New Governing Board and International Advisory appointed

Shri Ravindra Narayana Ravi is currently serving as the Governor of Tamil Nadu. He was an IPS 1976 batch officer from Kerala cadre, and has worked as Special Director in Intelligence Bureau and as Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee from 2014. He was the interlocutor for talks in 2014 between the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (a Naga nationalist separatist group operating mainly in Northeast India) and the Government of India, which brought about the Nagaland Peace Accord. 

He was appointed as Deputy National Security Advisor of India in 2018, and became Governor of Nagaland in 2019. He was appointed as Governor of Tamil Nadu in September 2021.

Dr Nirima Oza is a professsor at Mahatma Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Dental Sciences, Puducherry. She was  a member of the former Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation.

Shri Aravindan Neelakandan is a writer and journalist in Tamil Nadu. He has postgraduate degrees in psychology and economics from universities in Tamil Nadu. He is an editor of the website Tamil Hindu, and a contributing author for journals and magazines such as Swarajya and sutrajournal.com. He has been a regular contributor of columns to various media outlets, including Thinnai.com, UPI Asia, Dinamani Junction, Solvanam and Tamil Paper. 

Neelakandan serves as a mentor to the Srishti Madurai, an educational research foundation which has roots in the LGBTQIA space and which now works on the inter-relations between human, nature and society. Neelakandan organised the launch of the first book concerning gender variance in Tamil, Gopi Shankar’s Maraikappata Pakkangal.

Together with Rajiv Malhotra, he authored the book Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines (Amaryllis, 2011) which argues that India’s integrity is being undermined by western institutions’ support for the Dravidian movement and Dalit identity.

Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan is an Indian politician currently serving as Governor of Telangana, and also as Lieutenant-Governor of Puducherry. 

Dr Soundararajan has an MBBS, and obstetrics and genecology qualifications from Chennai universities, and she pursued further medical training in Canada. She worked as an assistant professor at Ramachandra Medical College, Chennai. 

Dr Soundararajan was raised in a political family and became a student leader. She has held many positions in the BJP in Tamil Nadu, and became the BJP’s National Secretary in Tamil Nadu in 2013. 

She conducted a weekly TV programme for women, and has been active in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. Dr Soundararajan is a supporter of the #MeToo movement and has emphasised that any woman who has faced sexual harassment should get justice.

Professor Goutam Ghosal heads the Department of English at the Visva Bharti University Santiniketan, West Bengal – the experimental school founded by Rabindranath Tagore.  

His research specializes in the poetry and prose of Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, Shakespeare, Indian poetry in English, and 19th Century British and American Literature. He has written various books on Sri Aurobindo and Indian literature, including a comparative study of Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. He has been awarded various literary prizes.

Professor R S Sarraju is the Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad. He previously led the university’s Department of Hindi, and presently heads the Centre for Dalit, Adivasi and Translation Studies. His academic work has focussed on functional Hindi, translation studies and comparative Indian literature.

After an academic career at the Andhra University and the University of Hyderabad, he served in the Indian Embassy in Moscow, and taught at the Moscow State University. He then continued as Professor of Hindi at the University of Hyderabad. He has received merit awards from the Government of India and Bihar State Government. He has published eight books and more than 60 research papers. He current serves on different Hindi Advisory Committees for the Government of India.

Professor Gurappa Basappa Nandana, Professor of Indian Political Thought and National Movement at the Department of Studies in Political Science at Karnataka University. 

His work investigates the working of grass-roots democracy and its relationship with the democratic system at regional and national levels, acknowledging the effects of globalization and the role of the internet. His work looks towards creating an enlightened and responsible generation of citizens with a commitment to the development of a civil society in tune with participatory democracy, which can combine local and global virtues.

Ex officio member Ms. Neeta Prasad, Joint Secretary (ICC), Ministry of Education, Govt. of India 

Ex officio member Smt. Darshana M Dabral, Joint Secretary and Finance Advisor, Ministry of Education, Govt. of India.

Members of the International Advisory Council

Ms Dena Merriam is the founder and coordinator of the Global Peace Initiative for Women (GPIW), an international network of spiritual and community leaders that builds interfaith understanding and develops leadership in young community leaders concerning climate change. Ms Merriam has been a student of Paramahansa Yogananda and a practitioner of Kriya Yoga meditation for over 40 years, and a long time student of the great texts of the Vedic tradition. She received her Master’s Degree from Columbia University and has served on the boards of the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, and many other international and Indian interfaith organisations. In 2014 she received the Niwano Peace Prize for her interfaith peace efforts.

Hotelier HP Rama is also well-known in Auroville. He is the founder and chairman of JHM Hotels in USA and India, and founder and Chancellor of the AURO University in Surat. 

HP’s life has been described as a ‘rags to riches’ story. After completing his education in India, he went to the USA at the age of 21 to pursue an MBA, with no more than two dollars in his pocket. He initially worked as a dishwasher and waiter in a motel. A few years later (in 1973), he started his own business, buying a 37-room motel in California. After ten years, he bought four Howard Johnson Hotels and a few restaurants. He then set up JHM Hotels, which now owns almost 90 hotels in the US and in India.

A staunch follower of the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, HP founded AURO University in Surat, which is dedicated to Sri Aurobindo. “We try to empower individual students through self-discovery,” he says. For HP, it is important for Indian students to have a good understanding of their own culture before going out and imbibing other cultures, so certain courses about Indian culture are compulsory. HP is passionately engaged in the operations of the university and in “manifesting the vision of the university”.

HP has helped organise a number of conferences on Integral Yoga in the US. The La Grace Integral Life Center is also hosted in one of HP's properties.

Michel Danino is a guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar and has been a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research. 

Born in France, Michel decided to shift to India at the age of 21, where he first took part in the English translation, editing and publication of books related to Sri Aurobindo and Mother. A student of Indian civilization, culture and history, he has lectured widely and published research papers in journals of archaeology and Indology. He has written on topics as varied as Aryan issues, the Sarasvati River, and the Indus Valley civilisation. His 2011 book, Indian Culture and India’s Future examined issues of Indian identity, India’s impact on the world, and secularism and tolerance in the Indian context. 

He participated in the English translation and publication of Mother’s Agenda (Mother’s 13-volume record of her yoga in the depths of the body consciousness) and several books by Satprem. He also edited India’s Rebirth (a selection from Sri Aurobindo’s works about India), and India The Mother (a selection from Mother’s words).

He spent a few years in Auroville before shifting to the Nilgiri mountains in Tamil Nadu, where he resided for two decades and worked for protection of the Shola forest – efforts that led to the creation of Tamil Nadu’s first joint forest management group involving local citizens. In 2003, he settled near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, and accepted Indian citizenship. His interests include nature photography and a multimedia project concerning India’s heritage. In 2017, the Government of India conferred the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian honor, upon him for his contribution towards literature and education.

David Frawley is an American author, astrologer, and teacher. He has written numerous books on topics spanning the Vedas, Hinduism, yoga, ayurveda and Vedic astrology. He is the founder and the sole instructor at the American Institute of Vedic Studies at Santa Fe, New Mexico and is a former president of the American Council of Vedic Astrology. He also previously taught Chinese herbal medicine and western herbology. He is a practitioner of Ayurveda and recommends the practice of ascetic rituals along with moral purification as indispensable parts of the Advaita tradition.

He has been described as a prominent figure of the Hindutva movement. He has been mentioned in various books as an important teacher of the Vedic tradition in the west, and a mentor of Deepak Chopra. 

In 2015 he was honored by the Government of India with the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian honour.

Ms Gabi Gillessen is well-known to many Aurovilians. She is the current President of the European Union of Yoga (EUY) and the Chairperson of the Irish Yoga Association. She studied yoga with some of the world’s most renowned teachers, and holds various yoga teaching qualifications. She conducts teacher training and postgraduate courses for the Irish Yoga Association. 

In her role in the EUY, she aspires to protect and uphold the authenticity of yoga teaching and training, and she has co-organised many international yoga congress meetings. She has coordinated intensive yoga workshops in Auroville, and she co-hosts the Indian Psychology Course in Bangalore, India.

Her video Exploring levels of being through asana practice can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cou-guPwVcs.