Nayantara Sahgal
Encyclopedia
Nayantara Sahgal is an India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n writer in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. Her fiction deals with India's elite responding to the crises engendered by political change; she was one of the first female Indo-Anglian writers to receive wide recognition. She is a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family
Nehru-Gandhi family
The Nehru–Gandhi family or Nehru - Feroze Gandhi family is an Indian political family which has been dominant in the Indian National Congress for most of India's history since independence...

, the second of the three daughters born to Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...

's sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Vijaya Lakshmi Nehru Pandit was an Indian diplomat and politician, the sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, the aunt of Indira Gandhi and the great-aunt of Rajiv Gandhi, all of whom served as Prime Minister of India.In 1921 she married Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, who died on 14 January 1944...

.

She was awarded the 1986 Sahitya Akademi Award
Sahitya Akademi Award
Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honor in India which Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of outstanding works in one of the following twenty-four major Indian languagesAssamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri,...

 for English, for her novel, Rich Like Us
Rich Like Us
Rich Like Us is a historical and political fiction novel by Nayantara Sahgal. Set in New Delhi during the chaotic time between 1932 and the mid 1970s, it follows the lives of two female protagonists, Rose and Sonali, and their fight to live in a time of political upheaval and social...

(1985), by the Sahitya Akademi
Sahitya Akademi
The Sahitya Akademi ', India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India...

, India's National Academy of Letters.

Early life

Her father was a successful barrister and classical scholar who translated the Kashmiri
Kashmiri people
The Kashmiri people are a Dardic linguistic group living in Kashmir Valley in Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and parts of the Pakistani territory of Azad Kashmir who speak the Kashmiri language...

 epic history Rajatarangini
Rajatarangini
The Rājatarangiṇī is a metrical chronicle of North west of the Indian subcontinent particularly the kings of Kashmir from earliest time written in Sanskrit by Kalhaṇa. The Rājatarangiṇī often has been erroneously referred to as the River of the Kings. In reality what Kalhana means by Rājatarangiṇī...

 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.
Sahgal attended a number of schools as a girl, given the turmoil in the Nehru-Gandhi family during the last years (1935–47) of the Indian freedom struggle, wherein her father would die in prison while Nayantara and her sister Chandralekha were overseas attending college. Her uncle Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...

 too was in and out of prison, as a political prisoner, in the 1930s and 1940s. Ultimately, she graduated from Woodstock School
Woodstock School
Woodstock School is a Christian, international, co-educational, residential school located in Landour, a small hill station contiguous with the town of Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India....

 in the Himalayan hill station of Landour
Landour
Landour , a small cantonment town contiguous with Mussoorie, is about from the city of Dehradun in the northern state of Uttarakhand in India. The twin towns of Mussoorie and Landour, together, are a well-known British Raj-era hill station in northern India. Mussoorie-Landour was widely known as...

 in 1943 and later from Wellesley College (B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

, 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
Dehradun
- Geography :The Dehradun district has various types of physical geography from Himalayan mountains to Plains. Raiwala is the lowest point at 315 meters above sea level, and the highest points are within the Tiuni hills, rising to 3700 m above sea level...

, a town close to Landour where she had been in boarding school (at Woodstock).

Marriage and career

Sahgal, who has been married twice, was later married to E. N. Mangat Rai, a Punjabi Christian who was an Indian Civil Service officer. Rai died aged 87 in 2003 in Dehradun, where Sahgal and he had lived for several decades, in the house once owned by her mother. Though part of the Nehru-Gandhi family
Nehru-Gandhi family
The Nehru–Gandhi family or Nehru - Feroze Gandhi family is an Indian political family which has been dominant in the Indian National Congress for most of India's history since independence...

, Sahgal developed a reputation for maintaining her independent critical sense. Her independent tone, and her mother's, would lead to both falling out with her cousin Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...

 during the most autocratic phases of Mrs. Gandhi's time in office in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...

 canceled Sahgal's scheduled appointment as India's Ambassador to Italy within days of her return to power. Not one to be intimidated, Sahgal would (in 1982) write 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.

See also

  • Nehru-Gandhi family
    Nehru-Gandhi family
    The Nehru–Gandhi family or Nehru - Feroze Gandhi family is an Indian political family which has been dominant in the Indian National Congress for most of India's history since independence...

  • Political Families of The World

Further reading

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".
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