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Gail Omvedt

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Dr. Gail Omvedt is an American born Indian scholar, sociologist and human rights activist. She was born in Minneapolis, and studied at the Carleton College, and at the UC Berkeley where she earned her PhD in sociology in 1973. She has been an Indian citizen since 1983.

Positions

Omvedt has been involved in the social movements in India like the Dalit and anti-caste movements, environmental, farmers' and women's movements. She has called the United States a "racist country" and has openly advocated for affirmative action Omvedt's views are shared by groups such as the Dalit Voice publication and polemicists such as Kancha Ilaiah, who is regarded by his critics as an anti-Hindu

Works

Omvedt's academic writing includes numerous books and articles on class, caste and gender issues, most notably:

  • We Shall Smash This Prison: Indian Women in Struggle (1979),
  • Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements in India (1993),
  • Gender and Technology: Emerging Asian Visions (1994),
  • Dalits and the Democratic Revolution (1994),
  • Dalit Visions: the Anticaste movement and Indian Cultural Identity (1994)

Her more recent works are:

  • Buddhism in India : Challenging Brahmanism and Caste,
  • Growing Up Untouchable: A Dalit Autobiography Among Others.

In recent years she has been working as a consulting sociologist on gender, environment and rural development, for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Oxfam Novib (NOVIB) and other institutions.

Omvedt's dissertation was on Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The NonBrahman Movement in Western India, 1873-1930.

Views on Caste

Omvedt is on record as equating caste practices with racism, contrary to the stated view of Indian government, which admits that caste discrimination in India is undeniable but holds the view that caste and race are entirely distinct, and contrary to prominent sociologists of caste including Andre Béteille, who writes that treating caste as a form of racism is "politically mischievous" and worse, "scientifically nonsense" since there is no discernable difference in the racial characteristics between Brahmins and Scheduled Castes. Béteille has written that "Every social group cannot be regarded as a race simply because we want to protect it against prejudice and discrimination".

References

  1. Mythologies of Merit by Gail Omvedt
  2. Poliakov, Léon (1994). Histoire de l’antisémitisme 1945-93 (P.395). Paris.
  4. Hindutva and ethnicity,'by Gail Omvedt
  5. An Untouchable Subject?
  6. Discrimination that must be cast away,The Hindu

Source: UC Berkeley website, University of Michigan website

External links

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