Neeraben was the front runner of Women’s Studies in India and the creator of a model women’s studies centre that combined the ethos of women’s studies and women’s movement at the SNDT University, Mumbai.

Neera Desai was born in 1925 to a middle class Anavil family that ardently supported the freedom movement. As a schoolgirl, along with Mandakini (later on Kunnikal Narayan) and Usha Mehta (who started an underground radio for the freedom movement called, “Voice of India”), she actively worked for the Monkey Brigade formed by Mahatma Gandhi. Later on, as a college student at the time of the Quit India movement in 1942, Neeraben, as she came to be known, was arrested several times.

Neeraben joined the SNDT Women’s University in the late 1950s and served on several decisionmaking bodies as professor and head of the postgraduate department of sociology, as founder director of the Post
Graduate Studies and Research Centre for Women’s Studies and the Centre for Rural Development till she retired in 1984.

Her research on the Bhakti movement of the 12th century and the social reform movement of the 19th century inspired many young scholars to examine the liberative aspects of their writings, debates, poetry, symbolisms and varied art forms.

Neeraben Desai played a crucial role in the Towards Equality Report of 1974; the Shram Shakti Report of 1988 and the National Perspective Plan for Women, 1988~2000. She coauthored a book, Women and Society
in India (1988) with Maithreyi Krishnaraj that helped institutionalise women’s studies in academia.

The Research Unit on Women’s Studies (that she set up in 1974) became the model and inspiration for other such centres and the University Grants Commission considered it a model to be emulated.

In 1990, she supported the efforts to establish SPARROW and was one of the mainstays of the India Centre for Human Rights and Law in Mumbai, and the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS, Delhi).

On 3 April 2008, Neeraben along with five outstanding women who have contributed immensely to Women’s Studies in India was felicitated by the Centre for Women’s Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Neera Desai always said that the women’s liberation cannot come about without liberation of humankind and vice versa. Neeraben, we will always celebrate your spirit!.

Neeraben Desai died of cancer on 25th June, 2009