You can purchase this print HERE.
“As India’s delegate to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1947–52, [Hansa Mehta] championed the case for a gender-neutral phrasing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mehta proposed the name of Eleanor Roosevelt as Chair of the committee that founded the Human Rights Commission and undertook the writing of an International Bill of Rights. The initial wording of Article 1 was ‘All men are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ Roosevelt’s biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook (2006: 558) writes that Hansa Mehta, the only other woman on the Commission, ‘significantly transformed the document by her insistence that the words “all men” would in much of the world be taken to exclude women. Hansa Mehta influenced ER in many ways. The commission adopted her inclusive formula “all human beings” during its June 1948 session, and women’s equality was forevermore affirmed in UN literature.’”
from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2022/09/12/hansa-mehta-an-early-indian-feminist/
“If not for Hansa Mehta, according to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ statement from December 2018, ‘we would probably be speaking of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man rather than of Human Rights.’”
from https://thepaperclip.in/hansa-mehta-all-human-beings-are-born-free-and-equal/
Hansa Mehta was born on July 3, 1897, to a privileged household in the princely state of Baroda, now part of Gujarat state along the western coast of India. Hansa pursued an education beyond what was typical of a woman at her time: she graduated with honors from Baroda College with a degree in philosophy; she studied journalism and sociology at the London School of Economics; and she participated in an exchange program in San Francisco. While in London, Hansa became friends with feminist, poet, and Indian independence activist Sarojini Naidu, who was friends with and worked closely with Mahatma Gandhi. Through this friendship Hansa also became close to Gandhi. She and a group of women visited Gandhi jail and this visit had a profound affect on Hansa.
It would be hard to overemphasize the effect that Gandhi’s ideas about non-violent resistance have had on global freedom struggles. (For example, perSISTER Pauli Murray engaged with these ideas when she refused to leave her bus seat, and when she participated in lunch counter sit-ins with other Howard University students in Washington DC.)
Hansa married a man of a lower caste than hers, which caused a stir. She worked for women’s rights and Indian independence from England, organizing boycotts and participating in demonstrations. She and Kamala Nehru shouted revolutionary slogans in the Delhi train station, causing the British to blast the train whistles non-stop to drown them out. The increasing number of women revolutionaries caused trouble for the British rulers. Hansa was arrested and spent some time in jail.
Upon release from jail, Hansa became involved in electoral politics in India, running for provincial office and winning a seat. She worked toward social, economic, political, educational, and reproductive justice for all people.
Hansa worked within the All India Women’s Conference and became its president in 1946. There she drafted the Indian Woman’s Charter of Rights and Duties, which demanded education, equality, and civil rights for women. You can read this document at this link: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1494728?ln=en
Starting in 1946, Hansa Mehta served as a member of the United Nations sub-committee on the status of women before she became the vice-chair with Eleanor Roosevelt of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Committee.
From 1946 to 1949, having been elected to the Constituent Assembly, Hansa sat at the tables to hash out the fundamental rights of the people of India and other details for their new constitution. Mehta was one of the 15 women framers of the Indian Constitution.
In the first few minutes of August 15, 1947, Hansa Mehta presented the new flag to the Constituent Assembly of the new nation of independent India, as a gift from the women of India. “It is in the fitness of things that this first flag that will fly over this august House should be a gift from the women of India!” She also presented “a list of nearly one hundred prominent women of all communities who have expressed a desire to associate themselves with this ceremonial” and stressed that there are hundreds and hundreds of women who want to contribute to the function of the government of the newly independent India. You can listen to her speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFC6_5yqM-U
Hansa Mehta served in many high caliber positions in academic administration in India, on the board of UNESCO, and she was also an author and translator. She died on April 4, 1995.
DESIGN NOTE
When looking for photographs of Hansa Mehta I found some examples on Ebay of printed postcards with her image, from the 1930s. I love the texture and color of this rather low-quality printing (by current standards). This led me to look up images of Indian vernacular typography like hand painted signs, match book printing, painted trucks. The bright colors, shadowed type, misregistered (not lined up) colors, blotchy halftone dots, I love it all. So this mode influenced my design for this print in the perSISTERS series.
See ebay print here (for a while, anyway: https://www.ebay.com/itm/404345693088). Also I found such good stuff to inspire me on Pinterest and you can too. Search for: Indian Street Signs, Truck art, match books.
The bars of color in the background (and the clor scheme of the print) are from the national flag of India, and the star burst shape is a riff on the Ashoka Chakra, also from the flag.
https://thewire.in/history/hansa-mehta-jivraj-sarojini-naidu-mahatma-gandhi-united-nations
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13540661221115957
A blog on hand painted signs in India
https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day/women-who-shaped-the-universal-declaration
https://ardra.medium.com/the-women-who-shaped-human-rights-at-the-un-3464a158e959
https://www.constitutionofindia.net/members/hansa-jivraj-mehta/
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