page_title: Anasuya Sengupta
section_title: Work and activism
hierarchical_section_title: Anasuya Sengupta / Work and activism
caption_attribution_description: English: Michael Connolly Miskwish, Stan Rodriguez, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, and Anasuya Sengupta present on a Whose Knowledge panel at Wikimania 2017.
context_page_description: Anasuya Sengupta is an Indian poet, author, activist, and a cited expert in representation for marginalized voices on the Internet.
context_section_description: Former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became aware of one of Sengupta's poems in March 1995, when Clinton was the First Lady and visiting India. Later, Clinton used it in her speeches in Delhi and at a United Nations women's conference in Beijing, China.
  (excerpt from "Silence"):
  Too many women
  in too many countries
  speak the same language
  of silence
  The poem also inspired Clinton to write a chapter in her autobiography, Living History entitled "Silence Is Not Spoken Here".
  Sengupta co-edited Defending Our Dreams: Global Feminist Voices for a New Generation (2005) which was reviewed favorably by Sister Namibia. The Women's Review of Books praised her essay in Defending Our Dreams, calling it a "visionary" work about feminism and the eradication of poverty. In Development in Practice, a reviewer comments that the "connection between dreaming and planning is the most arresting element the book offers to its readers. The dreams of its young contributors, are demonstrating new visions, new skills, and new approaches to development and feminism, which present a potential breakthrough in strategies for promoting social justice and women’s rights." Feminist Studies praised the book and wrote, "This volume does provide a surprisingly cohesive account, for a collection, of the thinking of key feminists about international trends."- See the publications section below for more information.
  Sengupta was the Chief Grantmaking Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, California. She is the co-founder of Whose Knowledge, a group set up to improve online knowledge and information in marginalised parts of the world, including Asia, Africa and Latin America. She works as the co-director of the organization alongside Siko Bouterse and Adele Vrana. The group has been described as "a global, multilingual campaign to reimagine the internet to be for and from all."
  As of October 2018, her work to decolonise the internet is supported by a fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation. In a keynote speech she gave at the Digital Library Federation's 2018 Forum, Sengupta spoke on her work to decolonise the internet. She said, "decolonising [the internet is] at the heart of true empowerment. In many ways, the crisis of violence and injustice that we face today feel like they are rooted in a hidden crisis of unknowing." Sengupta went on to discuss the importance of libraries and the need for a greater representation of the world's languages on the internet.
  Sengupta has used her platform to advocate for the decolonisation of knowledge in the Media. On 11 July 2016, she co-authored an article with Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Harjit Kaur, and Umar Malick on the need for revisions for social-science textbooks in California for the Indian Express. In this article, the authors argue that the Hinduvita lobby has marginalised the identities of other communities (such as the Dalit people, whom Whose Knowledge works with) in their effort to revise California's textbooks. They also advocate for the removal of historical inaccuracies in textbooks to dismantle false narratives about certain religious or ethnic groups, specifically Muslims.
  Furthermore, Sengupta has been featured in other major media outlets for her work to decolonise the internet, including BBC News, The Guardian, Mail & Guardian, and The Atlantic, among others.
  On 11 December 2018, Sengupta and Claudia Pozo released a resource series, "Our Stories, Our Knowledges" through Whose Knowledge. It is divided split into four parts: "Part 1: Decolonising Our Stories and Knowledges," "Part 2: Transformative Practices for Building Community Knowledges," "Part 3: Adding Our Knowledge to Wikipedia," and "Part 4: How to Ally and Be a Good Guest." The series focuses on the structures of power which silence marginalized voices, practices for those communities to overcome epistemic barriers placed upon them by white colonialist structures, the work of Whose Knowledge in these efforts, and advice for allies who want to get involved in decolonising the internet.
  In September 2018, The
caption: Sengupta (far right) in a panel discussion at Wikimania 2017 in Montreal
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