Radha Kumar is an Indian feminist, academic and author. Her work focuses on

ethnic conflict An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within so ...

s and peace processes from a strongly feminist perspective.

Early life

Kumar is the daughter of Lovraj Kumar, a former bureaucrat and the economic historian Dr Dharma Kumar. While Lovraj Kumar belongs to

Uttarakhand Uttarakhand (, ), also known as Uttaranchal ( ; List of renamed places in India, the official name until 2007), is a States and union territories of India, state in North India, northern India. The state is bordered by Himachal Pradesh to the n ...

, Dharma hails from a Tamil

Brahmin Brahmin (; ) is a ''Varna (Hinduism), varna'' (theoretical social classes) within Hindu society. The other three varnas are the ''Kshatriya'' (rulers and warriors), ''Vaishya'' (traders, merchants, and farmers), and ''Shudra'' (labourers). Th ...

family from

south India South India, also known as Southern India or Peninsular India, is the southern part of the Deccan Peninsula in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of ...

. Radha Kumar grew up in

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...

and studied in Modern School (New Delhi). She studied for her master's degree in English Literature at Newnham College, Cambridge, (the college at which her mother had previously studied), before taking her PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Career

Kumar has written several books on a wide range of subjects, mostly dealing with gender issues in a conflict situation. Usually, the conflicts that she has chosen to address in this manner have involved a

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

party or a

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

party or both of these. Kumar has been a director at the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Milia Islamia, a Muslim minority institution located in Delhi. She is also co-founder and Director-General of the ''Delhi Policy Group'', a think-tank which has received generous funding from US-based agencies including the Ford Foundation. Kumar, along with over 40 historians, economists, academics, activists, artists, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and media personalities from 13 countries will speak at the South Asia Union Summit Led by Women which will be held virtually from October 2–3, 2021. This goal of the summit is to discuss solutions for peace, social justice and gender equality.

Kashmir interlocutor panel

In October 2010, Kumar was appointed as one of the three interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir appointed by the

Cabinet Committee on Security The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) is a cabinet committee of the Government of India that discusses, debates and is the final decision-making body on senior appointments in the national security apparatus, defence policy and expenditure, and ...

(CCS) of the Central Government of India. The panel was headed by Dilip Padgaonkar, former editor of the

Times of India ''The Times of India'' (''TOI'') is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by the Times Group. It is the List of newspapers in India by circulation, third-largest newspaper in India by circulation an ...

. and the other member was M.M. Ansari, a former

Election Commission An election commission is a body charged with overseeing the implementation of electioneering process of any country. The formal names of election commissions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and may be styled an electoral commission, a c ...

er of India. Within a few weeks of the panel's constitution, and after private hints had failed, a public reprimand was issued to the panel by P. Chidambaram, home minister of India, for speaking too freely and too frequently to the press; and also for pushing various schemes and solutions, when the assigned job of the panel was to gauge and summarize the views and ideas of Kashmiri society. All of these criticisms pertained to actions taken by Kumar. Her reaction to the reprimand was to tell the press that the home minister (who had appointed the panel) had no business to tell the interlocutors what they should do.

Published works

*''Divide and Fall?: Bosnia in the Annals of Partition'' *''Negotiating Peace in Deeply Divided Societies: A Set of Simulations'' *''Making Peace with Partition'' *'' The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and Feminism in India 1800–1990'' *''Bosnia-Herzegovina: Between War and Peace''(Co editor) *''Frameworks For A Kashmir Settlement'' *''Paradise at war: A political history of Kashmir '' *'' The Republic Relearnt: Renewing Indian Democracy (1947-2024) ''

References

External links

Radha Kumar articles
Foreign Affairs {{DEFAULTSORT:Kumar, Radha Indian women non-fiction writers Living people Jamia Millia Islamia Indian social sciences writers Year of birth missing (living people)