Auroville Campus Initiative

warmly invites you to a confluence on

Indian Renaissance
focused on

Swaraj & Sarvodaya

commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of

Mahatma Gandhi

and leading up to the 150th birth anniversary of

Sri Aurobindo
March 7-8th, 2020
9:00 am – 6:00 pm

Bhumika Hall
Bharat Nivas, The Pavilion of India
Auroville

For registration and further details, please write to ir@auroville.org.in

The struggle for Indian Independence was a period of great churn and Mahatma
Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo are two of the most important gifts it bequeathed the
world with. They were both acutely concerned with the state of the country (and the
larger human condition) and dedicated their lives towards the awakening and
liberation of India and the well-being and evolution of all people across the world.
They not only gave us inspiring visions for the future, but also laid down processes
of Sadhana that could lead us towards collective freedom and evolution - Swaraj and
Sarvodaya.

However, they also had significant differences in how they viewed reality, and hence
the praxes they laid out are both convergent and divergent in many aspects. In this
two-day confluence, we will closely look at what we can learn from both, that could
strengthen our own sadhana going forward and also help serve the progress of
Auroville, Indic Regeneration and Human Unity.

The event is being offered in the spirit of Gift. Participants are welcome to make a
financial contribution from their hearts if they feel called to, but there is no obligation
to do so.

For registrations and other details, please write to ir@auroville.org.in at the earliest
possible. (Participation is by prior registration only.)

We look forward to hearing from you :)

Warmly,

Sangeetha, Divyanshi, Manoj & Naveen

(Confluence Organizing Team)
 SPEAKERS
Anju Khanna served as a college professor for several years. When
she started contemplating about the world that her three children
were to inherit and her own journey ahead, her search led her to join
Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Delhi). Here, she has been supporting various
education projects in Integral schools around the world, writing for
children, training teachers, facilitating youth initiatives, reading and
drawing inspiration from nature for a connected living. An ardent devotee of The Mother and Sri
Aurobindo, she is committed to her sadhana and aspires to live in coherence with the outer ecology
and the community that she is a part of. She is the Director of Madhuban in Ramgarh, a branch of Sri
Aurobindo Ashram (Delhi).

Anu Majumdar first came to Auroville in 1979 where she has worked in
several areas including the Matrimandir construction site and as a dancer -
choreographer with the Auroville Dance Lab, among many other things. She
is an author and poet and has published several books, including her latest
one, Auroville: A City for the Future which explores the vast field of experience,
growth and responsibilities that this experiment affords.
Arun bhai Bhatt spent his childhood (in the 1930s) with his parents
who actively participated in India's Freedom Movement. He later
completed his education in the Sevagram Nai Talim Sangh and at the
age of 19, dropped out of college to join Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan
Yajna. He married Miraben and they both worked together with
Vinobaji in various movements including Bhoodan, Gramdam, Shanti
Sena and Sarvodaya. He has lived his entire life rooted in Nishkaam Seva (Selfless Service) and has never
put a price-tag on his labour. His gentle presence and deep wisdom come from a life-long
commitment to truth, love and compassion. He finds great joy in singing devotional songs and feels
that it has played a very important role in his connection with the Divine.

Ganesh N Devy is a thinker, cultural activist and an institution builder.

In 1970s, Dr. Ganesh wrote his PhD thesis on Sri Aurobindo's poetry.
He then went to Baroda University to teach literature for 16 years. Later,
he moved to a tribal village to create Baasha & Adivasi Academy,
institutions dedicated to the study of tribal life, languages and
worldviews, contemporising them for the present times. His research
discovered hundreds of thriving and dying local languages, which he is
attempting to document and preserve. After working in these institutions (which were founded on
Gandhian principles) for about 20 years, he moved to Dharwad, Karnataka which is where he
currently lives. He is a prolific writer, and has written and edited close to ninety influential books in
areas as diverse as Literary Criticism, Anthropology, Education, Linguistics and Philosophy in
Marathi, Gujrati and English. He was awarded Padma Shri (2014) in recognition of his work with
denotified and nomadic tribes and endangered languages, the Sahitya Akademi Award (1993) and the
SAARC Writers’ Foundation Award (2001).

Kittu Reddy was born in Andhra Pradesh. At a young age of five (in
1941), he was taken to Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Pondicherry), which has
been his home ever since. He had all his education at the ‘Sri Aurobindo
International Centre of Education’ and has been teaching there since 1958.
Since 1987, he has been giving talks to the Indian Army on Indian
culture, the Mission of India, Motivation and Leadership. In 1994, Kittu
da was appointed as the adviser to the Army Welfare Education Society. Since then he has been
conducting workshops for the Indian Army, Navy and the Air Force on similar themes. He is the
author of A Vision of United India: Problems and Solutions, Kargil: A Manifestation of a Deeper Problem and
The History of India: A New Approach.

Ramasubramanian currently consults, teaches, mentors, writes and tells

stories in a bid to combine experience and learnings to shape actions for a
better planet. His experience includes corporate consulting, mindfulness
practice (given title ‘harmony of the heart’ by the Buddhist teacher Thich
Nhat Hanh), engaging with Hind Swaraj, assisting Gandhian thinker
Dharampal, study and work with rural community institutions and organic
farmers, creating and shaping institutions for the social sector. His work is
known through Samanvaya Consulting, Sustainable Livelihood Institute and Dharma Institute.
Shivakumar grew up in Kerala. After his graduation in Engineering, a
diploma in Computer-Aided-Design, and a 5-year stint in the corporate
world, he started engaging in full-time study and practice of Indian
spirituality, especially the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother. He’s known to be calm in raging storms and also to facilitate
the storms that rise within us all. He joined Sri Aurobindo Society
(Pondicherry) in 2001 to participate in working towards a global
spiritualised society as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo. He is the Director of AuroYouth, the youth wing
of Sri Aurobindo Society and has been organising national youth camps for the past 18 years.

Sudarshan Iyengar is one of the foremost Gandhian scholars in

India. He is former Vice Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith (Ahmedabad)
which was founded by Mahatma Gandhi, and former Director, Centre
for Social Studies, and Gujarat Institute of Development Research,
(Ahmedabad). He was Chair Professor, Gandhian Philosophy, at IIT,
Mumbai. He is currently working with Action Research in Community
Health and Development (ARCH) at Dharampur Centre, Valsad, Gujarat,
and is on the board of various voluntary organisations. His current focus areas are Gandhian
thoughts and practice, natural resource development and management, people and civil society
institutions. He has been active in the rehabilitation of tribal people displaced in the Narmada Dam
Project in the 1990s. He has published over 65 research articles and 8 books including Gandhiji and
Sanitation by Publication Division, GoI 2016.
 ORGANISING TEAM

Divyanshi Chugh is one of the executives of Auroville Campus Initiative (ACI),

Department of Further Learning of Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational
Research (SAIIER), Auroville. She is a facilitator and curriculum designer for
several programmes, prominently Swadharma and Svadhyaya. As an educationist,
she loves to listen and hold space. She was the lead organiser of Confluence on
Re-imagining Univers-city to accelerate the emergence of long-term learning
programmes in Auroville. She is also a poet and dancer.

Manoj Pavitran grew up in Kerala and graduated as a production engineer in

1988. However, a deeper quest led him to Sri Aurobindo and he started following
the path of Integral Yoga in 1989. He did post-graduate studies in Product
Design from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, in 1993. After
a short period of working as a professional design consultant, he quit the
profession and joined Auroville in 1995 to explore Integral Yoga and collective
evolution. In Auroville, he is actively involved in education through Swadharma and in software
development and film making through Sopanam.

Naveen Vasudevan is a student of Yoga. Over the last 15 years he has been
engaged with the questions "How may I offer the best of myself, to the Whole?".
He is a co-founder of Ritambhara and the founder of Pūrṇam. His interests include
Evolutionary Leadership, Integral Psychology and Process Work. He is
particularly keen on working with young changemakers and those interested in
bridging spirituality and social change. Naveen has spent many years studying Gandhi and facilitates
an online course called Re-engaging with Gandhi. He loves reading, good cinema and spending time in
nature.

Sangeetha Sriram’s search during her initial years of engagement with social-change
initiatives led her to the life and work of Gandhiji, which inspired her involvement in
reviving local self-governance through Panchayati Raj institutions. She co-founded
reStore, a community-based initiative in Chennai to promote localisation. Her personal
search further led her to Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, which she is a keen student of.
She is also a member of Ritambhara, a sangha dedicated to the praxis of yoga and the
revival of Indic wisdom traditions and of Vikalp Sangam, a pan-India initiative connecting systemic
alternatives. Her other interests include music, gardening, forest foraging and systems-design for
change.
 PROGRAM

7 March, Saturday
Morning Welcome & Introduction

Swaraj & Sarvodaya

Manoj Pavitran
Ganesh N Devy

Afternoon Indic Economy & Polity

Sangeetha Sriram
Sudarshan Iyengar
Kittu Reddy

8 March, Sunday
Morning Sadhana in Daily Life
Anju Khanna
Arun Bhatt

Afternoon Conscious Applications of the

messages of Sri Aurobindo and
Mahatma Gandhi for today’s times
Anu Majumdar
Shivakumar
Ramasubramanian

* Format: The different talks will be interspersed with dialogues and other
forms of reflective sharing.