A Desi Woman with Soniya Gokhale

A Desi Woman Podcast is joined by world renowned Historian & Author Manisha Sinha PhD. Manisha Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and a leading authority on the history of slavery and abolition and the Civil War and Reconstruction. She was born in India and received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina, which was named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico in 2015 and recently featured in The New York Times’ 1619 Project. Her multiple award winning second monograph The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition was long listed for the National Book Award for Non Fiction. It was named the book of the week by Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication and one of three great History books of 2016 in Bloomberg News. Dr. Sinha explains the profound connections that exist between the Black struggle for freedom & Civil Rights and India's fight for freedom from British Colonialism. Dr. Sinha also elucidates the congruence between Indian Nationalists movements and movements for Black freedom in the United States and how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who adopted the Gandhian notion of Satyagraha as a tactical and principled way of fighting against racial segregation and discrimination in the United States. Dr. Sinha & Soniya also review the depth and meaning of Kamala Devi Harris and her nomination as the first African American & first Indian American to be elected as a Vice Presidential Candidate in the US.