Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

Indian diplomat

• Born: August 18, 1900
• Birthplace: Allahabad, India
• Died: December 1, 1990
• Place of death: Dehra Dun, India

Pandit served as postindependence India’s foremost diplomatic representative, holding the highest positions in international councils and in many ways helping to reconcile the bitter and deep disputes between India, its neighbors, and its former rulers.

Early Life

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (VIHJ-i-yah LAHK-shmee PAHN-diht) was the eldest daughter of Motilal Nehru, a prosperous attorney, in the city of Allahabad. Her name at birth, Swarup Kumari (“Beautiful Princess”), was changed, according to the Hindu custom, on her marriage at the age of twenty to Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, but as a child and throughout her life she was known by the nickname Nan. Her elder brother, Jawaharlal Nehru, served as India’s prime minister, and Pandit, along with her entire family, was an active participant in the Indian political struggles of the day to separate India from the British Empire.

Pandit’s early life reached a watershed in 1920 during the turmoil following the Amritsar Massacre. The action by British General Reginald Dyer of allowing his troops to fire on demonstrators protesting British rule, killing 372 and wounding thousands, caused Pandit, along with the other members of her previously politically moderate family, to shift her allegiance to Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha movement, which aimed through nonviolent methods to force the British from India completely. Given Pandit’s upbringing with a Westernized and Anglophilic environment, however, such a high degree of political involvement might not have been expected. Still, while embracing the West, her family were members of the Kashmiri Brahman, and the family was correspondingly conservative in attitude.

Pandit was educated at home by English governesses and later attended finishing school in Switzerland. She was taken by her father on a visit to England when she was five and was encouraged in her studies, but it is unlikely that she hoped for any kind of scholarly future within the family most expectations were for Jawaharlal. She did begin writing for Hindu periodicals at about the age of fifteen, at much the same time as the divisions between Indian nationalists and the British were gaining strength. This division, marked by the participation of her father in the Indian National Congress meetings of 1915, led to Pandit’s first introduction to Gandhi.

Pandit’s marriage, unlike that of many upper-class Hindus of the time, was not arranged. Her husband was an attorney and a highly educated scholar who had studied abroad. He shared the Nehru family’s political interests, and the couple worked together in Allahabad toward Indian independence. Pandit, her husband, her brother, and his wife journeyed to Switzerland in 1926, where they were joined by Pandit’s father the next year. Pandit’s three daughters Chandalekha, born in 1924, Nayantara, born in 1927, and Rita Vitasta, born in 1929 were in their own right to carry on the family traditions of active political involvement in Indian politics. Further, after her sister-in-law’s death, Pandit was to help rear her niece, Indira Gandhi, India’s future prime minister.

Life’s Work

It was during the 1920’s that Pandit, by then accustomed to the highest levels of political discourse, began her own active participation. By the end of her public career, she had held more key diplomatic and political positions, both appointed and elected, then any other Indian woman of the twentieth century. Pandit’s background in Indian politics lay in both Gandhi’s “Quit India” movement, directed against the British, and in the All-India Women’s Conference. This latter affiliation culminated in her organization, with her sister-in-law Kamala Nehru, of the women’s general boycott of British goods, which spread outward from Allahabad throughout the entire province now known as Uttar Pradesh. She spoke vigorously at public gatherings, advocating the complete withdrawal of the British.

It was not until the 1930’s, however, that Pandit’s activities began seriously to alarm the British. In January, 1932, she and her sister Krisha (also a member of the All-India Women’s Conference, and Pandit’s junior by seven years) were forbidden to take part in any more political meetings, under threat of confinement. On Independence Day, January 26, the two deliberately participated in just such a meeting and were promptly arrested by the British authorities. This marked Pandit’s first term of imprisonment, when she was sentenced to serve one year. The political punishment was served at Lucknow Prison and was extremely rigorous.

Released in 1933, Pandit rejoined the independence movement. Her political fervor had been heightened by not only her imprisonment but also the public reaction that had followed her father’s death in 1932. The funeral had been marked by the presence of Gandhi, whose eulogy for Nehru was heard by thousands gathered on the banks of the Ganges River. It had become clear that the politicization of India against the British occupation was increasing at a very swift pace.

While it would be incorrect to speak of this period of Indian history as somehow indicating the “inevitable” withdrawal and defeat of the British, once the influential Indian upper classes had reached out and connected with the middle and lower classes on a unified political basis, the relatively small British ruling class was faced with very difficult choices. In an attempt to maintain the status quo, there were increased numbers of political arrests, interdictions of free speech, and military action. In response, the Indian political activists used Great Britain’s own traditions. The independence movement participants chose to join the existing governmental bodies, campaigning in and winning election after election, leaving the British in a position of appearing to oppose legitimately chosen representatives with legitimate grievances.

Pandit’s participation within government began when she stood as the congress candidate for the Allahabad Municipal Board and won. In 1935, a year later, she was elected chair of the board and served two years. During her membership, her chief concern was with local public institutions, particularly in the social services areas. In the time she was a member of the board, she was instrumental in turning the local “night schools” into the focus of Allahabad’s advanced study of literary and political issues. This change in emphasis reflected a worldwide movement in adult education, and allowed, often for the first time, workers in the city access to education beyond a primary or vocational level.

In 1936, Pandit won a seat during the general elections of that year, standing for Kanpur. In that rural district, she won a majority of about ten thousand from an electorate of thirty-eight thousand. In 1937, still representing the Congress Party, she capped her local governmental career by her unopposed election as the minister of local self-government and public health for the United Provinces.

During the 1930’s, Pandit consolidated her political position, standing firmly for the independence goals of the Congress Party and as well for the rights of women within the “new” India. It was a time of advancement for women throughout the world, but it is significant that within India, women were an integral part from the first of the independence movement. Rather than having to assert a separate role, Indian women political activists were accorded a fully equal position in the struggle against British rule. Not only were they admitted to strategic and political associations but also they suffered the same consequences in terms of imprisonment and censure by the British. Thus, women’s rights in India have not generally been a separate issue, at odds with mainstream political objectives. Pandit’s place within India was won with the assistance of the emerging political power of the Congress Party and the leaders of India. Consequently, after independence, her role as ambassador must be seen as fully representative of India’s nationalist political opinion and not as a concession to her position as Prime Minister Nehru’s sister.

When independence came in 1947, Pandit’s career as an international spokesperson for India was well under way. After her husband’s death in 1944, which had left her without financial resources, she had decided to go to the United States and lecture; she was accepted as India’s representative at the Pacific Relations Conference held by the Council for World Affairs. Her background as the former president of the All-India Women’s Conference (1940-1942) had validated her right to speak at such an international meeting and marked the beginning of her association with world figures. At the end of the war, she became the leader of the Indian delegation to the inaugural meetings of the United Nations (1946) and continued to serve in that position in 1947 and 1948. Her prestige was such that in 1949 she was appointed Indian Ambassador to the United States, where she remained until 1951.

In 1947, however, she served as Indian Ambassador to the Soviet Union, initiating a pattern that typified her public life. Pandit frequently held more than one post for the government at a time, and the 1940’s and 1950’s saw her moving between one responsibility and another. For example, in 1952 she headed the Indian “Goodwill Mission” to China during the extremely tense political atmosphere that had resulted from Sino-Indian border disputes and that same year was again leader of the Indian United Nations delegation. During the Eighth Assembly (1952-1953), she was elected president of the General Assembly and had become the acknowledged leader of the newly emerging Arab-Asian bloc.

It was in 1954 that Pandit served in what may have been the most remarkable position of her career. In that year, she became India’s High Commissioner to Great Britain, consolidating the former colony’s new status as an independent and equal state within the community of nations. Her work in the United Kingdom marked the conclusion of much of the enmity that had resulted from the conflict of the two nations and can be viewed not only as the high point of her career but also as an illustration of the ways in which colonial relationships could develop into effective partnerships.

Significance

While Pandit was most actively representing India internationally during the 1950’s, it was after the death of her brother that it became clear that she saw herself first and foremost as a servant of India, rather than as a world figure. When she left the High Commission to Great Britain in 1961, it had been her intention to resume private life, but she soon realized that this would be impossible. Between 1961 and 1964, she was her brother’s unofficial link to European opinion, most significantly during private talks with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. By 1963, she gradually reentered official life, serving as leader of the Indian United Nations mission. She was eventually recalled to India to become the appointed governor of Maharashtra Province.

This largely ceremonial position occupied her only until it became clear that her prestige and the respect in which she was held made it necessary that she stand in the by-election at Phulpur, for the seat her brother had held until his death. Pandit won the election with a huge majority of more than fifty-eight thousand votes, preserving the seat for the Congress Party and continuing thereby to ensure the presence of her family in Indian politics.

Pandit’s position in Indian government virtually paralleled that country’s own growth and development in the twentieth century. From her early life as a traditional member of the upper classes, through her participation in the effort to free India from the British, to her successful attempts to have India received into the community of nations, Pandit always stood for the betterment of the people of India.

Bibliography

Ali, Tariq. The Nehrus and the Gandhis: An Indian Dynasty. Rev. ed. London: Picador, 2002. This well-written family history begins with Pandit’s brother, Jawaharlal Nehru, and traces his relatives and their influence on Indian politics and history.

Andrews, Robert Hardy. A Lamp for India: The Story of Madame Pandit. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. A very admiring biography, with photographs and an index, which takes the story of Pandit’s life past her brother’s death, particularly noting her role as negotiator during the Pakistan-Indian conflicts of the 1960’s.

Bowles, Chester. Ambassador’s Report. New York: Harper and Bros., 1954. This former U.S. ambassador recounts his time spent in India during the early 1950’s and provides an insight into Pandit’s circle during the postindependence period. Contains many unique photographs that more than convey the flavor of the period.

Brittain, Vera. Envoy Extraordinary: A Study of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Her Contribution to Modern India. South Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1965. A well-written, accessible biography by a contemporary and friend. This account is intended for general readers with some knowledge of the times and concentrates on the feelings and personal behavior of Pandit.

George, T. J. S. Krishna Menon: A Biography. New York: Taplinger, 1965. This biography of Pandit’s sometime friend and sometime enemy contains in-depth discussion of the United Nations period and is particularly useful when discussing how the conflicts between the two emerged.

Guthrie, Anne. Madame Ambassador: The Life of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962. In a book intended for younger readers, the author relies heavily on anecdotal accounts and personal information. Still, her retelling of Pandit’s early life and how she gradually became political is most evocative.

Mallik, Avy. “Women Presidents of the General Assembly.” U.N. Chronicle 43, no. 3 (September-November, 2006): 6-9. Discusses the three women, including Pandit, who have served as presidents of the United Nations General Assembly. Pandit served in 1953.