A. Raghavan turned their expert gaze to the Middle East, a region where roughly 9.5 to 10 million Indians live and work. Sarna urged India not to take sides. “Foreign policy should not be based on immediate transactional, tactical gains. It has to be on principles,” he said.
Ahmad said India needs a longer-term vision and greater self-confidence, and that it is “missing in action” in several neighbouring regions. He also noted there is no single “Islamic world”, as each country follows its own interests.
Raghavan advised calm over the new Saudi Arabia–Pakistan–Turkey pact. “I don’t think we should be paranoid about the whole Islamic world ganging up and keeping us out of West Asia,” he said. He also cautioned that writing off the US would be a “fatal error.”
