Breaking The Silence

Dr. Satwant Kaur Rait, was born in the village of Lambra in the Hoshiarpur district of the Punjab (India), following the tradition of having the first child at the maternal grandparent’s home. At the age of five, she was admitted to a local school where she passed the Higher Secondary Examination and won a scholarship to go to university. Instead, however, she took a course in Librarianship and got a government job, which enabled her to graduate and complete an M.A. from Delhi in 1967. She worked in that job until she got married. She migrated to Leeds to join her husband in 1968. She studied in Leeds so that she could get a professional job in a library, her determination, strong will-power and support from her husband helped her to acquire a professional qualification in Librarianship. She got her first job in 1974. Between 1974 and 1986 she led a very busy life combining family, career and research. Although she started at the bottom, by 1986 she had become a Principal Officer and was also appointed as a Justice of the Peace on the Bradford Bench. She received her Ph.D. from Loughborough University in 1993, by which time she had many books, reports and research articles to her name. She has two children who have always remained her first priority in spite of her many other commitments. Dr. Rait has kept her religious and cultural values very close to her heart. Her deep attachment to Asian culture and the plight of some Asian women in India and England has inspired her to write on this theme. This book contains the women’s perceptions of their own life experience. Among some of Dr. Rait’s other publication are: Dictionary of Punjabi Name Elements (1984), Acquisition and Cataloguing of Punjabi Language Literature in British Public Libraries (1985), Punjabi Rasoi Kala (1989) and Sikh women in Leeds (2003).