Geetakshi Arora, a PG student of the South Asia Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, won the £1,000 prize.
An Indian student is the winner of the first Noor Inayat Khan Prize for
2016, the London-based Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust announced on
Saturday.
Geetakshi Arora, a post-graduate student of the South Asia Institute at
the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London,
won the prize — which consists of £1,000 and a certificate — for her
dissertation on “Goddess Myths in Graphic Novels: Reimagining Indian
Feminity”.
The Trust awards the annual prize to a post-graduate student from SOAS,
University of London, working in the area of gender studies and South
Asian history.
Ms. Arora said that she was “humbled” by the award. “Noor has always
inspired me to stand up for the values of peace, education and respect
for all individuals irrespective of race, gender and religion. I will
always try to live up to her legacy,” she told The Hindu.
Of Indian descent, Noor Inayat was a secret agent in the Second World
War, who was sent to Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943 from where she worked
as a wireless operative sending intelligence reports to the Allies.
Though betrayed to the Gestapo, tortured and ultimately killed at the
Dachau concentration camp, she defied her captors to the very end.
“We hope the annual award keeps the memory of Noor Inayat Khan alive in
the student community. We felt that SOAS was the natural choice to
locate this prize given its long tradition of promoting South Asian
culture and history” said Shrabani Basu, founder and chair of the Noor
Inayat Khan Memorial Trust, and author of the biography of Noor Inayat, The Spy Princess.
A campaign by the Noor Trust resulted in the unveiling by Princess Anne
in 2012 of a bust of Noor Inayat in Gordon Square, a tranquil lung space
close to a cluster of institutions including SOAS.
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