Indian Lives Series Book 3
In 1947, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay made an unexpected visit to a gloomy government building in New Delhi to confront one of the gravest crises facing the newly independent nation-the fate of the millions of refugees pouring across the borders with Pakistan. She had no official standing, but somehow managed to arrange for a piece of land just outside the capital, where a model town would be built to house 30,000 people. This town is today's Faridabad.
This is just one of the many efforts-often forgotten-made by an indomitable woman who strove to empower others throughout her life. Born a Saraswat Brahmin in Mangalore, Kamaladevi was a performing artist, a Gandhian, a social reformer, an educationist, an institution builder, a patron of the arts, an author, a visionary. She built bridges across divides decreed by tradition, while establishing her own identity as an Indian woman finding a place for herself in a male-dominated world. Her dream was of an India that was free not just of colonial rule but of the shackles of poverty, caste oppression and gender disparities.
Nico Slate's new and definitive biography explores the life of Kamaladevi, one of the most inspiring figures of twentieth-century India.
This is the third book in the Indian Lives series, edited and curated by Ramachandra Guha.
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About the Author
Nico Slate is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. His research and teaching focus on the history of social movements in the United States and India. He is the author of four books: Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2012); The Prism of Race: W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and the Colored World of Cedric Dover (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Lord Cornwallis Is Dead: The Struggle for Democracy in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2019); and Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World (University of Washington Press, 2019). Born in Los Angeles and raised in California's Mojave Desert, Dr. Slate earned degrees in Earth Systems and the Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities from Stanford University and in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University before completing his Ph.D. in History at Harvard University.