People

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit – The Missing Woman – Do We Know Her at All?

We’ve all seen that famous photograph of Mahatma Gandhi and India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru – but did you know that there was a third person in that picture who was edited right out of the picture? 

 In the original photo, you will see the person who was left out, and who remained just a footnote in history. This being March, Women’s History Month, I should tell you that this canceled person was, of course, a woman – Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister, radiant in an all-white homespun sari and a sleeveless blouse.

As Manu Bhagavan, author of The Remarkable Madame Pandit, a new biography of this missing woman, says, “There were three who were part of that moment, but she was sliced right out of it, erased from the public memory of that moment, and thus from the history of the photograph. She was not much more than a footnote in most accounts, just as reflected in the edited version of this photograph.”

Yet this was an amazing woman with many accomplishments – if only she had been a man, she would have made the front pages of history!

 What did she do? Says Bhagavan, “Answering this question is where things really get interesting and in a sense, overwhelming. For she seemed to be involved with everything, everywhere, all at once.”

For instance, she had audiences with British royalty right from a young age and grew quite close to members of the British aristocracy, even as she challenged the might of the British Empire alongside Mahatma Gandhi and went to prison several times for her efforts. She was detained for the attempted assassination of Mussolini in the 20s; she bashed appeasement and warned of the dangers of fascism in Britain the day before Winston Churchill made his famous remarks to Parliament; she worked with the powerful women of history including Margaret Sanger, Golda Meir and Madame Chang Kai-shek.

Madame Pandit, as she was known, was the first woman cabinet minister in the British Empire to hold substantial portfolios; president of the All India Women’s Conference; India’s first ambassador to the United Nations; India’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union; a member of India’s Constituent Assembly; the first woman ambassador to the United States; the first woman president of the UN General Assembly; and the first woman ambassador as high commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was witty and personally a delight to be with and had fans in disparate parts of the world. She engaged with everyone from Mao Tse Tung and Charles de Gaulle to Konrad Adenauer and Kwame Nkrumah. She had discourses with Gandhiji, the Father of the Nation, had a smoke with Mao Tse Tung and traded barbs and quips with Winston Churchill.

She was one of the funniest, wittiest, warmest people around, says Bhagavan. “Everybody loves her wherever she goes, and that’s how she’s able to win friends, including with people you wouldn’t think she could win friends with. Marlon Brando named her the woman he admired most in the world. Robert Oppenheimer asked her for assistance in preventing nuclear disaster, and then she told President Kennedy not to go to Dallas.”

Manu Bhagavan’s book, The Remarkable Madame Pandit  was published in India (Penguin) and in the US by Columbia University Press. This is just the latest in an impressive collection of books that he has written, including The Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World (2012) and India and the Cold War (2019).Bhagavan is Professor of History, Human Rights, and Public Policy at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, the City University of New York, where he is also Senior Fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. 

The New York community got to interact with Bhagavan at a lively salon organized by Sree Sreenivasan at his home near the UN. It was a gathering of writers, filmmakers, academics and public policy advocates and all were engrossed by this story of a woman whom they barely knew by name, a strong woman before her time,  and who had somehow toppled off the map of the world. This biography is Bhagavan’s effort to install her in her rightful place in history.

For those intrigued by Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and her disappeared status in history, Bhagavan’s comprehensive and deeply researched book sets the record right and tells us all that we need to know about her.

Many of the reviews of this book acknowledge the power of Madame Pandit. As Daisy Rockwell, International Booker Prize-winning translator of Tomb of Sand, writes: Sidelined by the “great men” school of history writing, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit is brought to life in this vividly written and painstakingly researched biography. You’ll find yourself eagerly turning the pages to learn what happens next in a story you thought you already knew.”

We’ll give Booker prize-winning author Kiran Desai the last word here: “With this illuminating biography, Manu Bhagavan restores Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit to the pantheon of extraordinary individuals who created a modern India according to their noble vision of international human rights. Written in lucid prose with a scholar’s unflinching eye, this is yet a deeply affectionate portrait of a complex woman, and a masterful recreation of a thrilling period in history.”

Books

The Remarkable Madame Pandit can also be purchased directly from Columbia with a 20% discount using the code CUP20:

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-remarkable-madame-pandit/9780231564243/