Former Miss India Deepti Diwakar (1981) now adds another feather in her cap.
Deepti, also a dancer and the grand daughter of R.R. Diwakar, who was a member of the Constituent Assembly with Nehru, Sardar Patel and Ambedkar and a pioneer in founding United Karnataka, visited Japan last year.
In Japan, Deepti taught peace, conflict and transformation studies, and about Mahatma Gandhi, her grand father’s founding of modern India, his sponsoring of Martin Luther King Junior’s trip to India in 1959, and Dialogue Negotiation with non-violence at the Seisen University, Tokyo, B.A. and M.A. classes.
She also participated in the Asian Conference on Religions and Peace and at the World Conference in Kyoto.
She enthralled the Japanese with her dance. Performing in Japan was a “special” experience for her. “I danced Bharatnatya for Goddess Bhagya Laxmi and Shinto Goddess ‘Amaterasu’ at the Shinto Temple, Kuruzomi Shinto Center in Okayama. I also visited a shelter at the tsunami-hit Fukushima for people who lost homes, and a children’s centre and danced for ‘Healing our hearts and earth’,” recalls the Bengaluru-based thinker, scholar and entrepreneur, who also visited Byakko Peace Sanctuary.
“Dance brings people together,” she says.
Deepti also did a lecture tour in California and taught at the UC, Berkeley in 2014 and a temple trust in Michigan. “I was a voracious reader,” reveals Deepti when asked about her spiritual quest. Being a science major, she “wondered at how divergent physics and chemistry were from religion. I wanted to find the divine from the point of view of science and from the point of view of inter-religious study. I also studied, questioned and observed myself. I fought with myself. I became revolutionary and then became evolutionary. Yoga helped me in my quest.”
