Virtual Archives

SPREADING THE WORD TAKING THE DIGITAL ROUTE

SPARROW VIRTUAL WALK

The Dr. Neera Desai Memorial Library

Dr. Neera Desai was involved with SPARROW long before it was registered as a Trust in 1988. The founder
of India’s first Women’s Studies research institution, SNDT’s Research Centre for Women’s Studies, Dr.
Neera Desai was a passionate advocate for women’s history and the preservation of the records necessary to write that history.

After many years of discussion and efforts to find a university willing to develop a Women’s Archives, Dr. C S Lakshmi, with the help and support of Dr. Neera Desai and Dr. Maithreyi Krishna Raj, conceived of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women). The plan to develop a women’s archives that would house visual, audio, and print materials about Indian women was not consistent with the 1980s emphasis on development as a means of addressing women’s issues. Dr. Neera Desai, however, was fully aware that knowledge about women’s lives and experiences was important not only to enrich our understanding of women’s history but also to guide public policy decisions.

She became one of the founder trustees of SPARROW in 1988 and became an enthusiastic champion of
SPARROW projects. This meant participating in fund-raising events, such as the 1992 Painting Exhibition, sharing stories from her youth at the 1994 workshop on Communal Harmony, and monitoring projects. Until the last days of her life, Neera Desai helped guide and inspire SPARROW.

Neera Desai passed away on the 25th of June 2009. To commemorate her work with SPARROW and honour her contribution, the Trustees of SPARROW, Dr. C S Lakshmi, Dr. Maithreyi Krishna Raj, Dr. Divya Pandey, Dr. Roshan G Shahani, Dr. Usha Thakkar, and Dr. Shoba Venkatesh Ghosh, passed a resolution on July 24, 2009 to name the library at SPARROW The Dr. Neera Desai Memorial Library. The Dr. Neera Desai Memorial Library was inaugurated on her birthday on 23rd September, 2009. Pushpa Bhave, the well-known political activist, inaugurated the library and spoke a few words of her association with Dr. Neera Desai and SPARROW.