Session 4
Dada Gunamuktananda
Meditation teacher of Ananda Marga, New York, USA
Dada Gunmumuktanada is a meditation teacher of Ananda Marga based in New York, USA. He is trained in meditation, yoga, philosphy and natural helath sciences from Australia, Phillippenes and India. He moved on to the path of spirituality and became a yogi. He has been a qualified meditation teacher of Ananda Marga since 1995 and has taught meditation across nations worldwide. He has also been the founding coordinator of the P.R. Sarkar Institue since 2015. He practices and teaches the lifestyle and philosophy taught by his guru, SHrii Shrii Anandamurti, which is about the sytem of life known as yoga or tantra, the core practice of which is meditation.
Dada Gunamuktananda talks about the exploration of inner space and how our own consciousness is eventually connected to our discovery of outer space. It can be accomplished through spiritual practice like meditation on a daily basis. He says that meditation makes the whole world a smaller place where everybody is connected to each other.
Dada Gunamuktananda, who is also known as The Monk Dude and is the author of ‘Close Your Eyes and Open Your Mind; a Practical Guide to Spiritual Meditation.’
He believes, “meditation is about finding the essence of yourself within yourself and realizing that essence as the inner self of all beings and the entire universe” and his mission is to teach meditation to as many people as possible.
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Dr. Diana Murtaugh Coleman
Professor, Department of Comparative Cultural
Studies Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff,
Arizona, United States
Dr. Diana Murtaugh Coleman earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Arizona State University in 2018. A scholar of Islam in Global Context with an emphasis on contemporary Islam and training in post-Holocaust ethics, her research reflects a multi-disciplinary expertise in religion and conflict to her work on militarism. Her recent publications include “The Amen Temple of Empire” in the New Caribbean Studies anthology Guantánamo and American Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and an invited article for special issue of Cultural Dynamics (November 2019) which examines militarized responses to climate change and migration.
Her article in Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language and Culture (in press) considers how memory and witnessing inform notions of possible futures at Guantánamo Bay. Dr. Coleman’s current manuscript on meaning making practices and the ideological use of military and prisoner bodies at Guantánamo Bay is under revision.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsk56mJj_XE
Vinod Subramanian
Global Marketing Leader | Media, Effectiveness & Agency Management | Procurement Leader
London Area, United Kingdom
Vinod is an Integrated Marketing, Communications Leader coupled with a deep commercial expertise. He comes with experience working across multiple markets, cultures and leading high-performance teams.
He now is a Director in DiDi, a global leader in the mobility space.Prior to this, he was heading the Marketing Procurement at Huawei Technologies, a leader in the telecom technology space globally with over $100bn in annual turnover. He was also the leader for all the Category Managers. He also leads Agency Management and is responsible for building and managing the relationship with key agencies across media, advertising, digital, technology, production, retail and forging a true partnership.
Vinod is an expert in Integrated Marketing, Brand Strategy, Media Communications Planning, Measurement, Marketing Effectiveness, Relationship Management, Digital & Direct Marketing, Campaign Management, Account Management, Planning & Strategy, Marketing Procurement, Negotiation, Pricing, Agency Management, Global Team Management, Event Management, Contract Management, Change Management, Category Strategy, Contracts and Compliance, Media audits.
Shri Sradhanand Sital
Chairman GHRD - Global Human Rights Defence, The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands
Shri Sradhanand Sital is the Chairperson, Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD), The Netherlands. GHRD is an international human rights organization with the objective of promoting human rights for those areas where severe violations have victimized relatively large populations. He was awarded the 2012 Suryadatta National Award for Global Public Service. He has also directed and produced movies on marginalized groups.
DHIRAJ SINGH
Director, School of Media & Journalism,
MIT-World Peace University Pune
Dhiraj Singh is Director of MIT- World Peace University's School of Media & Journalism and ‘The Idea Lab’—a unique hub of communication innovation & design. He has a vast experience in strategic communication & media, across different platforms which include Print, TV, Digital, Film & Branding. His expertise also extends to digital communication and formulating strategies for institutions, advocacy groups, legislative and policy think-tanks and at innovating fresh and creative modes of outreach. He is also a documentary filmmaker who created and presented a series on the amazing and colourful fairs of India.
Before this he was co-founder of Hunar TV, an arts & culture web channel that aimed to make the arts (all arts—including visual arts, music, dance, film, performance art, food & more) the talking-point of a wider audience. He also has an arts column called #ArtIsEverywhere with NDTV-Mojarto. He has recently authored two books—one on translated poetry and the other a biography. His book of translated poems by Jnanpith awardee Saumitra Saxena is called ‘I Like To Wash My Face With Seawater’. The book is called ‘A Life in Two Lanes’ and it is a biography of Uma Jain, the first woman art gallerist in India and one of the first woman Supreme Court lawyers of India.
Till August 2016 Dhiraj Singh was Executive Director-Programmes (rank of Joint Secretary) at Lok Sabha Television-the TV channel of the lower house of the Indian Parliament. At LSTV he was in-charge of creating programmes-shows and documentaries-with an aim of bringing ‘Parliament closer to the Public’. He was leading a team of more than 80 professionals. He was also the Officer-in-Charge for a landmark event at Parliament House when former US President Barack was invited to address both Houses of Parliament at Central Hall. Dhiraj Singh was responsible for the live international broadcast of this historic event where America’s first Black President was speaking in Parliament on the invitation of the first woman Speaker of Lok Sabha (Smt. Meira Kumar). He also served as a Consultant to Smt. Meira Kumar looking at her outreach as Hon’ble Speaker of Lok Sabha, writing many of her important speeches at key events such as the International Union of Parliamentarians, Commonwealth Speakers & Presiding Officers Conference and for many other international visits. He was later promoted to Executive Director by Smt. Sumitra Mahajan who became the second woman Speaker of Lok Sabha. Many programmes conceptualized and created during his time at Lok Sabha TV went on to win prestigious media awards such as Ramnath Goenka Award, Ladli Media Award among others.