Noted researcher, author Gail Omvedt passes away

 

 

 

GAIL Omvedt, a leading scholar on caste studies, died in Maharashtra’s Sangli district on Wednesday after a prolonged illness, family sources said. Dr Omvedt (81), who breathed her last at her village Kasegaon, pioneered caste studies having come as a student from the US and settled down in India in the 1970s. She married Bharat Patankar, a Marxist scholar and activist and the couple lived in the village.

 

Omvedt, who first came to study caste and Mahatma Phule’s movement in Maharashtra as a PhD student, was moved by the caste and untouchability system in India and settled down in Maharashtra to work for the liberation of the oppressed castes, a colleague said.