Faith, Family and Future : Understanding Interfaith Marriages in the Indian Society
SETU panel discussions after the play “When Gandhi and Mohammed Meet”
Sat, Mar 8, 5pm
Sat, Mar 15, 5pm
Mosesian Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA
PANEL ORGANIZERS
Sugandha Gopal, Ronita Panda, and Gitanjali Srivastava
Panelists
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Mike Ghouse
Dr. Ghouse is an Interfaith Wedding Officiant- InterfaithMarriages.organd a Muslim Wedding Officiant. He is a Muslim, Pluralist, activist, speaker, author, and social scientist.He is the President and founder of the Center for Pluralismand director of the World Muslim Congress. Dr. Mike Ghouse has officiated over 500 interfaith marriages between individuals of different faiths, races, and ethnicities. He is licensed to officiate civil marriages throughout the United States and is available to travel for religious ceremonies outside the U.S., depending on his schedule. Dr. Ghouse has also perfected virtual Nikah ceremonies and has officiated weddings across numerous countries, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Mexico, Egypt, Dubai, and India.. Dr. Ghouse provides coaching to help couples navigate their marriages smoothly and avoid potential hurdles that could lead to divorce. He also conducts a 7-minutes mini workshop on Pluralism while waiting for the arrival of bride and groom.
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Dilip Amin
Dr. Dilip Amin is the founder of Interfaithshaadi.org and HinduSpeakers.org. Dr. Amin is Director of the Peninsula Multifaith Coalition of the San Francisco Bay area. He is a Dharma Ambassador and on the Advisory Committee at the Hindu American Foundation. He is a jail chaplain and a Columnist at Patheos. He is a faculty member at Hindu University of America. Dr. Amin has guided 1200 youth in interfaith relationships over the past 18 years and has summarized his experiences in several books: Hindu Vivaha Samskara, Interfaith Marriage-Share & Respect with Equality and Hindu-Muslim Marriage: Difficulties and Reconciliations. His books are translated in Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam.
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Swayam Bagaria
Dr. Swayam Bagaria is a faculty member in the Department of Religion at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and at the Harvard Divinity School. He primarily works on ideas of psychosocial wellbeing in different cultural and therapeutic settings, with a special focus on India. His current projects include an intellectual and institutional history of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic practice in India, a multi-disciplinary global project designing mental health training programs to serve diverse cultural and spiritual needs of user populations, and a collaborative project on the science of altered states of consciousness and the philosophy of cognitive augmentation. He has also regularly written on the intersection of legal regulation, political governance, and public religious expression in India, including on topics as varied as inter-religious dynamics, uniform civil law, cultural rights of religious minorities, popular Hinduism and the economics of religious institutions. He is also the faculty supervisor for the Harvard Indian Students Association.
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Sejal Patel
Sejal received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in cultural anthropology and psychology. She received her masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Denver, where the bulk of my training focused on the treatment of couples. Sejal wrote her dissertation on applying self-psychology to masculine gender role stress and implications for couples therapy—or in plain terms, how to work effectively with male partners who struggle to be vulnerable, name internal experiences, and participate in couples therapy due to gender role stress and socialization. Sejal developed a specialty integrating my DEI and cultural anthropology knowledge into my work with couples, specifically interracial and intercultural couples, and she frequently present and teach on this topic. She also enjoy reviewing books and have published pieces in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, and GROUP: Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society.