Do Justice to Me: The Badass Women an Empire Couldn’t Silence

“Do justice to me.”

Maharani Jind Kaur said those words to the British officials taking everything from her: her son, her authority, her country. She was not appealing to their conscience. She was naming what they were doing.

This webinar is about three women from colonial India who used their voices under radically different conditions, and what that tells us about whose testimony has ever been treated as credible.

Jind Kaur, Regent of the Sikh Empire, whose political authority was suppressed by force. Sophia Duleep Singh, her granddaughter, who turned royal proximity into a political weapon as a suffragette. And Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, who taught herself to read in secret, wrote a feminist utopian story with her husband’s permission in 1905, and waited 119 years for UNESCO to formally recognise it.

These are not simply stories of remarkable women. They are a lens on the structures that decide which voices count, which accounts get recorded, and who gets to be a credible witness to their own life.

That question is not historical.

What to expect

60 minutes on Zoom, including Q&A. No pre-reading required, though if you want to read Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream beforehand, it is available free online.

About Anj Handa

Anj Handa is a British Punjabi writer, professional speaker and independent governance specialist based in Leeds, with twenty years of practice in UK civil society. She is the Founder of Inspiring Women Changemakers and writes at Power and Practice on Substack on the politics of voice, inclusive governance and systems change.

She is currently writing a work of narrative non-fiction about the British Partition of India, researched through a feminist lens and grounded in her own family history of displacement.

Accessibility

The session will be held on Zoom and captions are enabled as standard. If you require any other adjustments, please let us know. Email anj@inspiringwomenchangemakers.co.uk.