Vaad

In a distinguished diplomatic career spanning 35 years, Ajay Bisaria dealt with some of India’s key economic and security relationships, including as envoy in Canada (2020 to 2022), Pakistan (2017-2020), Poland and Lithuania (2015-2017).He represented the country at the World Bank in Washington DC and in embassies in Berlin and Moscow.He served in various capacities in the Ministry of External Affairs, Department of Commerce and the Prime Minister’s Office, where he was a key aide to Prime Minister Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004.As a specialist on the region, he dealt extensively with India’s Eurasia policy including with Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia.He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from St Stephen’s College, Delhi University; an MBA (Finance and Marketing) from IIM Calcutta; and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Princeton University. He speaks Russian, German and Urdu, apart from Hindi and English.

Pavneet Singh is an author and teacher at Tmentors UPSC platform. He teaches aspirants for Indian Civil Services Examination. His YouTube channel is called SpyGamesPavneet.

Dr. Manish Pandit is a physician who lives in the United Kingdom. He arrived in England in the mid 1990’s and trained as a surgeon (FRCS General Surgery and FRCS ENT) before switching career streams to Nuclear Medicine and obtaining a Masters with a Merit from Kings College in the process. He is an alumnus of BJ Medical College in Pune. He has published on many research topics within the fields of medicine and is a senior tutor for medical students in England as well as regional director for training in his medical speciality.Dr Manish has had an active interest in Indian history and spirituality since he was 21 years old, which is also when he met his Guru, Nakhate Maharaj. However he considers that spirituality (and alignment with so called dharma) is mostly useless unless closely moving with humanity and compassion on the ground in real life. It is easy for those who have not been miserable in life and not been engaged in the service of others for decades to be dismissive of any other sentient being’s troubles as mere “thought” or “nonsense”. Medicine provides him that impetus as nothing moves humans more than the sight of others suffering.He maintains an extensive personal library of books on Indology. He has studied the dating of the Mahabharata sufficiently enough to be considered as an expert on dating the Mahabharata using ancient Indian astronomy and is considered as a student of Dr Narahari Achar (a physics professor from Memphis who dated the Mahabharata to 3067 BCE).He is also a director, scriptwriter and cinematographer, who is known for making films on topics which very few within the broadcast and non-broadcast media like to touch. He has made several films including the acclaimed Krishna: History or Myth, Mumbai: Pani Mafia, SaiBaba: An Indian Jesus, Bharat ek Chetna and perhaps his best known film “The Ishrat Jahan Conspiracy (2014)”.His films can be divided into two principal categories, those which pertain to religion and those which pertain to politics. Apart from his feature length documentaries, he also makes short films which can be seen on saraswatifilms.org.

Disha Ahluwalia is an Indian archaeologist and researcher specializing in field archaeology and ancient ceramics. Disha has worked on significant excavation sites such as Rakhigarhi, Sinauli, Binjor, and Barnawa. She is the founder of Confessions of an Archaeologist, a platform aimed at making archaeology accessible to the public.

Dr. Niraj Rai is one of the world's foremost archaeogeneticists and molecular biologists. He is the group Head of the Ancient DNA Lab at Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow. He did his PhD from Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad.Dr Niraj was one of authors of consequential paper published in 2019 in one of the world’s most prestigious publication (CELL). It was based on the DNA successfully extracted by Niraj and his team from a 2500 year old woman’s skeletal found in Rakhigarhi, Haryana which was the largest site of Indus-Sarasvati Valley or Harappa Civilisation.

Kuljinder Dhillon is a common man from Majha region in Punjab. Like tens of thousands of youth, he also got swept away by the Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale-led Khalistan movement in late 1970s and early 1980s. He was inside the Golden Temple when the Indian Army launched a military operation codenamed 'Blue Star' to take control of the holy complex back from Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was using the Sikhism's holiest site as a launchpad for his terrorism and anti-India activities.Kuljinder Dhillon actively participated in the battle with Indian army on 4th & 5th June 1984. He was arrested later from the Golden Temple but managed to flee from a hospital where he was referred to for treating injuries inflicted by a grenade attack. He later fled to Pakistan in search of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, believing like lakhs of other Sikhs that 'Sant' was hiding in Pakistan.Kuljinder Dhillon later got involved in smuggling activities across the border but was caught few years later. Ultimately, he got disillusioned with the Khalistan movement and is a strong opponent of the same now. His journey from extremism to mainstream is an important one that needed to be documented. Though, Kuljinder Dhillon lives like a family man in Punjab, he is constantly under the threat from Khalistanis who have made attempts on his life for speaking truth.

Dr Prasanna Tantri is an Associate Professor in the Finance area and Executive Director of the Centre for Analytical Finance at ISB. His research areas include- banking, financial inclusion, financial contagion, regulation, and the relationship between politics and finance. He teaches a course on Indian financial systems.

Sunil Kumar Gupta served as a jailer at Tihar Jail, one of India's most notorious prisons, from 1981 until his retirement in 2016. Born into a modest background, Gupta left a stable job at the Indian Railways to pursue his dream of becoming a prison officer, joining Tihar Jail as an assistant superintendent.

Dr Prasanna Tantri is an Associate Professor in the Finance area and Executive Director of the Centre for Analytical Finance at ISB. His research areas include- banking, financial inclusion, financial contagion, regulation, and the relationship between politics and finance. He teaches a course on Indian financial systems.

Dr Abhinav Pandya, a Cornell University graduate in public affairs and a bachelor's from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, is a founder and CEO of Usanas Foundation, an India-based foreign policy and security think tank. He has authored two books, Radicalization in India: An Exploration (2019) and Terror Financing in Kashmir (2023).He had previously advised the former governor of Jammu and Kashmir on security issues during the critical times when Kashmir's special status, Article 370, was revoked.He has written extensively for several national and international newspapers, and worked with the International Labour Organization, the United Nations.