On the 7th of February, the SOAS South Asia Institute in association with the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust organised the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Annual Lecture: The Liberté Series on ‘The Struggle for Human Rights in India’. The event was held at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, which was packed with attendees ranging from students, journalists to human rights activists, among others. Noor Inayat Khan, GC, MBE, Croix de Guerre with Gold Star, was a descendant of the legendary Tipu Sultan. She was a secret agent who unhesitatingly went on a dangerous mission and was dropped behind enemy lines in the Second World War.
The founder of the Trust, Shrabani Basu, who authored a book on Noor titled ‘Spy Princess’ (2006), opened the event with her journey of how she founded the Trust, and how she and her team campaigned to build a memorial in the name of Noor at Gordon Square (Bloomsbury), from where Noor left for her last mission. The Trust also awards an annual prize to a post-graduate student from SOAS, University of London, working in the area of gender studies and South Asian history. The speaker, Vrinda Grover, is one of the most noted advocates in Supreme Court, India. She is also a researcher and a human rights activist based in New Delhi. Vrinda is also actively involved with the women’s rights movements in India. Her expertise is sought in representing victims and survivors of sexual violence, communal conflict, extra judicial executions, and custodial torture.
Vrinda highlighted several case studies of Indian women in the past few years, who had been raped, murdered, abused, suppressed, and also commented on jurisprudential issues relating to accountability for violence against women and other communities that were vulnerable. The discussion was chaired by Razia Iqbal (BBC), and it dealt with the current scenario of judicial apathy and lack of accountability displayed in cases such as the Ishrat Jahan ‘encounter’, Muzaffarnagar gang rapes, and Kashmiri parents whose children have been mysteriously missing, among others.
Her arguments also referred to a growing trend of perpetrating hatred to dominate electoral politics that is happening across the world. She urged the people, on a global level, to come together and understand the politics of divisiveness and to not give in to this current environment of mistrust and misconceptions that lack simple, hard facts. In 2013, 'TIME' magazine listed her among the 100 most influential people in the world.
