Shahjahan Begum

Founder

Shahjahan Begum is the founder of Shakti Shalini [1], an Indian non-profit working on women & children, human rights and lgbtq+ & inclusion from New Delhi.

Shahjahan Begum (1936 – 28 September 2013), widely known as Shahjahan Aapa, was an Indian women's rights activist in Delhi. With Satyarani Chadha she founded Shakti Shalini in 1987, an organisation working against dowry-related and domestic violence which opened one of Delhi's first shelters for women in distress.

She came to activism after her daughter was killed in a dowry death, and spent the following decades organising women in low-income neighbourhoods of Delhi and campaigning for legal change.

Early life

Her parents were killed during the Partition of India in 1947, when she was eleven, and she and her sister were brought up by a foster family in rural Mathura. She attended a religious school where she studied the Quran and Urdu. At fourteen she was married to her foster parents' son; she had seven sons and two daughters, and left the marriage after years of abuse. She moved to Delhi and supported her children by needlework and tailoring.

Activism and Shakti Shalini

In 1979 her daughter Noorjehan was killed at Nangloi in Delhi, doused in kerosene and set alight by her in-laws over dowry demands. The police recorded the death as suicide. After three years of failing to have charges brought, Shahjahan turned to organising other bereaved parents.

In 1987 she co-founded Shakti Shalini with Satyarani Chadha, developing it from the Parents Association of Dowry Victims into a full organisation. Its first shelter opened in July 1987, offering women and their children safe housing for ninety days or more, alongside counselling, legal aid, education and vocational training. Shakti Shalini campaigned for the anti-dowry and domestic violence laws later enacted in India and works across several marginalised communities in Delhi.

She died on 28 September 2013 in a road accident while travelling to a mahila panchayat, a community forum on ending violence against women. Her testimony was recorded by the University of Michigan's Global Feminisms Project.[2][3][4]

Shakti Shalini

Shakti Shalini was founded in 1987 by Satyarani Chadha and Shahjahan Apa, two mothers who lost their daughters to dowry-related violence and turned their grief into one of Delhi's first support systems for survivors. It runs a 24x7 helpline, a crisis intervention and counselling centre, the Pehchan shelter home — which also shelters LGBTQ+ persons fleeing family violence — a child protection unit, skills training through Kushalta Vikas Kendra, and grassroots feminist mobilisation in five marginalised Delhi communities.

Shakti Shalini reports the following, on its own site:

15,000+ women supported over 36 years
2,000+ residents of marginalised communities engaged in grassroots feminist mobilisation
500+ individuals engaged in skills training and art-for-activism workshops