Bela Bhatia is an independent writer and human rights lawyer working in the District courts of

Bastar division Bastar division is an administrative division of Chhattisgarh state in central India. It includes the districts of Bastar, Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Sukma, Kondagaon and Kanker. Bastar Division was created in 1999, when the larger B ...

, south Chhattisgarh, India.

Biography

She was born in a middle-class, upper-caste

Punjabi Hindu Punjabi Hindus are adherents of Hinduism who identify ethnically, linguistically, culturally, and genealogically as Punjabis and are natives of the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. Punjabi Hindus are the third-largest religious g ...

family. As a step against the caste system, she converted to

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

at Deekshabhumi, Nagpur, in 2003. Her doctoral thesis was on 'The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar' (Faculty of Social and Political Sciences,

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, 2000). Prior to turning to academics, she was a full-time rights activist for nearly a decade in a ''sangathan'' (collective) of landless agricultural labourers and marginal farmers in Bhiloda taluka of Sabarkantha district (Gujarat) and in autonomous movements for peace and justice in Iraq and Palestine. She first came to Bastar in 2006 when she began studying the ongoing war between the Indian state and the

Communist Party of India (Maoist) The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is a banned Marxist–Leninist-Maoist communist political party and militant organization in India which aims to overthrow the Republic of India through protracted people's war. It was founded on 21 S ...

and continued to visit regularly in the following years. She moved to live in Bastar in January 2015 and has been working there on an independent basis since. Police-linked vigilante organisations harassed her for her human-rights work on several occasions in 2016–17. Twice, through mass actions, they tried to get her evicted from her rented home in a village and force her to leave Bastar. She has been an Associate Fellow at the

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) is an Indian research institute for social sciences and humanities. It was founded in 1963 by Rajni Kothari and is largely funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research.

, Delhi and an Honorary Professor at the

Tata Institute of Social Sciences Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) is a multi-campus public university in Mumbai, India. It is Asia's oldest institute for professional social work education and was founded in 1936 in the then Bombay Presidency of British India as the S ...

, Bombay. Her research interests have included questions related to the lives of dalits, adivasis, and other marginalised communities of rural India. She has been particularly interested in understanding poverty, inequality, injustice and resistance movements. She is amongst the 121 Indians who were allegedly targeted through WhatsApp using Israeli cyber-surveillance NSO Group's notorious Pegasus spyware in 2019 and one of the five Pegasus allegedly targeted civilians globally who are part of the WhatsApp legal case against NSO in a US court (December 2020). She is co-author (with Mary Kawar and Mariam Shahin) of ''Unheard Voices: Iraqi Women on War and Sanctions'' (London: Change, 1992), co-editor (with

Jean Drèze Jean Drèze (born 22 January 1959) is a Belgian-born Indian welfare economist, social scientist and activist. He has worked on several developmental issues facing India like social welfare, poverty and gender inequality. His co-authors inclu ...

and

Kathy Kelly Kathy Kelly (born 1952) is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of ''Voices in the Wilderness'', and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of ''Voices for Creative Nonviolence''. As part of p ...

) of ''War and Peace in the Gulf: Testimonies of the Gulf Peace Team'' (London: Spokesman, 2001) and co-author (with other members of the 'expert group' set up by the Planning Commission, Government of India) of 'Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas' (2 vols, 2008); the first draft of this report was written by K. Balagopal and herself. Her book ''India's Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins'' was published in 2024 by Penguin India. She considers herself to be a humanist, libertarian socialist, and global citizen.

References

External links

Bela Bhatia attacked in Bastar, interview with Bela Bhatia (video)
Footnotes on citizenship from rural India
by Bela Bhatia (video)
Corruption and Change in India
interview with Bela Bhatia (video)
Articles by Bela Bhatia
in ''

Economic and Political Weekly The ''Economic and Political Weekly'' (EPW) is a weekly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all social sciences, and is published by the Sameeksha Trust. In January 2018, academic Gopal Guru was named the new Editor of the journal. Guru will be ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Bhatia, Bela Living people Date of birth missing (living people) Alumni of the University of Cambridge Indian human rights activists 21st-century Indian women writers 21st-century Indian writers Indian women journalists Journalists from Chhattisgarh People from Bastar district Indian political journalists Women writers from Chhattisgarh 1963 births