Prem Chowdhry | |
---|---|
Born | 1944 [1] India |
Occupation | Academic, activist, artist |
Nationality | Indian |
Prem Chowdhry is an Indian social scientist, historian, [2] and Senior Academic Fellow at the Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi. [3] She is a feminist [4] and critic of violence against couples refusing arranged marriages. [5]
She is a well-known scholar of gender studies, authority on the political economy and social history of Haryana state in India. [6] [7]
Chowdhry is a Life Member of the Center for Women Studies. [8] [9] She has also worked at the Indian Council of Social Science Research supported Centre for Contemporary Studies, New Delhi; an advanced studies unit of Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. [10]
Chowdhry is an alumna of Jawaharlal Nehru University, [11] and professorial fellow of the University Grants Commission.
She has provided expert commentary to news media, including to The Guardian about the impact of prejudice against having a daughter in India; [12] to The Guardian, [13] Associated Press , [14] TIME , [15] and Reuters [16] about "honour killings"; to The Statesman about the Haryana social structure; [17] to NPR about the Haryana social structure and how it relates to the rape of Dalit women; [18] to The Indian Express about the political history of Indian cinema; [19] and to Reuters about inheritance rights for women in India. [20] Her 2004 Modern Asian Studies article "Private Lives, State Intervention: Cases of Runaway Marriage in Rural North India" was cited by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada in 2006. [21]
She has also written commentary in The Tribune , including about violence related to inter-caste marriages, [22] and advocacy for an investment in the education of girls to reduce poverty. [23]
Chowdhry is a self-taught artist [24] [25] whose painting are held by the National Gallery, India [ citation needed ] and the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Fine Arts. She started exhibiting in 1970 and her paintings often reflect on the status of women in India. [26] [27]
She is the daughter of Hardwari Lal, [28] the educationist and Indian National Congress member of parliament for Haryana. [29]
The status of women in India has been subject to many changes over the span of recorded Indian history. Their position in society deteriorated early in India's ancient period, especially in the Indo-Aryan speaking regions, and their subordination continued to be reified well into India's early modern period.
Devaki Jain is an Indian economist and writer, who has worked mainly in the field of feminist economics. In 2006 she was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award from Government of India, for her contribution to social justice and the empowerment of women.
A Khap is a community organisation representing a clan or a group of North Indian castes or clans. They are found mostly in northern India, particularly among the Village people of Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, but also amongst states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh although historically the term has also been used among other communities. A Khap Panchayat is an assembly of Khap elders, and a Sarv Khap is an assembly of many Khap Panchayats.
In India, a caste is a social group where membership is decided by birth. Castes often have related political preferences. Broadly, Indian castes are divided into the Forward Castes, Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes, though Indian Christians and Indian Muslims can also function as castes. The reservation system in India essentially acts as affirmative action to provide representation to caste groups that have been systematically disadvantaged.
Gail Omvedt was an American-born Indian sociologist and human rights activist. She was a prolific writer and published numerous books on the anti-caste movement, Dalit politics, and women's struggles in India. Omvedt was involved in Dalit and anti-caste movements, environmental, farmers' and women's movements, especially with rural women.
Feminism in India is a set of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and opportunities for women in India. It is the pursuit of women's rights within the society of India. Like their feminist counterparts all over the world, feminists in India seek gender equality: the right to work for equal wages, the right to equal access to health and education, and equal political rights. Indian feminists also have fought against culture-specific issues within India's patriarchal society, such as inheritance laws.
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Sharmila Rege was an Indian sociologist, feminist scholar and author of Writing Caste, Writing Gender. She led the Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre, at University of Pune which position she occupied since 1991. She received the Malcolm Adiseshiah award for distinguished contribution to development studies from the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) in 2006.
Susan Visvanathan is an Indian sociologist, social anthropologist and a fiction writer. She is well known for her writings on religious dialogue and sociology of religion. Her first book Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual among the Yakoba is a pathbreaking work in the field of sociology of religion.
Female foeticide in India is the abortion of a female foetus outside of legal methods. A research by Pew Research Center based on Union government data indicates foeticide of at least 9 million females in the years 2000-2019. The research found that 86.7% of these foeticides were by Hindus, followed by Sikhs with 4.9%, and Muslims with 6.6%. The research also indicated an overall decline in preference for sons in the time period.
Women in Guyana are a cross-section of Asian, African, and indigenous backgrounds. British colonization and imperialism have contributed to the sexism against Guyanese women in the household, politics, and education.
Violence against women in India refers to physical or sexual violence committed against a woman, typically by a man. Common forms of violence against women in India include acts such as domestic abuse, sexual assault, and murder. In order to be considered violence against women, the act must be committed solely because the victim is female. Most typically, these acts are committed by men as a result of the long-standing gender inequalities present in the country.
Bride buying in India is the practice of forced arranged marriages through human trafficking. Brides are commonly referred to as "paro" or "molki" within this framework. The brides are sold by their parents to human traffickers who transport and sell them within relatively wealthier regions of Northern India. The desire for a male child and subsequent female infanticide has resulted in a significantly lowered sex ratio within India, creating an abundance of unmarried men in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Western UP. These men resort to purchasing inter-region women from impoverished communities mainly to continue their family lineage. The key motivation for low-income families to sell their daughter is to receive financial compensation and avoid having to pay a dowry. Major sources are the impoverished parts of Northeast India (Assam), Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh.
Suvira Jaiswal is an Indian historian. She is known for her research into the social history of ancient India, especially the evolution of the caste system and the development and absorption of regional deities into the Hindu pantheon.
Dalit feminism is a feminist perspective that includes questioning caste and gender roles among the Dalit population and within feminism and the larger women's movement. Dalit women primarily live in South Asia, mainly in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Dalit women face different challenges than women in oppressor castes in these countries. They are more likely to be poor, uneducated and socially marginalized. Dalit feminists advocate and have advocated for equal rights for Dalit women based on gender, caste and other issues. They have addressed conferences, created organizations and helped elect other Dalit women into political office.
Shareefa Hamid Ali, also known as Begum Hamid Ali, was an Indian feminist, nationalist, advocate, and political figure. She was the President of the All India Women's Conference in 1935, and one of the founding members of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 1947.
Gopal Guru is an Indian political scientist. He is the editor of the journal Economic and Political Weekly. He is a retired professor in political science at Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was a visiting professor at Columbia University, Oxford University and University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Earlier, he taught at the University of Delhi and the University of Pune.
Sheila Bhalla was a Canadian-Indian labor economist and trade union activist. She was professor emerita at the School of Social Sciences in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and also taught at Panjab University, Chandigarh. Her work focused on agricultural and labor economics in the Indian state of Haryana.
Wandana Sonalkar is an Indian economist, and an author and translator. She retired as Professor teaches at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai in 2017, and previously taught at the Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad. Her research focuses on gender and caste in India. She has published translations of several books from Marathi to English, including the autobiographies of Urmila Pawar and R.B. More, and in 2021, she published Why I am Not a Hindu Woman, an autobiography and critique of misogyny, caste and violence in the context of the Hindu religion.
her study would have been richer had she placed it in the context of feminist scholarship — one thinks of Prem Chowdhry's fantastic work on changing gender relations in Haryana, for instance, and how she works with notions of caste, gender, labour and economic change.