Bela Bhatia

Bela Bhatia (born 1963) is an Indian academic and human rights worker based in Bastar, south Chhattisgarh. She holds a Ph.D in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge (her thesis was on 'The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar,' 2000), a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B, 1989) from the Gujarat University, and a Master of Arts in Social Work (M.A., 1985) from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay.

Bela has been an Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS, Delhi) and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay. Her research interests have included questions related to people’s struggles, human rights, peace, and democracy, especially with reference to the lives of poor and marginalised communities in rural India. She has been particularly interested in understanding the forms that resistance has taken, from nonviolent movements to armed insurgency. The latter has taken her to insurgency-torn regions of the country including Kashmir, Nagaland and Bastar.

Since 2006, she has been a regular visitor to Bastar where she has been studying the ongoing war between the Indian state and the Communist Party of India (Maoist). She moved to live in Bastar in January 2015 and has been working there on an independent basis. She has been harassed by police-linked vigilante organisations on several occasions in 2016-17.[1][2]

Prior to turning to academics, she was involved in full-time democratic rights and peace activism for nearly a decade in a trade union of landless agricultural labourers and marginal farmers in Bhiloda taluka of Sabarkantha district (Gujarat), and in Iraq and Palestine.

She is co-author (with Mary Kawar and Mariam Shahin) of Unheard Voices: Iraqi Women on War and Sanctions (London: Change, 1992) and co-editor (with Jean Drèze and Kathy Kelly) of War and Peace in the Gulf: Testimonies of the Gulf Peace Team (London: Spokesman, 2001). She is married to the developmental economist Jean Drèze.

References

  1. ↑ "Academic Bela Bhatia Attacked, Threatened in Bastar". Wire.in. Retrieved 8 March 2017.
  2. ↑ "Why Chhattisgarh wants this researcher out". The Hindu. Retrieved 8 March 2017.
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