INTERVIEW | When Anjhula Singh Mya Bais was at a recent bonding session with other staff of Amnesty International, each participant was posed the question - “What was your first act of activism?”

“I said my first act of activism actually wasn’t civil disobedience, but domestic disobedience.

“Because I broke hundreds of years of royal protocol and married outside of my caste,” the newly appointed chairperson of Amnesty International told Malaysiakini in a recent interview.

Born into an aristocratic family from Rajasthan, India, Anjhula said she was raised to determine her own destiny rather than follow the path laid down by others.

She said her father Thakur Birendra Bikram Singh Bais chose to pursue an academic path and made that available to all his children regardless of gender.

“My father always said I will educate you as well as, if not better than your brother, which is very uncommon."

She added that her father purposely gave her the name Anjhula, which carries no specific meaning because he wanted his daughter to determine her fate.

“So when I look back, it all connects, I’m paving my own path,” she said.

Nonetheless, a lot of expectations were still placed on her growing up, but the former chairperson of Amnesty's Malaysia chapter was never the person to...