Board of Trustees - The 1947 Partition Archive in India

The 1947 Partition Archive in India's Board of Directors come from diverse backgrounds and are lending their knowledge, time and expertise in governance.  Listed in alphabetical order:

Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla 

Guneeta Singh Bhalla is Founder of The 1947 Partition Archive. In 1947 her father's family migrated from Lahore to Amritsar on August 14Previously, she was an experimental condensed matter physicist and completed her tenure as a post-doctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley, in December 2012. She studied quantum confinement at interfaces that include oxide heterostructures and domain walls in multiferroics. After a 2008 visit to the oral testimony archives at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial she was inspired and began interviewing Partition survivors in 2010. In 2011 The 1947 Partition Archive was born. She has personally interviewed over 100 Partition survivors and rallied volunteers to join in building the grassroots foundations of this people-powered organization.

Sonam Kalra

Sonam Kalra is an award winning singer and composer, known for her beautiful, powerful voice and complex compositions. Trained in both Indian and Western traditions of music, she is equally adept at both. Her creative and unique expressions of music have made her a popular voice at prestigious stages including the Sydney Opera House and MTV's Coke Studio as well as festivals and venues across 30 countries. Sonam has shared the stage with legendary musicians like Sir Bob Geldof at the Sounds of Freedom Concert in New Delhi and Sufi Legend Abida Parveen at Muzaffar Ali's World Sufi Festival. She sang at Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas's wedding as well as Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor's wedding. She has also performed for the Prime Minister and President of India as well as 52 heads of World states. Her fully immersive and experiential audio visual performance 'Partition - Stories of Separation' has been received with standing ovations by audiences at sold out events.

Sumathy Sodhi

Bio coming soon.

Vikram Sodhi

Bio coming soon.

Emeritus

Mr. Arun Seth (Chairman Emeritus)

Arun Seth is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Calcutta and has worked in senior commercial positions in the UB Group and HCL among others for the last 40 years. He has been the non-Executive Chairman of Alcatel-Lucent India since May 2011. He has worked for BT Group in India in a variety of positions over 17 years before retiring in July 2012 as non-Executive Chairman. He was on the board of Tech Mahindra (earlier Mahindra BT) since inception, on the board of Airtel Board untill 2002, as well as Jubilant Foodworks (Dominos), Cadista Pharma (a Jubilant group co) in USA, Centum Learning (a Bharti Group co), Usha Breco Ltd, Samtel Avionics (in a JV with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd). He is a Charter Member of TiE Delhi, Indian Angel Network and on the Advisory Board for National Entrepreneurship network. He is deeply interested and actively involved in philanthropy and has served on NGO boards such as Helpage India where he chairs the Resource Committee, Katha, SPIC-MACAY and India Sponsor Foundation. He is also a Trustee of The Nasscom Foundation, which drives CSR initiatives for the IT Industry. 

Mr. Kaushik Datta

Kaushik Datta is an experienced Director at the Thought Arbitrage Research Institute (TARI), a not for profit organisation set up under Section 25 of the Indian Companies Act. TARI is one of the few privately-funded, independent and non-partisan Indian think-tanks on - Corporate Governance, Sustainability, Economics and Public Policy. Tari's reports on Fraud and Corruption have been discussed in the Indian Parliament, the Indian government has referred to it while answering questions on corruption raised by MPs & academics, media, UN agencies refer to this report as a bench mark study. He has worked with SFIO to develop fraud prediction models. In 2018-19, Tari was engaged by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to develop a fraud prediction model based on research for use on public filings. Kaushik has authored books published by Oxford University Press or Lexis Nexis titled - Corporate Governance- Myth to reality( 2005), India Means Business- how the elephant got its stripes( 2012), Hand book for independent directors- upholding the moral Compass( 2016 and 2 edition in 2017) , Audit Committee Handbook( 2018), Corporate Governance in India( 2016) and 1000 pages in CR Dutta's - Companies Act, 2013 and over 100 Op ed and other columns in news papers and periodicals.