Amrit Kaur

Others, um, turned to, uh, sort of, uh, more, uh, social service or developmental work, um, being very involved in what we would call sort of NGOs, which received, um, funding for kind of village-level development, uh, but often through the sort of national development blocks that the Nehruvian government was setting up.

Other women went into, like Hansa Mehta went into developing education or Rajkumari Amrit Kaur went into developing, um, aims and kind of medical, uh, infrastructure for the new state.

Um, so the kind of argument then sprang from what the material, the source materials provided, which was to show that this was a far more active and engaged period for this generation of women and for the Indian women's movement.

Um, and that, of course, then allowed me to make an intervention in the historiography and to say, "Well, you know, I think the historiography hasn't quite got it right, and this is an alternative picture which can be shown." Um, of course not to say that, um, you know, the aim is not to just sort of, um, unreservedly praise the contribution of this wom- these, this cohort.

Uh, they'd seen what other women's groups in other countries were doing.

Um, so there was kind of, uh, quite a diversity within their, uh, uh, sort of approaches to sort of nation building and, um, development.

So just to give you, um, two interesting examples of these, uh, again, you could take Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, who is a key in helping establish, um, AIIMS and other important medical institutions in India in the early years, and has also uses her international connections, uh, to get funding, international funding for these as well.

Um, she's also president of the World Health Organization in the 1950s.