Amrita Shah

Amrita Shah is an Indian journalist and scholar. She became the first female editor of the men's magazine Debonair, and a co-founding editor of India's Elle. Her work has included a series of articles on Mumbai's organised crime, a biography of Indian space researcher Vikram Sarabhai, a study of the city of Ahmedabad, and two books on her research of the effects of television in India.

Amrita Shah
OccupationJournalist, writer
EducationElphinstone College

Her major works have been supported by several awarded fellowships, including from the New India Foundation, Fulbright Programme, Nantes Institute for Advanced Study Foundation, Homi Bhabha Fellowship Council, and the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.

Shah has been editor for the Indian Express, and has also written for Mumbai's Imprint Magazine.

Career

Amrita Shah graduated in 1983 in English literature from Elphinstone College, Mumbai.[1] She subsequently freelanced for Time, and authored a series of articles on Mumbai's organised crime.[1][2]

In October 1991, she was the men's magazine Debonair's editor at the launch of KamaSutra condoms advertisements; the magazine sold out in just a few days.[3] According to Shah, the rush to buy the issue had little to do with the editing, but more to do with the images in the adverts.[3] Unusual for its time, she was its first female editor.[4] In 1996 she became a co-founding editor of Elle.[1][5]

From 1999 to 2009 Shah was editor for the Indian Express.[2] She has also written for Mumbai's Imprint Magazine.[6] Stephen H. Hess noted that journalists like Shah objected to Americentrism in publishing and aspired to writing about a wider range of topics, with an aim to reach larger audiences.[6] In relation to the expected articles from freelance journalists in Asia, Shah noted that Americans found popular stories about burning brides or stampeding elephants.[6]

Fellowships

In 2008 she held a fellowship with the New India Foundation, working on her book about the Indian city of Ahmedabad.[7] Continuing with research on the city, in 2009 she was Fulbright-Nehru doctoral and professional research fellow.[8] From January to April 2018 she was a writing fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.[9] In 2019, she was listed as resident fellow at Nantes Institute for Advanced Study Foundation, continuing her work on a project titled "A personal journey through history", in which she traces the history of her great grandfather Mohanlal who moved to Natal at the turn of the twentieth century.[1] She has previously received fellowships from the Homi Bhabha Fellowship Council, and the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.[2]

Works

Hype, Hypocrisy, and Television in Urban India

Shah's book Hype, Hypocrisy, and Television in Urban India was published in 1997.[10] According to the book, five television sets were sold every minute in India in 1988, with a large choice of TV brands.[11] The impact she found, was that a new generation of women were shunning old patriarchal systems, and aspiring to becoming independent and making their own decisions.[12][13] In her assessment of journalism she found that prominent journalists in the Indian media pushed for greater secularism.[14] Her research for the book drew her to the attention of television broadcast technology by Indian space researcher Vikram Sarabhai and his city of birth Ahmedabad.[15]

Vikram Sarabhai: A Life

She subsequently authored a biography of Vikram Sarabhai, titled Vikram Sarabhai: A Life, published in 2007.[16][17] In it she wrote that he "dreamed of using space technology for applications in agriculture, forestry, oceanography, geology, mineral prospecting and cartography, with a strict focus on peaceful ends".[18] She included relationship difficulties with his wife, Mrinalini Sarabhai.[19] Space historian Asif Azam Siddiqi called the work a "thoughtful examination of his life".[20] In Robert S. Anderson's Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India, a footnote credits the biography for being one of the best about an Indian scientist.[16]

Ahmedabad: A City in the World

Her book Ahmedabad: A City in the World was published in 2015, and gives an account of how the city has developed.[21] Shah details Ahmedabad's Muslim ghettos, including the Bombay Hotel.[22] She follows Miraj, a Muslim who lost his home in the Gulbarg Society massacre.[23][24] Shah writes that "all signs of life [at Gulbarg].. have been stamped out".[25] The book is described as well written in Thomas Blom Hansen's Saffron Republic: Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India.[26] In 2016, Ahmedabad was shortlisted for the Raymond-Crossword Book Award.[1] In 2017 SAGE awarded Shah their Tejeshwar Singh Memorial Award.[27]

Telly-Guillotined: How Television Changed India

Shah's book Telly-Guillotined: How Television Changed India, published in 2019, is a new, revised, and expanded version of Hype, Hypocrisy, and Television in Urban India (1997), continuing the story of television in India for an additional two decades.[15][10]

Selected publications

Articles
  • "City of Gold". The Illustrated Weekly Of India. January 1988. (Interview with Varadarajan Mudaliar)
  • "The Man with Big Ears, and Big Dreams that Took India to the Moon" (PDF). Current Science. 118 (8): 1190. 25 April 2020. doi:10.18520/cs/v118/i8/1190.

Books

References
  1. "Amrita SHAH - Résidents - Fondation Institut d'Études Avancées de Nantes". www.iea-nantes.fr (in French). Archived from the original on 26 September 2023. Retrieved 25 September 2023.
  2. Chandran, Ramjee (2 February 2022). "Shakespeare, Joan Didion And Amrita Shah Walk Into A Bar. And, "No Loos In Texas". - The Literary City: Shakespeare, Joan Didion and Amrita Shawalk into a bar". Archived from the original on 22 September 2023. Retrieved 22 September 2023.
  3. Mazzarella, William (2003). "3. Citizens have sex, consumers make love; karma Sutra I". Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Duke University Press. p. 61-76. ISBN 978-0-8223-3145-2. Archived from the original on 2023-10-09. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  4. Biblio: A Review of Books. Asia-Pacific Communication Associates. 1998. p. 6.
  5. Joseph, Ammu (2000). Women in Journalism: Making News. Konark Publishers. p. 288. ISBN 978-81-220-0563-9. Archived from the original on 2023-09-26. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
  6. Hess, Stephen (1996). "6-Freelancers and foreigners". International News and Foreign Correspondents. Washington: Brookings Institution Press. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-8157-3630-1. Archived from the original on 2023-09-25. Retrieved 2023-09-25.
  7. "New India Foundation". New India Foundation. Archived from the original on 21 September 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  8. "Welcome to USIEF :". www.usief.org.in. Archived from the original on 26 September 2023. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
  9. Bruyn, Retha De. "Writing Fellowships 2018". JIAS. Archived from the original on 26 September 2023. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
  10. Lad, Mita (September 2021). "Book Review: Telly-Guillotined: How Television Changed India". Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies. 16 (3): 328–330. doi:10.1177/17496020211015463a. Archived from the original on 2023-10-09. Retrieved 2023-09-23.
  11. Sundaram, Ravi (2010). "3. The pirate kingdom". Pirate Modernity: Delhi's Media Urbanism. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. 115. ISBN 978-1-134-13051-1. Archived from the original on 2023-10-09. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  12. Malhotra, Sheena; Crabtree, Robin D. (2002). "3. Gender (Inter)Nation(alization) and culture: Implications for the privatisation of television in India". In Collier, Mary Jane (ed.). Transforming Communication About Culture. SAGE. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-7619-2488-3. Archived from the original on 2023-09-28. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  13. Shah’s larger argument about the rise of independent women and the role of television in India is on pp. 182-195 in the updated edition Telly-Guillotined: How Television Changed India (2019).
  14. Kumar, Shanti (2006). "Conclusion: is there an Indian community of television?". Gandhi Meets Primetime: Globalization and Nationalism in Indian Television. University of Illinois Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-252-09166-7. Archived from the original on 2023-09-28. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
  15. Najib, Rihan (6 September 2019). "Interview with Amrita Shah, author of 'Telly-Guillotined'". BusinessLine. Archived from the original on 21 September 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  16. Anderson, Robert S. (2010). "Notes". Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-01975-8. Archived from the original on 2023-10-09. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  17. Nilekani, Nandan; Shah, Viral (2016). "Introduction". Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations. Penguin UK. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-14-197860-4. Archived from the original on 2023-09-25. Retrieved 2023-09-25.
  18. "Engineering India's Space Dreams". www.tata.com. Archived from the original on 21 September 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  19. Singh, Gurbir (2017). "6. Vikram Sarabhai: leadership by trust". The Indian Space Programme: India’s incredible journey from the Third World towards the First. Astrotalkuk Publications. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-9569337-6-8. Archived from the original on 2023-09-28. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
  20. Siddiqi, Asif (January 2016). "Another global history of science: making space for India and China". BJHS Themes. 1: 115–143. doi:10.1017/bjt.2016.4. ISSN 2058-850X. Archived from the original on 2023-09-26. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
  21. Bose, Mihir (30 July 2015). "Ahmedabad: A City in the World by Amrita Shah, book review: Riveting". The Independent. Archived from the original on 21 September 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  22. Barua, Rukmini (2022). "7. Security and tenancy at the margins of the city". In the Shadow of the Mill: Workers' Neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad, 1920s to 2000s. Cambridge University Press. p. 263. ISBN 978-1-108-83811-5. Archived from the original on 2023-10-09. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  23. Sircar, Oishik (2019). "6. Gujarat 2002". In Juss, Satvinder (ed.). Human Rights in India. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. 144. ISBN 978-1-000-69097-2. Archived from the original on 2023-10-09. Retrieved 2023-09-25.
  24. Mathur, Navdeep; Mittal, Harsh (2020). "11. Neoliberal governing as production of fantasy: contemporary transformations in Ahmedabad's landscapes". In Mishra, Deepak K.; Nayak, Pradeep (eds.). Land and Livelihoods in Neoliberal India. Springer. ISBN 978-981-15-3511-6. Archived from the original on 2023-10-10. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  25. Ahmed, Heba (2017). "9. The Gulbarg memorial and the problem of memory". In Mahn, Churnjeet; Murphy, Anne (eds.). Partition and the Practice of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 193-198. ISBN 978-3-319-64516-2. Archived from the original on 2023-10-09. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  26. Ghassem-Fachandi, Parvis (2022). "13. Pratikriya, guilt and reactionary violence". In Hansen, Thomas Blom; Roy, Srirupa (eds.). Saffron Republic: Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India. Cambridge University Press. p. 290. ISBN 978-1-009-10048-9. Archived from the original on 2023-10-09. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  27. "SAGE announces the "Tejeshwar Singh Memorial Award for Excellence in Writing on the Urban"". SAGE India. 22 February 2017. Archived from the original on 9 October 2023. Retrieved 25 September 2023.
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