Ashwin Raman

Ashwin Raman (born 18 June 1946) is a German journalist and documentary filmmaker of Indian descent. Raman is notable for a number of prize-winning documentaries which have garnered him the Grimme Prize, the Robert Geisendörfer Prize (2012), Otto Brenner Special Award, the international CNN Rory Peck Award and the Deutscher Fernsehpreis, among others.

Early life Raman's father was the editor-in-chief of The Times of India (Ahmedabad edition) and his mother a teacher. After completing his bachelor's degree in literature in India, he received a scholarship for a master's degree at the University of Oxford. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich he worked as a host and made his first contacts with Germany during this time. After his Master's degree he returned to India and started working as a reporter for The Times of India.

At this time, India's political situation was extremely unstable owing to Indira Gandhi's state of emergency. Raman was imprisoned for evading censorship with an underground newspaper. Amnesty International in Hamburg took up his case and were able to aid him to migrate to Germany.