Gail Omvedt: Feisty Theoretician, Spirited Activist, and Staunch Anti-Caste Crusader
Gail Omvedt (1949-2021) has been widely regarded as the voice of voiceless and the marginalised, celebrated for her vociferous and pro-subaltern mode of academic activism. She was born in Minneapolis, USA and lived her life in Kasegav, Sangli (Maharashtra). Omvedt came to India in 1971 for her docto...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Univ.
2021
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| In: |
Nidān
Year: 2021, Volume: 6, Issue: 2, Pages: 98-101 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Gail Omvedt (1949-2021) has been widely regarded as the voice of voiceless and the marginalised, celebrated for her vociferous and pro-subaltern mode of academic activism. She was born in Minneapolis, USA and lived her life in Kasegav, Sangli (Maharashtra). Omvedt came to India in 1971 for her doctoral research on social movements and Jyotiba Phule. Studying at Carleton College, Minnesota, under the mentorship of Eleanor Zelliot, who was among the earliest Western academics to study the marginalized sections of Indian society, Gail read Buddha, Ambedkar, Phule, Iyothee Thass, and Ravidas with great enthusiasm. She became an Indian citizen in 1983, and her precise and rigorous reconstruction and deconstruction of anti-caste, environmental, peasant and feminist movements have mapped the embedded exploitation of socio-feudal structures of capitalist and Brahmanical hegemony. The integrative perspective of her writings and ideas, juxtaposed to praxis informed by Marxism, Buddhism, Ambedkar-ism, and feminism made her a champion of neo-subaltern studies in India. While going through her research informed by ground-truth, every page reverberates with a story of voiceless subjects and traduced communities. Her spirit of activism resulting from the organic subjective understanding she developed, saw her cataloguing analytical stories about the neglect and exploitation of tribals, Dalits and other deprived communities. While discussing her penchant for organic sociology, one cannot therefore delink Omvedt from the category of scholarly activism since her scholarly writings were deeply connected with grassroots activism. |
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| ISSN: | 2414-8636 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Nidān
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.58125/nidan.2021.2 |