Harsh Mander
Harsh Mander is a human rights and peace worker, writer, columnist, researcher and teacher.
To counter rising hate violence and lynching, he leads the national initiative called the Karwan e Mohabbat www.karwanemohabbat.in or Caravan of Love. The Karwan visits the families of those who lost loved ones to hate violence and lynching, for atonement, solidarity, healing, conscience and justice; and to promote goodwill and trust between communities.It tries to counter rising hate and fear in the country, but not with hate; instead with love and solidarity.
He is Chairperson, Centre for Equity Studies, devoted to the analysis and development of public policy and law for justice and rights of disadvantaged groups.
He is also the founder and director of Aman Biradari www.amanbiradari.org, a people’s campaign for a secular, peaceful, just and humane world. Aman Biradari works closely with other people’s organizations and groups for the defence of secularism; for public compassion and justice; and for promoting the values of the constitution.
Teaching Assignments
He is visiting faculty in FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg; Vrije University, Amsterdam; Heidelberg University and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Past teaching assignments include the LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie; the Open Society Internship for Rights and Governance in the European University; the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi; St Stephen’s College, Delhi, the Centre for Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; and NALSAR (National Academy for Law) Hyderabad.
He has also lectured at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; the Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK; ISS in the Hague; MIT, Boston, UCLA, Universities of Stanford, Washington (Stanford), Austin, and several others.
He writes and speaks regularly on issues of social justice.
Writing
A prolific writer www.harshmander.in, his 25 books include:
His over 25 books include:
- ‘Burning Pyres, Mass Graves and a State That Failed Its People: India’s Covid Tragedy’, published by Speaking Tiger, 2023.
- ‘Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India’, published by Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2019.
- ‘Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India’, published by Speaking Tiger, 2015.
- ‘Locking Down the Poor: The Pandemic and India’s Moral Centre’, published by Speaking Tiger, 2020
- ‘Between Memory and Forgetting: Massacre and the Modi Years in Gujarat’, published by Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2019.
- ‘Reconciliation: Karwan e Mohabbat’s Journey of Solidarity Through a Wounded India’ (co-authored), published by Westland Publications, Chennai, 2018.
- ‘This Land is Mine, I am Not of This Land’ – CAA-NRC and the Manufacture of Statelessness (co-edited), published by Speaking Tiger, 2021
- ‘Fatal Accidents of Birth: Stories of Suffering, Oppression and Resistance’, published by Speaking Tiger, 2016.
- ‘Ash in the Belly: India’s Unfinished Battle against Hunger’, published by Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2013.
- Invisible People: Stories of Courage and Hope, published by Duckbill Books, New Delhi, 2016
- ‘Unheard Voices: Stories of Forgotten Lives’, published by Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2001.
- ‘Fear and Forgiveness: The Aftermath of Massacre’, published by Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2009.
- ‘Untouchability in Rural India’ (co-authored), published by Sage Publications India, New Delhi, 2006
- ‘Fractured Freedom: Chronicles from India’s Margins’, published by Three Essays Collective, 2012.
His real-life stories have been adapted for films, such as Shyam Benegal’s Samar, and for Mallika Sarabhai’s dance drama Unsuni.
He writes a regular column Bearing Witness for the online portals Scroll, and articles for the news magazine Caravan, the Wire and Article 14 and, and also contributes to scholarly journals. Earlier, he wrote columns The Hindu, the Indian Express, and The Hindustan Times.
Research
He is a PhD from Vrije University in Amsterdam. His thesis was titled Vulnerable People and Policy Development in India: Designing State Interventions for Hunger, Homelessness, Destitution and Targeted Violence. He is Distinguished Scholar with the Initiative on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights at the Centre for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley.
He convenes and edits the annual India Exclusion Report. These attempt to document the experience of disadvantaged people of the state; and on evidence-based analysis and advocacy for more just and equitable laws and policies http://indiaexclusionreport.in/ .
Policy Engagements
As Member of the Prime Minister’s National Advisory Council from June 2010-12, he convened the working groups on
- the National Food Security Bill,
- Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Bill,
- National Street Vendors Act
- Manual Scavenging Abolition Act
- Communal and Targeted Violence Bill; and
- Child Labour Abolition, Dalits and Minorities, Tribal Rights, Urban Poverty and Homelessness, Disability Rights, Bonded Labour, and Urban Slums, among others.
He was Special Commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food case for twelve years from 2005-17. In these 12 years, he investigated for the Supreme Court starvation deaths, and reviewed implementation and directed public policy reform for advancing the right to food and nutrition in several states in India.
He was Chairperson of the Committee of the Government of India to suggest ways to make the Urban Health Mission to make it work for urban poor people.
He was also on various national official National Committees such as on Social Protection and both the Saxena Committee for identification. Of Rural BPL (Below Poverty Line Families) and Hashim Committee for Urban BPL.
He was a Member of the Core Groups on Bonded Labour and Mental Hospitals of the statutory National Human Rights Commission.
He was founder Chairperson of the State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh, which established the Mitanin Community Health Programme, which was the fore-runner of the national Asha Programme for country-wide community health workers.
Civil Society Engagements
He is a member of the working group of Genocide Watch.
He was a member and then Chairperson of the Advisory Board of the Human Rights Initiative of the Open Societies Foundation from 2018-21.
He was also a Council Member of Progressive International.
He was a Richard von Wiezsacker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin in 2021-22.
He founded a campaign to work with homeless persons and street children through which around 5000 homeless street girls and boys, by providing them safe spaces are being provided safe spaces as residential hostels in mostly running government schools in 10 cities. (These are now managed by the Rainbow Foundation India).
In Delhi, Patna, Hyderabad and Jaipur, he founded and headed an initiative which helps run extensive street medicine programs to reach homeless women, men and children on the streets with health-care services, with health teams on foot and in vans at night. He has also conceptualised and helped open recovery shelters for homeless men and women with TB, orthopaedic ailments, mental health problems and reproductive health challenges, recognizing that cure on the streets for homeless persons in impossible.
He founded Ashagram, or Village of Hope, in Barwani, Madhya Pradesh, for lives of dignity for persons with leprosy, with facilities for dignified livelihoods, surgery and rehabilitation, and education for children. This extended later to include polio surgery and community care of persons with mental illness.
He is also a founding member of the National People’s Right to Information.
He was a founding member of ANHAD (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy).
He is a Member of the Ara Pacis Initiative in Rome aimed to launch an active reflection on forgiveness as a moral, spiritual and political tool for achieving reconciliation among peoples.
From October, 1999 to March 2004, worked as Country Director, ActionAid India, a development support organization.
He was Patron of the Sanjivini Society for Mental Health, New Delhi
He was Chairperson of INCENSE (The Inclusion and Empowerment of People with Severe Mental Disorders).
Civil Services
He worked formerly in the Indian Administrative Service in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for almost two decades. During this time, the positions he held included as district head in 6 districts, divisional commissioner, and faculty in the LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.
He took voluntary retirement from the civil services in 2002 in protest against the role of the state in the communal massacre in Gujarat, which he believed to be state-sponsored.
Judicial Interventions
He has made many significant interventions in India’s highest courts. For instance:
- his petition to decriminalize beggary was allowed, which ended begging as a crime after nearly a hundred years
- his petition in the Supreme Court resulted in the reopening for investigation of over 2000 criminal cases related to the Gujarat carnage of 2002 which had been closed without trial.
- a series of his interventions in the Supreme Court as Commissioner led to orders making homeless shelters a legal duty for all state governments.
- he petitioned against the detention of undocumented people deemed to be ‘foreigners’ in jails in inhuman conditions in Assam for nearly a decade;
- he petitioned for legal action against perpetrators of hate speech resulting in sectarian violence in Delhi 2020
- he petitioned for food and livelihood security of migrants during the covid pandemic
- he petitioned for humane treatment of persons with mental illness in mental hospitals.
Awards and Honours
Among his awards are:
- FAU (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg) Human Rights Award 2022
- the inaugural Centre of South Asian Studies Lecture on South Asian Public Affairs of Cambridge University
- the Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Gold Plaque 2020
- the Quaide Milleth Award 2020
- the Ida Scudder Memorial Oration of Christian Medical College, Vellore 2019
- the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat Lifetime Achievement Award, 2015
- the South Asian Minority Lawyers Harmony Award 2012
- the Chisthi Harmony Award 2012
- the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award for peace work 2002, and
- the M.A. Thomas National Human Rights Award 2002.
The Peace Research Institute Oslo has included him in its 2022 shortlist of people recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize.