A WOMAN who has spent 25 years helping women escape forced marriages says she is “overwhelmed” to be walking in the footsteps of someone like Robert Burns.
Jasvinder Sanghera, founder of the UK-wide charity Karma Nirvana, spoke out after being honoured with this year’s Robert Burns Humanitarian Award (RBHA).
The gong is given out annually in recognition of “courage, commitment, inspiration and hands-on humanitarian efforts”, as South Ayrshire Council and EventScotland mark the legacy of the national bard.
Derby-born Sanghera, who founded the charity following her own escape from a forced marriage at the age of 16, received the prize at a Burns Cottage ceremony in Alloway on Wednesday night.
READ MORE: National Trust for Scotland in £100k bid to save Burns Cottage
Expressing her “immense thanks” for the honour on BBC Radio Scotland yesterday, she said she was “overwhelmed absolutely to be walking the footsteps of someone like Robert Burns”, who she said “had the ability to empathise with the human condition and somebody who was universally loved because of his advocacy in respect to struggle [and] social inequality”.
Judges behind the award said Sanghera’s story had been deemed to “exemplify the values that Burns himself stood for in terms of humanity, equality and freedom for all”.
Karma Nirvana’s helpline has received more than 78,000 calls since 2008, handling in excess of 800 per month.
Sanghera’s own four older sisters were taken individually to India for forced marriages. She ran away from home to avoid her own at the age of 16.
Last year she waived her anonymity to tell how LibDem peer Lord Lester had offered her a peerage in return for sex.
Councillor Douglas Campbell, South Ayrshire Council leader and RBHA judging panel chair, said: “Jasvinder is an amazing example of Burns’s humanitarian values in action and I have no doubt he would consider her to be a very worthy winner to follow in his footsteps.”
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