Second Annual Induben Bhatt Memorial Lecture

The South Asia Studies Council hosted the second annual Induben Bhatt Memorial Lecture on 11th September by Mallika Kaur. Kaur is a lawyer who focuses on gender and minority issues, including domestic violence and post-9/11 human rights concerns, in the United States and South Asia. The lecture was made possible through a generous endowment by the Bhatt family to honor the life of Indu Bhatt, the late wife of Dr. Pravin Bhatt, a Yale research scholar (retired) and secretary emeritus of South Asia Studies Council.

Kaur is a Staff Attorney at Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse, an agency located in Bay Area, California with the sole purpose of serving victims and survivors of domestic violence and abuse. More broadly, Kaur’s work has focused on international human rights with particular expertise in gender and minority rights issues. In the U.S., Mallika has worked closely with immigrant communities in New York, Illinois, and California on issues ranging from post-9/11 civil rights violations to domestic violence against dependent visa holders to political asylum for women and men from Guatemala, Mexico, and Nepal. Additionally, she has experience working in the Mayor’s Office, San Francisco, as well as the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In The Hague, Mallika has worked with the Appeals team of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as well as conducted a consultative research project for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. In South Asia, she has created women’s self-help groups in Haryana; worked on issues of farmer suicides and female feticide in Punjab, on enforced disappearances and gendered violence in Kashmir; as well as studied rule of law issues including torture and police interrogation methods. She received her JD from Berkeley School of Law and MPP from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Kaur’s lecture, titled “Why Attention to “Violence Against Women” is Simply Not Enough”, posed the question that when we respond vociferously to certain types of violence against women, particular rape cases, are we participating in a very selective telling of the story? As someone who has worked with women survivors for over eleven years, Kaur asked what if, amidst the various protests against ghastly acts, we all first protested for a pause? A pause to ponder the underlying causes of violence and the overwhelming strength shown by women and their allies in the face of adversity. Kaur argued that much of the current attention remains focused on violence against women’s bodies. Her lecture pondered on how we might broaden our thinking beyond such violence, and beyond ‘women’s issues’, to in fact create a more inclusive, secure, and just environment for women, men, and communities.

Indu Bhatt, in whose name the endowment has been made, was born in Palitana, India in 1927. She grew up in Palitana and in Ahmedabad, where she graduated from LD Arts College, receiving a BA in economics. She married Pravin N. Bhatt, then a student of medicine, in May of 1946. In 1950, thanks to a scholarship, Dr. Pravin Bhatt arrived in the US to continue his studies at Tulane University. Indu joined him in 1953, also enrolled at Tulane, and studied at the School of Social Work. In 1968, the family moved to New Haven, where Dr. Bhatt began working at the Department of Comparative Medicine at Yale. After a few years, Indu began to work as a Histology technician at the Department of Ophthalmology at Yale. She worked there for over ten years, quickly earning the respect and admiration of her colleagues. After retiring, Indu supported Dr. Bhatt’s efforts for the South Asian Studies Program at Yale by regularly inviting students to their home for dinners, thus providing a home away from home for these students. Throughout her life, Indu had many interests including music, singing, history, philosophy, literature, cooking and gardening. She was an avid reader and an excellent writer of letters. The heart and soul of her family, a trust fund in the name of Indu Bhatt was initiated at Yale University upon her passing in 2010. The funds are used to encourage promising young writers from South Asia to work for some time at Yale.