Sunil Sahasrabudhey (born 1950) is the  founder president of Vidya Ashram  (vidyaashram.org) set up in 2005  at Sarnath, Varanasi. He did Masters in Chemistry and Ph.D. in Philosophy from IIT Kanpur and was a member of the Faculty of The Gandhian Institute of Studies in Varanasi for several years. He has written books relating to the Human Activity and the Concept of the Colonized human, the Farmers' Movement and Science and Politics in Gandhi's philosophical perspective. He has done studies in the philosophy and logic of knowledge and politics with Gandhian perspective and has been active in the Farmer’s Movement in India since the late 1970s. He was a member of the Interstate Coordination Committee of Peasant Organizations (1987-90) and he edited (1977-87) the Hindi fortnightly Mazdoor Kisan Neeti, a journal for radical political activists. He was a member of the PPST Foundation almost from the beginning  and held secretarial positions in the three Congresses of Traditional Sciences and Technologies of India ( IIT Bombay 1993, Anna University, Chennai 1995 and The Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi 1998 ).

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Sahasrabudhey has always worked in group and with friends. He  lives in Vidya Ashram with his partner Dr. Chitra Sahasrabudhey who is a life long activist working amoung women and artisans. With her, he gives all his time to Ashram activities, theory and practice around the idea of lokavidya.  Lokavidya is the knowledge with the people, which ever renews itself with their experiences, needs, change of ethical and aesthetic contexts and so on. It incorporates their practices, expertise, way of thinking, principles of organizations, modes of abstraction etc. Lokavidya constitutes the epistemic strengths of the people, which are likely to provide the new political imagination for a just and sustainable life and its governance. Since the days of the PPST foundation, there is this belief that radical change requires a knowledge intervention. This idea is reinforced by Vidya Ashram. Vidya Ashram has held several dialogues in different parts of the country and  workshops in the global events of the World Social Forum (WSF) to focus on Knowledge in Society (lokavidya) and Knowledge Satyagraha for the dignity and status of knowledge that it deserves.

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Sahasrabudhey and his friends at the Ashram initiated a Lokavidya Jan Andolan (lokavidyajanandolan.blogspot.com) through a conference in 2011, at Vidya Ashram in Sarnath, to start a peoples’ knowledge movement for the dignity of lokavidya and through it a new political imagination. The Vidya Ashram website www.vidyaashram.org  gives a reasonable idea of the work of the Ashram and Sahasrabudhey’s involvement in it.

 

Sunil and Chitra have one daughter and one son.