This website has been built as part of a larger effort to create a series of websites based on Indian philosophical texts. Our team works under a project in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Members

T.V. PRABHAKAR (Professor, IIT Kanpur)
TVP is the heart of the group. Together with VC, he began this work many years ago and, kept it alive and going, even in the occasional absence of official funding. Passionate about learning and teaching, he stays abreast of the latest on technology. Also passionate about Indian philosophy: appears “inspired” to work on the Bhagavadgita and Upanishads, often against great odds!

RAVI S MULA
Ravi re-engineered the platform and brought new life to the effort.

T. ARCHNA.
Archna is the Subject Specialist in the group and directs the content, interface and features of the websites. Would rather be an out-of-work-philosopher than be employed in any other capacity. But is interested in exploring technology to see how its use can enhance the study of philosophical texts. She has a huge number of ideas and the technology group can hardly keep pace with them.

HARISH C. KARNICK (Professor, IIT Kanpur).
HK took over the group’s leadership when TVP went on a years’ leave. Putting in enormous energy and remaining accessible to the group at all times, he has moved the work towards a major consolidation of effort. The project is now unthinkable without him.

NITIN GAUTAM
Nitin did lots of interesting things with the site. He brought in a CMS, streamlined Indian language display issues writing converters to the scripts we are using.

MURAT DHWAJ SINGH.
MD is the senior programmer in the group, having worked to build the first version of the Gita Supersite. Quiet and unassuming, he has picked up enormous experience in putting up Indian language websites. His non-confrontationist attitude helps keep peace when tempers run high!

MADHU KUMAR DHAVALA.
Madhu has joined the group mainly to develop and test our sites and softwares. His major assets are his active participation in the group, willingness to learn and a charming smile!

RAJEEV BHATIA.
Rajeev is the local wizard on data-entry and proofreading. The accuracy and speed of his typing, both in English and Devanagari are truly remarkable, and his keen eyes catch errors that the proofreaders miss. Over the years, Rajeev has quietly made himself indispensable to the group.

SAURABH KUMAR.
The latest recruit, Saurabh has joined the group mainly to test our sites and software. His major assets are his active participation in the group, willingness to learn and a charming smile!

Others

DR. VINEET CHAITANYA was the driving force behind the Geeta Vaatika, as well as the inspiration for the Gita Supersite. Now he watches our activities from IIIT Hyderabad, and is still one of the few who truly understand the spirit behind this work.

NAGARAJU PAPPU, the first one, wrote 100,000 lines of C-code for the initial versions of Geeta Vaatika. His DOS version had more features than the current HTML one!

Apart from the current team, those who have contributed to the growth of these websites in a major way include:K. Anil Kumar, Anvita Bajpai, Ashutosh Sharma, Gita Pathak, Rajni Moona,  K. Ravi Kiran, Rohit Patwardhan, Samudra Gupta, Shrikant Trivedi and Tripti Singh.

Sponsors

This work was done as part of the activities of the Resource Centre for Indian Language Technology Solutions, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. The Resource Centres are funded by the Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India under its programme, Technology Development for Indian Languages. We gratefully acknowledge their financial assistance.