Gita Sahgal facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gita Sahgal
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Sahgal speaking in London, July 2017
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| Born | 1956/1957 (age 67–68) Bombay, Bombay State, India
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| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | School of Oriental and African Studies |
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| Parent(s) | Nayantara Sahgal (mother) |
| Relatives | Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (grandmother) Jawaharlal Nehru (great uncle) |
Gita Sahgal (born 1956 or 1957) 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.
She has been a co-founder and active member of women's organisations. She has also been head of Amnesty International's Gender Unit, and has opposed the oppression of women in particular by religious fundamentalists.
In February 2010, she was suspended by Amnesty as head of its Gender Unit after she was quoted by The Sunday Times criticising Amnesty for its high-profile associations with Moazzam Begg, director of the campaign group Cage (formerly Cageprisoners), that represents men detained at Guantanamo under extrajudicial conditions. She referred to him as "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban".
Amnesty responded that she was suspended "for not raising these issues internally". Speaking in her support were novelist Salman Rushdie, journalist Christopher Hitchens and others, who criticised Amnesty for the affiliation. Begg disputed her claims of his jihadi connections and said that he did not consider anyone a terrorist who had not been convicted of terrorism.
Sahgal left Amnesty International on 9 April 2010.
Contents
Early life and education
Gita Sahgal was born in India, the daughter of the novelist Nayantara Sahgal. She was raised as a Hindu, and says she is now an atheist. She is a great-niece of former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and the granddaughter of his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit. Schooled first in India, she moved to England in 1972, where she attended and graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She returned to India in 1977, and began working in the civil rights movement. She moved back to England in 1983.
Career
Activism
Women's organisations
In 1979 she co-founded Southall Black Sisters, a non-profit organisation based in Southall, West London.
In 1989 she co-founded and has participated with Women against Fundamentalism. It has criticised Great Britain for protecting only Christianity and its blasphemy laws. She believes this exclusion of protection for immigrant religions contributes to the growth of sectarianism and immigrants' turning towards religious fundamentalism.
Invasion of Iraq; Views on Guantanamo Bay
Sahgal, who was against the United States and allies' invasion of Iraq, also condemned the extrajudicial detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay. She told Moazzam Begg, a British citizen and former Guantanamo Bay detainee, that she was "horrified and appalled" by the treatment he and other detainees received.
Secularism
Gita Sahgal is the executive director of the Centre for Secular Space and an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.
Writing and film producer
Among her various writings, in 1992, she contributed to and co-edited Refusing Holy Orders: Women and Fundamentalism in Britain with Nira Yuval-Davis.
In 2002 she produced Tying the Knot. The film was commissioned by the U.K.'s Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Community Liaison Unit, set up to handle the problem of British victims of forced marriage who have been, or may be, taken abroad to marry against their will. Sahgal said she was not opposed to arranged marriages unless the persons involved were abducted or subjected to physical or emotional abuse.
Saghal also made Unprovoked, a film about the case of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, for Channel 4's Dispatches documentary series. Ahluwalia was a Punjabi woman brought to the UK for an arranged marriage who was repeatedly abused by her husband. .....
In addition, Sahgal produced the British documentary film The War Crimes File, about atrocities committed during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.
Select writings
Book
- Refusing holy orders: women and fundamentalism in Britain, co-editor with Nira Yuval-Davis, and contributor, Virago Press (1992), WLUML (2002), ISBN: 1-85381-219-6
Chapters
- Looking at class: film, television and the working class in Britain, Sheila Rowbotham, Huw Beynon, "Chapter: Struggle Not Submission", Rivers Oram Press, 2001, ISBN: 1-85489-121-9
- Feminist postcolonial theory: a reader, Reina Lewis, Sara Mills, Chapter: "The Uses of Fundamentalism", with Nira Yuval-Davis, Taylor & Francis, 2003, ISBN: 0-415-94275-6
- The situated politics of belonging, Nira Yuval-Davis, Kalpana Kannabirān, Ulrike Vieten, "Chapter: Legislating Utopia? Violence Against Women: Identities and Interventions," SAGE, 2006, ISBN Ch1412921015
See also
In Spanish: Gita Sahgal para niños
In Spanish: Gita Sahgal para niños
- List of Indian writers
- Mandakranta Sen
- Sithara S.
