Uma Chakravarti Collection

Uma Chakravarti (b. 1941) is an Indian historian, feminist scholar, activist, and documentary filmmaker whose work has been foundational to feminist historiography and the study of caste and gender in South Asia. She taught for many years at Miranda House, University of Delhi, where she played an important role in shaping the field of women’s studies and feminist historical scholarship in India. Trained as a historian of ancient India, her research has examined the intersections of caste, patriarchy, labour, religion, and social power, particularly through the concept of “Brahmanical patriarchy,” which has had a major influence on feminist and Dalit scholarship.

Chakravarti is the author of several influential books, including Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens, The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism, and Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories. Her work combines archival research, social history, and feminist critique to foreground the experiences of women and marginalized communities often absent from conventional historical narratives.

Alongside her academic writing, Chakravarti has also worked extensively in documentary film. Her films, including A Quiet Little Entry, which explores women’s literacy and autobiographical writing in nineteenth-century India, and Fragments of a Past, reflect her longstanding engagement with memory, testimony, and histories of resistance. Across scholarship, teaching, activism, and filmmaking, Chakravarti’s work has consistently sought to recover marginalized histories and expand feminist approaches to the study of the past.