Manjula Pradeep, executive director, Navsarjan Trust, was conferred Woman PeaceMaker for the year 2011 by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ) of the University of San Diego, US. In a profile, she has been called “a brazen human rights activist and lawyer”, who has spent her life “defending the rights of India’s women and Dalits, the “untouchables” of the Hindu caste system”. A writeup on her while giving the award says, “Pradeep, a Dalit herself, knows intimately the intersectionality of grief and abuse that Dalit women experience at the bottom of all of India’s social hierarchies – caste, class and gender. But she has defied India’s patriarchal and caste-structured society. As the executive director of Navsarjan Trust, a grassroots Dalit rights organization based in India’s Gujarat state, Pradeep is a respected and prominent woman leader of the Dalit movement.” News link: http://www.sandiego.edu/peacestudies/institutes/ipj/programs/women_peace_makers/women_peacemakers/asia/India.php

For a detailed profile click HERE. And watch a video interview by clicking on the image below: