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Madhu Khanna is an Indian scholar based inDelhi who works onIndic studies,Religious Studies andTantric studies. She is a well-known expert on the goddess centricŚakta tantric traditions ofIndia. At present she serves as the Director and founding trustee ofTantra Foundation andShrikunja. She is also currently serving as a subject expert to the Acarya Shankar Sanskritik Ekta Nyas, set up by the culture department of the Madhya Pradesh government for their Omkareshwar Project.[1] At present she also serves in the academic council of Nalanda University[2] and in the fellowship council of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. She has many research papers as well as several books and exhibition catalogues to her credit. She has contributed to three national projects, as well as several research projects for the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA).[3]
Khanna obtained her PhD inIndology/Religious Studies from the Faculty ofOriental Studies,University of Oxford, in 1986. Her PhD thesis was onThe Concept and Liturgy of theSricakra based onSivananda's Trilogy, under the supervision of ProfessorAlexis Sanderson, Ethics and Religion,All Souls College,University of Oxford. Her subject was Esoteric Hinduism, with special reference to HinduTantra and Goddess Traditions. Her research has shown that the origins ofSri Vidya as a central doctrine ofShaktism were inKashmir.[citation needed]
Khanna has served as a Professor of Religious/ Indic Studies and Director for the Centre for the Study of Comparative Religion and Civilizations,Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. There she taught Hindu Studies, cross-cultural studies in the areas of Religion and Gender, Religion and Ecology and Religion and the Arts. These courses introduced by her were taught for the first time in India at Jamia. She is also credited with organising the first-ever international Religious Studies conference at Jamia. After completing her tenure at Jamia, she was awarded the Tagore National Fellowship by the National Museum, New Delhi.
Prior to this, she has been Associate Professor (Religious studies/Indic studies) at theIGNCA, where she researched and organised all major, inter-disciplinary research projects and exhibitions. Notably:Prakriti: Man in Harmony with the Elements, a cross-cultural, inter-disciplinary project;Rta: Cosmic Order & Chaos, a cross-cultural seminar which explored the multi-faceted Vedic concept ofRta, which pervades all aspects of life, the natural order, the human world, the social and the moral worlds, as well as the arts; andRupa-Pratirupa: Man, Mind & Mask, to name a few. She conceptualised and executedNarivada: Gender, Culture & Civilization Network of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), Delhi. Narada is a pioneer project that revisions and contextualizes women's cultural resources and knowledge systems in South Asia as an integral element inGender Studies.
She has also been involved with three research-based, multi-media-exhibition projects of national interest in collaboration with the Sacred World Research Laboratory, New Delhi. The most recent of these was a project commissioned by Ayush, Ministry of Health. The project was titledPlanet Health: Green Consciousness inAyurveda andYoga, A Multimedia Exhibit (2010). For this project in her capacity as Honorary Director for Content Research, Documentation and Production, she produced 150 documentary videos on Indian health heritage, namely Ayurveda and yoga. The project involved interviews with scholars, masters of yoga and experts in Ayurveda. For theEternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum Exhibit (2002), she produced the content research on the life and philosophy ofMahatma Gandhi. The videos are exhibited in 51 interactive installations permanently housed in the memorialGandhi Smriti,Birla House, New Delhi, where the Mahatma was assassinated. The Mahavira Mahatma Award was conferred upon Madhu Khanna by the Times Foundation, New Delhi, in 2005 for her work on this project.The Crossing Project: Living, Dying and Transformation in Benaras (2002) was sponsored by Xerox PARC,Palo Alto Research Center. She was conferred the Excellence in Research certificate by Xerox PARC for this project.The Crossing Project won the following awards: Winner Prix Arts Electronica,Linz, Austria, 2002; WinnerID Magazine Gold Prize, Interactive Review, New York, 2002; Jury's Recommendation, CG Arts Festival, Japan, 2002. Currently, she is the President and Founding Member of theTantra Foundation in New Delhi. She recently initiated an ecological project,Shri Kunja – A Rural Centre for Eco Heritage in Bamunara village,Burdwan, West Bengal, to create aherbarium of traditional plants based on ancient Hindu scriptures to promote programmes for ecological sustainability.
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