Abstract
Among those who were jailed as a result of the Quit India Resolution was Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s younger sister, the middle of three siblings. This was not her first confinement. A committed, if less famous, nationalist fighter and Gandhian, Nan, as she was affectionately known, had spent several terms in prison for her political activism. After the 1935 Act that created a new constitutional framework, she had stood for election and won, becoming the first woman cabinet minister in India, holding portfolios on local self-government and medical and public health in the Government of the United Provinces (present-day Uttar Pradesh). She was talented and respected, and unbelievably courageous,1 but few knew in the 1930s just what a force she would become.
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Notes
During her tenure as minister, she once faced down an angry mob that had gathered outside her home. She had no security, on the grounds the protest was a democratic right, and the mob had surrounded the house and broken all the windows. She suddenly stormed outside, stood on a chair and welcomed a conversation with them. Violence was their privilege, she told them, but would only backfire. The crowd dispersed and she received a letter of apology several weeks later. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness (New York: Crown Publishers, 1979), pp. 141–143.
Marika Sherwood, “India at the Founding of the United Nations,” International Studies 33:4 (1996), p. 413
Robert Rhodes James, Robert Boothby: A Portrait of Churchill’s Ally (New York: Viking, 1991), pp. 146–147.
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© 2013 Manu Bhagavan
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Bhagavan, M. (2013). India in New York. In: India and the Quest for One World. The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349835_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349835_3
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