Nayantara Sahgal

{{Infobox writer

| name = Nayantara Sahgal

| image = Nayantara Sahagal,Indian origin english language writer,India.jpg

| imagesize =

| caption = Sahgal at a press meeting in 2016

| pseudonym =

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=yes|1927|05|10}}

| birth_place = Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (present-day Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, India)

| birth_name = Nayantara Pandit

| occupation = Writer

| nationality = Indian

| parents = Ranjit Sitaram Pandit (father)
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (mother)

| relatives = Jawaharlal Nehru (uncle)
Indira Gandhi (cousin)

| spouse = {{Plainlist|

{{marriage|Gautam Sahgal|1949|1967|end=div}}
{{marriage|Edward Nirmal Mangat Rai|1979|2003|end=d.}}

}}

| children = 2, including Gita Sahgal

| period = 20th century

| genre = Politics, feminism

| subject =

| movement =

| debut_works =

| influences =

| influenced =

| alma_mater = Wellesley College

| awards = Sahitya Akademi Award (1985)

| website =

| footnotes =

}}

Nayantara Sahgal (née Pandit; born 10 May 1927) is an Indian writer who writes in English. She is a member of the Nehru–Gandhi family, the second of the three daughters born to Jawaharlal Nehru's sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.

She was awarded the 1986 Sahitya Akademi Award for her English novel Rich Like Us (1985).{{cite web|url=http://sahitya-akademi.gov.in/sahitya-akademi/awards/akademi_awards.jsp|title=Sahitya Akademi Awards listings|publisher=Sahitya Akademi, Official website|access-date=2 March 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100925203857/http://sahitya-akademi.gov.in/sahitya-akademi/awards/akademi_awards.jsp|archive-date=25 September 2010|url-status=dead}}

Early life

Sahgal's father Ranjit Sitaram Pandit was a barrister from Kathiawad. Pandit was also a classical scholar who had translated Kalhana's epic history Rajatarangini into English from Sanskrit. {{Citation needed|date=February 2020}} He was arrested for his support of Indian independence and died in Lucknow prison jail in 1944, leaving behind his wife (Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit) and their three daughters Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sehgal and Rita Dar. {{Citation needed|date=February 2020}}

Sahgal's mother, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, was the daughter of Motilal Nehru and sister of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Vijaya Lakshmi had been active in the Indian freedom struggle, had been to jail for this cause and in 1946, was part of the first team representing newly formed India that went to the then newly formed United Nations, along with M.C.Chagla.{{cite book|last1=Chagla|first1=M.C.|title=Roses in December - an autobiography|date=1 January 1974|publisher=Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan|location=Bombay|edition=1}}, Tenth Edition, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2000, {{ISBN|81-7276-203-8}} After India achieved independence, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit served as a member of India's Constituent Assembly, the governor of several Indian states, and as India's ambassador to the Soviet Union, the United States, Mexico, the Court of St. James, Ireland, and the United Nations. {{Citation needed|date=February 2020}}

File:Frida Kahlo in Sari.png (centre) in Mexico City (1947){{Cite news|url=https://scroll.in/article/837352/flashback-how-mexican-artist-frida-kahlo-came-to-photographed-in-a-sari|title=Flashback: How Mexican artist Frida Kahlo came to be photographed in a sari|last=Prashad|first=Vijay|work=Scroll.in|access-date=24 November 2017|language=en-US}}]]

Sahgal attended a number of schools as a girl, given the turmoil in the Nehru family during the last years (1935–47) of the Indian freedom struggle. Ultimately, she graduated from Woodstock School in the Himalayan hill station of Mussoorie in 1943 and later in the United States from Wellesley College (BA, 1947), which she attended along with her sister Chandralekha, who graduated 2 years earlier in 1945.{{cite web | last=George | first=Rajni | title=Grand Dame of Destiny | website=Open The Magazine | date=6 August 2014 | url=https://openthemagazine.com/lounge/books/grand-dame-of-destiny/ | access-date=27 February 2025}} She has made her home for decades in Dehradun, a town close to Mussoorie where she had attended boarding school (at Woodstock).{{Cite web|url=https://www.outlookindia.com/outlooktraveller/travelnews/story/45394/at-home-in-dehradun|title=At home in Dehradun: From Hindus to Muslims and Christians to Buddhists--revelling in the multi-cultural hues of the Doon Valley|last=Sahgal|first=Nayantara|date=13 October 2014|website=www.outlookindia.com|language=en|access-date=24 December 2019}}

Marriage and career

File:Nayantara Sahgal.JPG in Delhi, November 2007]]

Sahgal has been married twice, first to Gautam Sehgal and later to Edward Nirmal Mangat Rai, a Punjabi Christian who was an Indian Civil Service officer.{{Cite news|url=https://www.thehindu.com/books/literary-review/biography-of-nayantara-sahgal-by-ritu-menon/article6555161.ece|title=Snippets from a rich life|last=Choudhury|first=Sonya Dutta|date=2 November 2014|work=The Hindu|access-date=25 May 2019|language=en-IN|issn=0971-751X}}{{Cite book |url=https://www.abhilekh-patal.in/jspui/handle/123456789/2689949 |title=Invitation card of the marriage ceremony of Km. Nayan Tara Pandit D/o Vijay Lakshmi Pandit from J.L. Nehru on 2nd Jan 1949 |year=1949 |location=New Delhi |language=Hindi |access-date=12 September 2022 |url-access=registration |via=National Archives of India}} Though part of the Nehru family, Sahgal developed a reputation for maintaining her independent critical sense.{{Cite web|url=https://jaipurliteraturefestival.org/archive/jlfspeakers/nayantara-sahgal-2/|title=Nayantara Sahgal {{!}} Jaipur Literature Festival|website=jaipurliteraturefestival.org|date=17 September 2013|access-date=25 May 2019}} Her independent tone, and her mother's, led to both falling out with her cousin Indira Gandhi during the most autocratic phases of the latter's time in office in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Gandhi cancelled Sahgal's scheduled appointment as India's Ambassador to Italy within days of her return to power. Not one to be intimidated, Sahgal in 1982 wrote Indira Gandhi: Her Road to Power , a scathing, insightful account of Gandhi's rise to power.{{cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/delhi/salrp/nayantarasahgal.html|title=Nayantara Sahgal -- English writer: The South Asian Literary Recordings Project |publisher=Library of Congress New Delhi Office|website=Library of Congress}}{{cite web|url=http://www.postcolonialweb.org/india/literature/choubey2.html|title=Food Metaphor. A Champion's Cause: A Feminist Study of Nayantara Sahgal's Fiction with Special Reference to Her Last Three Novels|website=Postcolonial Web|first1=Asha |last1=Choubey}}{{cite web|url=http://www.sawnet.org/books/authors.php?Sahgal+Nayantara|title=Bookshelf: Nayantara Sahgal|publisher=South Asian Women's NETwork| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160406093305/http://www.sawnet.org/books/authors.php?Sahgal+Nayantara| archive-date= 6 April 2016|url-status=dead}}

Gita Sahgal, the writer and journalist on issues of feminism, fundamentalism, and racism, director of prize-winning documentary films, and human rights activist, is her daughter.{{Cite web|url=http://allahabaddekho.com/Home/Vijaya_lakshmi_pandit|title=Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit|website=www.allahabaddekho.com|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222092019/http://allahabaddekho.com/Home/Vijaya_lakshmi_pandit|archive-date=22 December 2019|access-date=24 December 2019}}

On 6 October 2015, Sahgal returned her Sahitya Akademi Award to protest what she called "increasing intolerance and supporting right to dissent in the country", following the murders of rationalists Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar and M. M. Kalburgi, and the Dadri mob lynching incident;{{cite news|last1=Ramachandran|first1=Smriti Kak|last2=Raman|first2=Anuradha|title=Nayantara Sahgal protests Dadri lynching, returns Akademi award|url=http://www.thehindu.com/news/nayantara-sahgal-to-return-her-sahitya-akademi-award/article7730676.ece|access-date=7 October 2015|work=The Hindu|date=6 October 2015}} for this she was praised in 2017 by Karima Bennoune, United Nations monitor for cultural rights.{{cite web | url=https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/un-body-praises-author-nayantara-sahgal-for-returning-sahitya-akademi-award-afte/303482 | title=UN Body Praises Author Nayantara Sahgal For Returning Sahitya Akademi Award After Dadri Lynching | work=Outlook India | date=26 October 2017 | access-date=28 October 2017}} In September 2018 she was elected as a Vice President of PEN International.{{Cite web|url=https://pen-international.org/news/the-84th-pen-international-congress-closes-in-india-with-a-focus-on-free-expression-and-women-writers|title=The 84th PEN International Congress closes in India with a focus on free expression and women writers|website=peninternational.org|date=8 October 2018|access-date=4 September 2019}}

Bibliography

Prison and Chocolate Cake (memoir; 1954){{cite book |last1=Sage |first1=Lorna |last2=Greer |first2=Germaine |last3=Showalter |first3=Elaine |title=The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English |date=30 September 1999 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=0-521-49525-3 |page=551 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NB59uc9_ss8C&dq=%22Prison+and+Chocolate+Cake%22&pg=PA551 |language=en}}
A Time to Be Happy (novel; 1958)
From Fear Set Free (memoir; 1963)
This Time of Morning (novel; 1965)
Storm in Chandigarh (novel; 1969)
The Freedom Movement in India (1970)
Sunlight Surrounds You (novel; 1970) (with Chandralekha Mehta and Rita Dar i.e. her two sisters; this was the daughters' tribute to their mother)
The Day in Shadow (novel; 1971)
A Voice for Freedom (1977)
Indira Gandhi's Emergence and Style (1978)
Indira Gandhi: Her Road to Power (novel; 1982)
Plans for Departure (novel; 1985)
Rich Like Us (novel; 1985)
Mistaken Identity (novel; 1988)
A Situation in New Delhi (novel; 1989)
Point of View: A Personal Response to Life, Literature, and Politics (1997)
Lesser Breeds (novel; 2003)
Relationship (collection of letters exchanged between Nayantara Sahgal and E.N.Mangat Rai;1994){{cite web | url=http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/book-review-nayantara-sahgal-and-e-n-mangat-rai-relationship-extracts-from-a-correspondence/1/293578.html | title=Lost labour | work=India Today | date=30 June 1994 | access-date=4 March 2015 | author=Alok Rai}}{{cite book | title=Relationship | publisher=Harper Collins | author=Nayantara Sahgal, E.N.Mangat Rai | date=25 August 2008 | pages=336 | isbn=9788172236823}}
Before freedom: Nehru's letters to his sister 1909-1947 (edited by Nayantara Sahgal)
When the Moon Shines by Day (novel, 2017)
The Fate of Butterflies (novella; 2019)

Nayantara Sahgal

Early life

Marriage and career

Bibliography

See also

References

Further reading