Cultural and media figures feature as well as activist…
POET Imtiaz Dharker, BBC economics correspondent Dharshini David, media personality and presenter Jasmine Dotiwala and Professor Nandini Das, are just four of the South Asian cultural figures named in His Majesty The King’s New Year’s Honours List. Equality campaigner Mandy Sanghera is also among those presented with an OBE.
Dharker is recognised as a poet, artist and video filmmaker and her OBE is given for her services to the arts.
She was born in Lahore, brought to Glasgow, as a one year old and grew up in the city. She is one of the country’s leading poets and has published six collections to much acclaim, both at home and abroad.
Her poetry deals with journeys, cultural displacement and gender conflict and politics. As a filmmaker, she has worked for non-governmental organisations on the subjects of shelter, education, health, women and children in India.
She spoke to www.asianculturevulture.com Associate Editor Suman Bhuchar at the Manchester International Festival in 2021 and read one of her poems.
Dharshini David is currently the BBC’s Chief Economics Correspondent and also presents programmes for BBC Radio 4. She has a long media career, working both for the BBC at the start of her media working life as a reporter and then moving to Sky before returning to the corporation. After reading Economics at Cambridge University and working in the City, she swapped the trading floor for the studio and has never looked back. David’s last book, ‘Environomics’ released in 2024 and follows on from her best selling success with ‘The Almighty Dollar’, which came out in 2018.
Jasmine Dotiwala took to Instagram to express her shock at being awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting, music and to equality, diversity and inclusion – saying she was “stunned” when she was first informed in November.
She writes: “I accept this recognition of my hard work over the years (and BOY have i worked hard, eaten dinner at 1am often, and juggled multiple jobs simultaneously..brought the good fight before it was an official thing!)” She dedicated her OBE to all those who have supported her in her work.
Dotiwala was with MTV for more than 13 years and started out as a presenter, before becoming a producer and director and has also been a head of department and involved in training and diversity and inclusion initiatives for many years too.
Professor Nandini Das is professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Exeter College, Oxford University. She has been awarded an OBE for services to Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and to Public Engagement.
Educated at university in Kolkata, she is a Rhodes scholar and completed a doctorate at Trinity College, Cambridge before working as a software programmer in the publishing industry. Returning to academic research, her area of focus is Renaissance romance and fiction and then later travel and cross-cultural encounters.
Her last book, ‘Courting India; England, Mughal India and the origins of Empire’ in 2023, won the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding and she is now working on a new history of Tudor and Stuart England from the perspective of those who travelled between countries in 16th and 17th centuries. She has also been a presenter and is a BBC New Generation Thinker – these are academics who work with programme makers at BBC Radio 4.
Mandeep (Mandy) Sanghera is a humanitarian, philanthropist and rights champion and receives an OBE for her work with refugee and migrants and for her varied global charity work. She also has campaigned extensively against human trafficking and battled for women’s equality and the rights of children.
She dedicated her honour to all those “colleagues and clients who inspire me to create meaningful change”.
