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Author

Gail Omvedt

1 book · 1 session

Smiling into the camera on a beach at sunset, in a dark shirt, the sea behind her.
Image: Krantivir2014 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped and recoloured

Gail Omvedt (1941–2021) was a sociologist and writer on caste, class, and the anti-caste movement in India. Born in Minneapolis, she came to India for her doctoral research on the non-Brahmin movement in western India, settled in Kasegaon in Maharashtra, and took Indian citizenship in 1983.

She wrote on Phule and on Ambedkar, on Dalit and non-Brahmin politics, and on the peasant and women's movements she took part in alongside her research rather than only wrote about.

On the reading list

What the circle has read of theirs

  1. 01

    Ambedkar

    towards an enlightened India

    Gail Omvedt's biography of Dr. Ambedkar for Penguin's Lives series, tracing his path from an untouchable childhood in colonial India to the framing of its Constitution, and his lifelong argument that political freedom without social democracy is worthless.

    1 session