First Indian Dalit woman to receive ‘Genius Grant’ of 6 crores, know who is Shailja Pike?

Shailja Pike, a resident of Maharashtra, has received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship of 8 lakh dollars i.e. about 6 crore 72 lakh rupees, which is also known as ‘Genius Grant’. She has not only become the first Indian Dalit woman to receive this fellowship but is also the first professor of Cincinnati University.

Sonu Sharma

Recently, an American female professor of Indian origin has received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, after which she has come into the limelight. MacArthur Fellowship is also called ‘Genius Grant’. Under this ‘Genius Grant’, the female professor has received 8 lakh dollars i.e. about 6 crore 72 lakh rupees. The name of this female professor is Shailja Pike. She has become the first Dalit woman of India to receive the Genius Grant. Shailja is a professor at Cincinnati University. She has done research on Dalit women and has also written many books.

Shailja Pike is a resident of Maharashtra. She was born in a Dalit family. Earlier her family lived in Pohegaon, but later they moved to Pune. Here she was brought up in a small room in a slum. Although they were living below the poverty line and were also facing the stigma of being a Dalit in the society, but her parents considered education as the basis for changing their lives and dreamed of educating their daughters.

How educated is Shailaja?

Shailaja Paik did BA from Savitribai Phule University, Pune in 1994 and after that she got MA degree in 1996. Then in 2007 she also did PhD from Warwick University and after that in 2005 she went to America on a fellowship from Emory University and started teaching in colleges. She worked as a visiting assistant professor of history at Union College here from 2008 to 2010 and then as a visiting assistant professor at Yale University from 2012 to 2013. Currently she is working as a research professor at the University of Cincinnati.

She has written a book on Dalit women

Shailaja wrote her first book in the year 2014, named ‘Education of Dalit Women in Modern India: Double Discrimination’. In this book, she has written about the challenges faced by Dalit women in getting education in Maharashtra. After this, in 2022, she wrote another book, named ‘The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality and Humanity in Modern India’.

Courtesy : Hindi News