The President of ELINEPA, Dr Dimitrios Vassiliadis, awarded the Bharat Mitra Saman by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations
Dr Dimitrios Vassiliadis was honored by the President of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Dr Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, with the Bharat Mitra Samman – Distinguished Alumni Award, a prestigious distinction presented to distinguished ICCR alumni for their contribution to India’s cultural and educational relations with other countries.
The award was presented by the Ambassador of India to Greece, Shri Ravi Shankar, as part of the celebration of Hindi Day, a subject that lies at the heart of Dr Vassiliadis’s long-standing engagement with Indian Studies. The event took place on 18 September 2026 at the residence of the Ambassador of India in Palaio Psychiko, in the presence of many students and friends of Indian culture.
The award is a recognition of Dimitrios Vassiliadis’s many years of academic and cultural activity in the field of Indian Studies. His work has focused particularly on the study and teaching of Hindi and Sanskrit, as well as on Indian philosophy, religious traditions, and the history and culture of India.
His academic career has been closely connected with India. His studies at Banaras Hindu University and his research brought him into direct contact with the Indian philosophical and linguistic tradition. He subsequently brought this knowledge to Greece through teaching, research, and writing.
A particularly important part of his work has been his more than twenty years of teaching Indian languages at the Foreign Language Teaching Center of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, as well as his educational and scholarly activities as Founder and President of the Hellenic-Indian Society for Culture and Development and the Athens Centre for Indian and Indo-Hellenic Studies. Dr Vasiliadis has contributed to introducing the Greek public to the Hindi and Sanskrit languages, Indian philosophy, and—more broadly—the culture and thought expressed through these traditions.
Beyond the personal academic recognition, this distinction also highlighted the importance of educational and cultural relations between Greece and India. Language, philosophy, and the study of ancient spiritual traditions can serve as bridges of communication between the two cultures.
The ICCR distinction therefore represents an important milestone in Dimitrios Vassiliadis’s career and in his many years of effort to promote greater awareness in Greece of Indian languages, philosophy, and spiritual traditions.
Read the thank-you speech by Dr Dimitrios Vassiliadis: [हिंदी] [English]
