About the Contributors

Aditi Banerjee received a B.A. in International Relations, magna cum laude, from Tufts University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She is a practicing attorney in New York. Her publications include: “The Hyphenated Hindus”, in Outlook India; “Hindu-American: Both Sides of the Hyphen”, in Silicon India; and “Hindu Pride”, in Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America (Jon Butler et al. eds., Oxford University Press.) She is interested in the preservation and revival of the traditional ways of knowledge rooted in Sanatana Dharma.

Antonio T. de Nicolas, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He was educated in Spain, India and the United States receiving his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University, New York. He is presently a director of the Biocultural Research Institute in Florida. He is the author of several books on Philosophy and Hinduism such as “Avatara: The humanization of Philosophy through the Bhagavad Gita”, “Meditations through the Rig Veda” and “Habits of Mind: An introduction to Clinical Philosophy”.

Alan Roland, Ph.D. is a practicing psychoanalyst who has worked extensively with Indians and Japanese abroad and in New York City. He is on the faculty of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He is the author of “Cultural Pluralism and Psychoanalysis: The Asian and North American Experience”.

Arvind Sharma, Ph.D. is Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Canada and a distinguished scholar of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics. His publications include “Are Human Rights Western?: A Contribution to the Dialogue of Civilizations”, “The Rope and the Snake: A Metaphorical Exploration of Advaita Vedanta”, “Hinduism and Human Rights: A Conceptual Approach (Law in India)” and “Women Saints in World Religions”.

S.N. Balagangadhara, Ph.D. is Director of the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap (Comparative Science of Cultures) in Ghent University, Belgium. He is the author of “The Heathen in His Blindness: Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion”, a seminal work on the nature of religion. His central area of inquiry is to develop a description of Western culture against the background of Indian culture. Prof. Balagangadhara was recently co-chair of the Hinduism Unit of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).

Pandita Indrani Rampersad, Ph.D. (Mass Communication and Journalism), is a fourth generation born Person of Indian Origin from Trinidad, West Indies. She is a teacher, journalist, and a Hindu priest (ordained by the Arya Samaj and the first female Hindu priest to be formally recognized by the government and institutionalized religion in Trinidad, West Indies). She is an activist in Hindu, Women and Minority Issues. She chose India for her higher education, studying at the Benares Hindu University and the University of Pune.

Kalavai Venkat is a practicing agnostic Hindu with degrees in Business Administration and Physics. He is a consultant providing solutions to large corporations. His areas of specialization are Tamil literature, historiography and the impact of Abrahamic religions on Indian civilization. He also volunteers as a teacher of Tamil and Hinduism in the Indian community in the Bay Area. He resides with his wife and children in the Bay Area in California.

Krishnan Ramaswamy, Ph.D. is a scientist with a background in psychometric research. His areas of research include clinical outcomes trials in major mental and neurological illnesses. He is active in rural education projects in India, particularly among disadvantaged children. He works with the Infinity Foundation and is a student of the Vedas, Vedanta, Sanskrit and Panini, and has had a lifelong interest in bhakti poetry from various regions of India, particularly Maharashtra.

Vishal Agarwal is a Biomedical Materials Engineer with graduate degrees in Materials Engineering and Business Administration. He resides with his wife and children in Minnesota, where he works for a leading biomedical device company. He is an ardent student of religion, archaeology and the history of ancient India and has numerous contributions to his credit in peer-reviewed publications. He is currently engaged in creating electronic versions of important Hindu scriptures.

Ramesh N. Rao, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair, Communication Studies and Theatre Department, Longwood University, Farmville, Virginia. He is the author of several papers on India and its portrayals in the Media.

Sankrant Sanu is a software entrepreneur who lives in Redmond, WA and India. Following several years of working at Microsoft, he left in 1999 to co-found Paramark, a software company. A prolific writer on issues regarding India, Sankrant is a strong advocate of Indian pluralism. He is an alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin and IIT Kanpur. His interests are varied—from spirituality to skiing, from computers to playing the congas. More recently, he has been volunteering as a Hindi teacher for youths in Redmond, and drawing up a blueprint for rural education in India.

Yuvraj Krishan, MA, LL.B. is a scholar of Indian History, Religion, Philosophy and Art. He has published over 150 research papers on these topics in renowned journals in India and abroad. He has a long and distinguished record of service under the Government of India – in the Railways, Indian Administrative Service and the Audits & Accounts Department from where he retired as Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General of India in 1980. He has published several books, including “The Buddha Image: Its Origin and Development”; “The Doctrine of Karma in Brahmanical, Buddhist, Jaina Traditions”; and “Understanding Partition”.

Yvette C. Rosser, Ph.D. is an author, scholar and educationist. Her Master’s thesis (at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas) examined the treatment of India in the social studies curriculum. Her Ph.D. dissertation studied the politics of history in South Asia. She has authored several books and papers, including “Indoctrinating Minds: Politics of Education in Bangladesh” (2004). Rosser is co-founder of the “G M Syed Memorial Committee” and is also on the advisory board of the “Baacha Khan Research Centre” in Baacha Khan Markaz, Peshawar; and founder of the “Badshah Khan Peace Initiative” (BKPI).