Gail Omvedt

Dr. Gail Omvedt is an American born Indian scholar, sociologist and human rights activist. Omvedt has been involved in Dalit and anti-caste movements, environmental, farmers' and women's movements.

Biography

She was born in Minneapolis, and studied at Carleton College, and at UC Berkeley where she earned her PhD in sociology in 1973. She has been an Indian citizen since 1983.

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.

Works

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

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,
• Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of Anticaste Intellectuals (2008).

She is currently a Fellow-In-Residence at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla (INDIA).

Positions

Omvedt posits that Hindutva groups foster an ethnic definition of Hinduism based on geography, ancestry and heritage in order to create a solidarity amongst various castes, despite the prevalence of caste-based discrimination.^[1]

Omvedt endorsed the stand taken by Dalit activists at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism that caste discrimination is similar to racism in regarding discriminated groups as "biologically inferior and socially dangerous".^[1]

She has called the United States a "racist country" and has advocated for affirmative action^[2]

She has on occasion supported big-dam projects^[3] and GMO crops.^[4][5]

Critcism

Her stand on racism was opposed by the Indian government^[6] and sociologists including Andre Béteille, who acknowledges that discrimination exists but opposes treating caste as a form of racism simply to protect against prejudice and discrimination, calling such an attempt "politically mischievous and "worse, scientifically nonsense".^[7][8]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Gail Omvedt, Hindutva and ethnicity, The Hindu, Feb 25, 2003 Archived 25 December 2010 at WebCite
2. ^ Gail Omvedt, Mythologies of Merit, Outlook, Aug 29, 2003 (requires registration)(Convenience link) Archived 25 December 2010 at WebCite
3. ^ Gail Omvedt, Open Letter To Arundhathi Roy
4. ^ Gail Omvedt, Burning Farmer's Fields (Part 1), The Hindu, 9 November 2010, [1]
5. ^ Gail Omvedt, Burning Farmer's Fields (Part 2), The Hindu, 10 November 2010, [2]
6. ^ An Untouchable Subject?, NPR, Aug. 29, 2001 Archived 25 December 2010 at WebCite
7. ^ Discrimination that must be cast away,The Hindu, June 03, 2001 Archived 25 December 2010 at WebCite
8. ^ Andre Béteille, Race and caste, The Hindu, 10 March 2001 Archived 25 December 2010 at WebCite

Source: UC Berkeley website, University of Michigan website

External links

• Profile of Gail Omvedt, UC Berkeley sociology website
• Profile of Gail Omvedt, University of Michigan website
• Profile of Gail Omvedt, Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.
• Gail Omvedt, An Open Letter To Arundhati Roy
• Gail Omvedt, The Hindutva bomb, published in The Hindu, June 20, 1998
• Gail Omvedt, Caste System and Hinduism, Economic and Political Weekly, March 13, 2004
• Gail Omvedt, Bhakti versus Hindutva, lecture at the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, April 30, 2007 (requires RealPlayer)
• Hindutva and ethnicity - Gail Omvedt.
• Why Dalits dislike environmentalists - Gail Omvedt

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