Hansa Jivraj Mehta

1. In 1918, Hansa Mehta graduated in Philosophy from Baroda College, at a time when only about 2% of Indian women were literate, marking her entry into a deeply male-dominated academic world.

2. 🌍 Between 1946 and 1948, she served as one of only two women delegates alongside Eleanor Roosevelt in the UN Human Rights Commission, successfully lobbying to change the phrasing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from “all men” to “all human beings.”

3. In 1931, Hansa Mehta became the first woman elected to the Bombay Legislative Council, where she organized picketing against foreign goods and was jailed three times for her activism aligned with Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement.

4. 🎓 From 1949 to 1958, she was Vice-Chancellor of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, becoming the first woman to hold that role at an Indian co-educational university and mentoring future scholars such as sociologist M. N. Srinivas.

5. In 1930, she founded the Desh Sevika Dal, mobilizing women into the freedom struggle and was arrested in 1932 alongside her husband Jivraj Narayan Mehta, who later became Gujarat’s first Chief Minister.

6. ✍️ Beyond activism, she translated Shakespearean plays and parts of Valmiki’s Ramayana into Gujarati, authoring 20 books focused on women and children’s issues.

7. After independence, she was one of 15 women in the Constituent Assembly and pushed for a secular uniform civil code and gender equality in India’s fundamental rights.

8. ❓ How did Hansa Mehta’s insistence on inclusive language at the UN ripple into the global fight for women’s rights in the decades that followed?