Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was an Indian diplomat, politician, and a sister of India’s first prime-minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. She was active in the Indian freedom movement and held high national and international positions.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, also known as Swarup Kumari Nehru was born on Aug. 18, 1900, in Allahābād India. She was the eldest daughter of a distinguished Brahmin lawyer, Motilal Nehru, and eleven years younger than her brother, Jawaharlal. Accustomed to luxury and educated at home and in Switzerland, she was greatly influenced by Mohandas Ghandi and became identified with the struggle for independence. She was imprisoned by the British on three different occasions, in 1932-1933, 1940, and 1942-1943.
In 1921, after receiving a private education in India and abroad, she married Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, a fellow Congress worker. At that time she changed her name to Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. The Pandit’s had three daughters, including the novelist Nayantara Sehgal. Her husband died on January 14, 1944.
In her family’s tradition she became an active worker in the Indian nationalist movement and was imprisoned three times by the British authorities in India. In 1934 Pandit’s long career in politics officially began with her election to the Allahabad Municipal Board. In 1936 she was elected to the Assembly of the United Provinces, and in 1937 became minister of local self-government and public health—the first Indian woman ever to become a cabinet minister. She entered municipal government in Allahābād before entering the legislative assembly of the United Provinces and becoming minister for local self-government and public health, the first Indian woman to hold a cabinet portfolio.
Like all Congress party officeholders, she resigned in 1939 to protest against the British government’s declaration that India was a participant in World War II. Along with other Congress leaders, she was imprisoned after the Congress’ “Quit India” Resolution of August 1942.
With the coming of Indian independence, Pandit entered on a distinguished diplomatic career in the fall of 1946, leading the Indian delegation to the United Nations and serving as India’s ambassador to Moscow and to Washington and Mexico.
Shortly after India’s independence in 1947, she joined the foreign service and was appointed India’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union. In early 1949 she became ambassador to the United States. She also led India’s delegations to the General Assembly in 1947, 1948, 1952, 1953, and 1963.
In November 1951 she returned to India to contest successfully for a seat in the Lok Sabha (India’s parliament) in the first general elections. In 1953 Pandit became the first woman to be elected president of the UN General Assembly. In September 1953 she was given the honor of being the first woman and the first Asian to be elected president of the U.N. General Assembly.
From 1954 to 1961 she was Indian high commissioner in London and concurrently ambassador to Dublin. She served as governor of the state of Mahārāshtra from 1962 to 1964, and from 1964 to 1968 she was a member of the Indian Lok Sabha, representing the constituency formerly represented by Jawaharlal Nehru.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s death on May 27, 1964 came as a great shock to her. In November, she was elected to the Lok Sabha in a by-election in the Philpur constituency of Uttar Pradesh, which her brother had represented for 17 years. She was re-elected in the fourth general elections in 1967, but resigned the following year for personal reasons.
In 1977 Pandit left the Congress Party to join the Congress for Democracy, which had merged with the Janata Party. Furious at Indira Ghandi’s state-of-emergency suspension of democratic processes from 1975 to 1977, she campaigned against her niece. Her efforts resulted in an electoral defeat for Ghandi. year later she was appointed the Indian representative to the UN Human Rights Commission, and in 1979 she published The Scope of Happiness: A Personal Memoir.
Pandit had not been politically active for several years when she died in Dehru Dun, India on December 1, 1990. Pandit’s own writings include So I Became a Minister (1939); Prison Days (1946); a touching essay, “The Family Bond, ” in Rafiq Zakaria, ed., A Study of Nehru (1959); many interviews and articles, and innumerable published speeches. Her daughter, Nayantara (Pandit) Sahgal, presented revealing portraits in Prison and Chocolate Cake (1954) and From Fear Set Free (1963). There is no good biography of Pandit, but three books by professed admirers are interesting: Anne Guthrie Madame Ambassador: The Life of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1962); Vera Brittain Envoy Extraordinary (1965); and Robert Hardy Andrews A Lamp for India: The Story of Madame Pandit (1967). She is often referred to in books on the Nehrus and in biographies of her brother, Jawaharlal Nehru.
On the occasion of her death, President Ramaswami Venkataraman described Pandit as a luminous strand in the tapestry of India’s freedom struggle. Distinctive in her elegance, courage, and dedication, Mrs. Pandit was an asset to the national movement.
