Shruti Nagvanshi

Founder

Founder of People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR)

Photo: Wikimedia (CC BY-SA)

Shruti Nagvanshi is the founder of People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR) (1996)[1], an Indian non-profit working on human rights from Varanasi.

Shruti Nagvanshi (born 2 January 1974) is an Indian human rights activist based in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. She is a founding member of the People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), set up in 1996, and founded the Savitri Bai Phule Mahila Panchayat, a forum through which women in Varanasi's poorer neighbourhoods take up cases of domestic and caste violence.

Her work concentrates on Dalit and minority communities, on violence against women and children, and on child malnutrition and survival in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Early life and education

Nagvanshi was born in the Dashashwamedh area of Varanasi. She took a bachelor's degree in social science, Hindi and ancient history from Udai Pratap Autonomous College, Varanasi, in 1995. She married Lenin Raghuvanshi in 1992; the couple have one son.

Career

PVCHR was founded in 1996 by Nagvanshi with Lenin Raghuvanshi, the historian Mahendra Pratap, the musician Vikash Maharaj and the poet Gyanendra Pati. The organisation documents torture, caste atrocities and bonded labour, and supports survivors through legal follow-up and rehabilitation.

Through the Savitri Bai Phule Mahila Panchayat she organised women's collectives that hear and pursue complaints of domestic violence, dowry harassment and caste discrimination. She has also worked on campaigns against child labour and on hunger and malnutrition in Varanasi district.

She is co-author, with Archana Kaushik, of 'Margins to Centre Stage: Empowering Dalits in India'.

Recognition

Nagvanshi received the Jan Mitra Award in 2000 and the International Human Rights Prize of the city of Weimar in 2010. In 2016 she was named among the Top 100 Women Achievers of India by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. She received the Rex Karmaveer Chakra (silver) in 2019 and the Karmaveer Gold Chakra in 2024, and was awarded the Public Peace Prize in 2021 and the Savitri Bai Phule National Award in 2022.[2][3]

People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR)

PVCHR was founded in Varanasi in 1996 by Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi and Shruti Nagvanshi as a membership-based human rights movement. It works against police torture, bonded labour, hunger and caste discrimination, pioneering testimonial therapy for torture survivors and organising marginalised Musahar and Dalit communities across Uttar Pradesh and beyond.

People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR) reports the following, on its own site:

Membership 72000 as neo-Dalit communities comprising progressive people from upper caste, OBC, tribal and minorities.
Through networking, working in 16 states of India with the involvement of 99 organisations.