EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Dr. Satish Joshi - President
is an engineer-chemist and holds a doctorate in environmental science from the ETH. He previously studied in Mumbai and then at the University of Zurich. He is an Overseas Citizen of India as well as a Swiss citizen. As he is a practicing Hindu and his wife Protestant, with two children, they form a binational & bicultural family. Dr. Satish Joshi is a cultural communicator for India and Hinduism and represents their voice in various interfaith organisations (IRAS COTIS / Zurich Forum of Religions etc.) as well as in Swiss society.
Swami Vivekananda - Vice President
came into contact with Hinduism at the age of 12 through her mother and decided as a teenager in the early 1970s to live in the Ashram (monastery). She has been leading the Omkarananda Ashram in Winterthur for over 40 years and is also active as a priest.
Sandeep Rajan - Finance / Accounting
Sandeep Rajan comes from Mysore in India. He has been living in Switzerland (Richterswil) since 2002 with his wife and two children. He works for an insurance company.
Acharya Vidyabhaskar - General Secretary
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Vidyabhaskar grew up in Switzerland, England and India, where he studied from the age of 12 in the traditional Kailas Ashram in Rishikesh Panini’s Sanskrit grammar and the Shastras (the Upanishads, Brahmasutras and Bhagavadgita with the traditional Sanskrit commentaries).
Today he teaches Sanskrit, the scriptures, Maitri meditation and Atiyoga, for example, at the Sarvamangala Foundation.
Krishna Premarupa dasa - Board Member
Originally raised Roman Catholic, he decided in 2001 to live as a monk in the Bhakti Yoga tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Since 2007 he has been serving in the Krishna Community of Switzerland as Temple President and has been strongly involved in interfaith dialogue for many years.
Jeganathan Periyathamby - Board Member
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was born in Sri Lanka in 1960, came to Switzerland in the early 1980s, like many of his compatriots, because of the civil war. As a founding member of the Sri Sivasubramaniar Temple Adliswil, he was one of the early pioneers who worked to safeguard Tamil culture and religion. Today he lives with his wife and three children in Zürich. He serves the Adliswil temple as a board member and is responsible for administration. He represents Tamil Hinduism in this Swiss Umbrella Association for Hinduism.
Sowgandhika Krishnan Rao - Board Member / Event Management
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Sowgandhika is an Indian classical dancer and theatre artist. She hails from a family of Sanskrit scholars of the Dvaita Vedanta Vaishnava tradition. Her interest in philosophy started from her teenage years reading the Bhagavad Gita and an introduction to the philosophical works of her grand uncle and eminent scholar Dr. B. N. Krishnamoorthy Sharma. Sowgandhika holds an MBA from HEC Paris, postgrad certifications from Wharton, SDA Bocconi and Yale, and in filmmaking from FTII, Pune. She runs an entertainment startup in Zurich. She organises concerts, dance theatre shows, theatre based corporate training programmes and focuses on education through the arts.
Ganeshkumar Velupillai - Vorstandsmitglied
Born in Sri Lanka in 1957, he came to Switzerland as a refugee in 1982 and worked for around 40 years at SwissOptic AG and Leica Geosystems AG in Heerbrugg SG, among other companies, until his retirement.
In 2001, he also obtained Swiss citizenship. He is married and the father of five daughters. In 2005 he co-founded the Muruga Temple in St. Margrethen. Since the beginning he has been committed to the temple until today in the function of the president.
Swami Amarananda - Member of the Advisory Board
joined the Order of Ramakrishna in 1966. For 20 years he worked in various congregations of the Order in India. In September 1986, he was given responsibility for the Centre Védantique Ramakrishna in France. Three years later he became the director of the Centre Védantique Genèva, which he still runs today.
