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Author Namita Gokhale honored with 7th Yamin Hazarika Woman of Substance Award at Virtual Event

Author Namita Gokhale honored with 7th Yamin Hazarika Woman of Substance Award at Virtual Event
on Sep 07, 2021

NEW DELHI: Writer Namita Gokhale has been chosen as the recipient of the seventh Yamin Hazarika Woman of Substance Award. She was conferred upon the honor recently in a virtual ceremony. Organized by a collective of women professionals from the year 2015, the annual award honors Yamin Hazarika, the first woman from Northeast India to be selected for DANIPS, a federal police service that administered Delhi and the Union Territories in 1977. The organizers noted that Gokhale is a critically acclaimed award-winning writer with 20 books, including 11 works of fiction, to her name. A co-founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Gokhale also mentors Himalayan Echoes and the Kumaon Festival of Literature and the Arts. The world is full of unsung heroes whose legacy adds momentum to human progress. Yamin Hazarika was made of heroic mettle and continues to be an inspirational figure more than two decades after she passed on, Gokhale said.

Hazarika succumbed to cancer in the year 1999. Speaking during the ceremony, historian Yasmin Saikia of the Arizona State University said that history is no longer confined to great men but is also about great women.

I am thinking of women like Yamin Hazarika and Namita Gokhale who are somewhat like us, we can access them as friends, colleagues, family members, and so on, and yet they are the ones who create their reputations made in a spirit of tireless work and quiet fortitude transcending the social forces and society in general that come in their way, and keep moving forward with determination and raise themselves so outstandingly above the rest of us, Saikia said.

Previously, historian Rana Safvi, author Indrani Raimedhi, athlete Tayabun Nisha, actor Moloya Goswami, environmental activist Purnima Devi Barman and social activist Hasina Kharbhih have been the recipients of the Yamin Hazarika Woman of Substance Award.

Source- The Economic Times