Maqbool Fida Husain was an Indian artist known for executing bold, vibrantly coloured narrative paintings in a modified Cubist style. He was one of the most celebrated and internationally recognised Indian artists of the 20th century. He was one of the founding members of Bombay Progressive Artists' Group. M.F. Husain is associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. His early association with the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group used modern technique, and was inspired by the "new" India after the partition of 1947. His narrative paintings, executed in a modified Cubist style, can be caustic and funny as well as serious and sombre. His themes—sometimes treated in series—include topics as diverse as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the British Raj, and motifs of Indian urban and rural life. In September 2020, his painting titled “Voices”, auctioned for a record $2.5 million.
Human rights in Myanmar under its military regime have long been regarded as among the worst in the world. In 2022, Freedom House rated Myanmar’s human rights at 9 out 100.
Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray is an Indian politician who served as the 19th Chief Minister of Maharashtra from 2019 to 2022 and the Leader of the House, Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from 2019 to 2022. He is a member of Maharashtra Legislative Council since 2020, the president of Maha Vikas Aghadi since 2019 and the president of Shiv Sena since 2022. He was also the leader (pramukh) of Shiv Sena from 2013 to 2022, working President from 2003 to 2013 and the editor-in-chief of Saamana from 2006 to 2019.
The Godfrey Phillips National Bravery Awards is a surrogate tobacco brand promotional activity of Godfrey Phillips India, instituted in 1990, as a PR campaign to promote its cigarette brand "Red and White" by honoring courageous people in Indian society. It is supported by a parallel advertising campaign, "Red & White Piney Walon Ki Baat hi Kuch Aur Hai." The award purports to recognise the ordinary citizens who have selflessly performed extraordinary, little-known acts of physical bravery and social acts of courage, thereby setting an example for others to follow.
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organization is to campaign for "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments." The organization has played a notable role on human rights issues due to its frequent citation in media and by world leaders.
Kamla Beniwal is an Indian politician. She was a senior member of Indian National Congress party. She served as a minister on different posts and Deputy Chief Minister of Rajasthan in 2003. Later she served as Governor of different Indian states between 2009 and 2014. She became the first woman minister in Rajasthan in 1954 at the age of 27. She has been the first ever woman Governor of any northeastern state. She was awarded Tamrapatra by former prime minister Indira Gandhi in recognition of her contribution in the freedom struggle.
Sunitha Krishnan is an Indian social activist and chief functionary and co-founder of Prajwala, a non-governmental organization that rescues, rehabilitates and reintegrates sex-trafficked victims into society. She was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award the Padma Shri in 2016.
Irom Chanu Sharmila, also known as the "Iron Lady of Manipur" or "Mengoubi" is an Indian civil rights activist, political activist, and poet from the Indian state of Manipur, which is located on the north-eastern side of India. On 5 November 2000, she began a hunger strike in favour of abolishing the Armed Forces Act, 1958 that applies to the seven states and grants Indian armed forces the power to search properties without a warrant, and to arrest people, and to use deadly force if there is "reasonable suspicion" that a person is acting against the state. She ended the fast on 9 August 2016, after 16 long years of fasting. Having refused food and water for more than 500 weeks, she has been called "the world's longest hunger striker". On International Women's Day, 2014 she was voted the top woman icon of India by MSN Poll.
Rukhsana Kausar KC is a Gujjar woman from Upper Kalsi known for the 2009 shooting of a LeT terrorist at her home, in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India. She was born to Noor Hussain and Rashida Begum. A Class 10 dropout, she has been awarded the India National Bravery Award, for the killing of a Laskar-E-Taiba terror cell leader, Abu Osama, at her residence, using an axe and AK47 rifle. She has a younger brother, Aijaz, who helped her chase the other terrorists involved in the home invasion and contact the police afterward.
Gita Sahgal is a British writer, journalist, film director, and women's rights and human rights activist, whose work focusses on the issues of feminism, fundamentalism and racism.
Bawandar is a 2000 Indian film, based on the true story of Bhanwari Devi, a rape victim from Rajasthan, India. The film depicts the personal trauma, public humiliation and legal injustice that Bhanwari Devi went through, while pursuing justice in the Indian courts.
Bhanwari Devi is an Indian social-worker from Bhateri, Rajasthan, who was gang raped in 1992 by men angered by her efforts to prevent a child marriage in their family. Her subsequent treatment by the police, and court acquittal of the accused, attracted widespread national and international media attention, and became a landmark episode in India's women's rights movement.
Kirity Roy is an Indian civil rights activist working in West Bengal. He is the founder secretary of Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM) of a non-governmental human rights organisation based in Serampore, Hoogly, near Kolkata. he has been documenting alleged state atrocities, particularly in Indo-Bangladesh bordering districts of West Bengal. In 2003, Roy was elected to the board of Amnesty International India.
Soni Sori is an Adivasi school teacher turned political leader of Aam Aadmi Party in Sameli village of Dantewada in south Bastar, Chhattisgarh, India. She was arrested by the Delhi Police's Crime Branch for Chhattisgarh Police in 2011 on charges of acting as a conduit for Maoists. During her imprisonment, she was tortured and sexually assaulted by Chhattisgarh state police. By April 2013, the Indian Courts had acquitted her in six of the eight cases filed against her due to lack of evidence. After release from prison, Sori began campaigning for the rights of those caught up in the conflict between Maoist insurgents and the government, in particular criticising police violence against tribespeople in the region.
The 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, commonly known as the Nirbhaya case, involved a rape and fatal assault that occurred on 16 December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood in South West Delhi. The incident took place when Jyoti Singh, a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern, was beaten, gang-raped, and tortured in a private bus in which she was travelling with her male friend, Awindra Pratap Pandey. There were six others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman and beat her friend. She was rushed to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi for treatment and transferred to Singapore eleven days after the assault, where she succumbed to her injuries 2 days later. The incident generated widespread national and international coverage and was widely condemned, both in India and abroad. Subsequently, public protests against the state and central governments for failing to provide adequate security for women took place in New Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with security forces. Similar protests took place in major cities throughout the country. Since Indian law does not allow the press to publish a rape victim's name, the victim was widely known as Nirbhaya, meaning "fearless", and her struggle and death became a symbol of women's resistance to rape around the world.
Bitti Mohanty, also called Bitihotra Mohanty is a computer engineer and is a high-profile convict sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for raping a German tourist at Alwar, India and was since absconding after he was released on parole on 20 November 2006 to meet his ailing mother at Cuttack, Orissa. He was arrested from Kannur in Kerala, on Saturday, 9 March 2013. His case was one of the quickest rape trials conducted by a fast-track court; the trial was completed within 15 days of lodging the complaint. The parole was granted within 8 months of his conviction. His father, Bidya Bhushan Mohanty, an Indian Police Service officer, stood as surety for his son's 15 days' parole and was subsequently suspended and arrested on the charges of helping, hiding and harbouring his son. He was later reinstated into service in 2009 and retired in 2012. Six years after his son's disappearance, the father expressed ignorance about his son's whereabouts and asserted that his son did not commit any major crime.
The 2013 Kerala solar panel scam occurred in 2013, when a solar energy company, Team Solar, in Kerala, India, used two women to create political contacts with links including to the Chief Minister's office. The company duped several influential people to the tune of 70 lakhs, by offering to make them business partners, or by offering to install solar power units for them, and receiving advance payments for the same. Team Solar was unsuccessful in lobbying Kerala Govt to get their firm included in ANERT programmes.
Rajni Kumar was a British-born Indian educationist and the founder of Springdales Group of Schools. She was the recipient of the Padma Shri, the Government of India's fourth highest civilian award, in 2011.
Phoolbasan Bai Yadav is an Indian social worker and the founder of the non governmental organization, Maa Bamleshwari Janhit Kare Samiti, known for her efforts towards the development of economically and socially backward women of Chhattisgarh, India. She was honored by the Government of India, in 2012, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri. She also acts as a mentor to Vision India Foundation. She appeared in the Karmveer special episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati along with Renuka Shahane.
Vishal Garg is an Indian researcher working mainly in building energy efficiency and Cool Roofs. Garg is University Chair Professor and Dean Academics at Plaksha University. Previously he was Professor and Head of the Center for IT in Building Science at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. He is the recipient of the inaugural Dr. Arthur H. Rosenfeld Urban Cooling Achievement Award. He is actively involved in supporting the formulation of national-level policies and standards and implementation of building energy codes in India, and was made a Fellow of IBPSA in 2019.
