Nayantara Sahgal

Nayantara Sahgal
Born	(1927-05-10) 10 May 1927 Allahabad, United Provinces of British India, British India
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Indian
Period	20th century
Genre	Politics, Feminism
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Nayantara Sahgal (born 10 May 1927) is an Indian writer in English. Her fiction deals with India's elite responding to the crises engendered by political change; she was one of the first female Indian writers in English to receive wide recognition. She is a member of the Nehru family (but not the Nehru-Gandhi family as she clarifies often), the second of the three daughters born to Jawaharlal Nehru's sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.

She was awarded the 1986 Sahitya Akademi Award for English, for her novel, Rich Like Us (1985), by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, but has since returned it in protest.

Early life

Her father Ranjit Sitaram Pandit was a successful barrister from Kathiawad and classical scholar who translated Kalhana's epic history Rajatarangini into English from Sanskrit. He was arrested for his support of Indian independence and died in Lucknow prison jail in 1944, leaving behind his wife and their three daughters Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sehgal and Rita Dar.

Nayantara Sahgal speaking at the launch of Mistaken Identity by HarperPerennial in Delhi, November 2007

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. Her father died in prison in 1944 when Nayantara and her sister Chandralekha were overseas attending college. Her uncle Jawaharlal Nehru too was in and out of prison, as a political prisoner, in the 1930s and 1940s. Ultimately, she graduated from Woodstock School in the Himalayan hill station of Landour 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. She has made her home for decades in Dehradun, a town close to Landour where she had attended boarding school (at Woodstock).

Marriage and career

Sahgal has been married twice, first to Gautam Sehgal and later to E.N. Mangat Rai, a Punjabi Christian who was an Indian Civil Service officer. Rai died aged 87 in 2003 in Dehradun, where Nayantara and he had lived for several decades, in the house once owned by her mother. Selected collection of letters exchanged between Nayantara Sahagal and E.N.Mangat Rai was published in the book "Relationship". When the book was published in the year 1994, it was received with varying degrees of shock and appreciation. The letters highlight one woman's endeavour to remain true to herself, her writing, her ideals and relationships, both outside and within marriage.

Though part of the Nehru family, Sahgal developed a reputation for maintaining her independent critical sense. Her independent tone, and her mother's, led to both falling out with her cousin Indira Gandhi during the most autocratic phases of Mrs. Gandhi's time in office in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Indira 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 a scathing, insightful account of Gandhi's rise to power.

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.

On 6 October 2015, it was reported that Sahgal returned her Satiya Akademi award to protest increasing intolerance and supporting right to dissent in the country.

Bibliography

• Prison and Chocolate Cake (memoir; 1954)
• From Fear Set Free (memoir; 1963)
• A Time to Be Happy (novel; 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)
• Lesser Breeds (novel; 2003)
• Relationship (collection of letters exchanged between Nayantara Sahagal and E.N.Mangat Rai;1994)
• Before Freedom: Nehru's Letters to His Sister 1909-1947 (edited by Nayantara Sahgal)

See also

• Nehru-Gandhi family
• Political Families of The World

Further reading

• Ritu Menon, "Out of line: A literary and political biography of Nayantara Sahgal. 2014".
• Asha Choubey, "The Fictional Milieu of Nayantara Sahgal: A Feminist Perspective. New Delhi: Classical. 2002."
• Asha Choubey, "A Champion's Cause: A Feminist Study of Nayantara Sahgal's Fiction with Special Reference to Her Last Three Novels".