Nehru's Niece

The first family of India has given three prime ministers to the country.

- Mayuri Chawla

The first family of India has given three prime ministers to the country. But the only one who seems to have inherited a touch of Jawaharlal Nehru’s way with words is his niece Nayantara Sehgal, daughter of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. Both mother and daughter fell out with their famous cousin years ago as Nayantara revealed that the last time when she called on Indira was after the Bangladesh war. In later years, she became an arch critic of the Indira regime which stifled democracy at every available opportunity. And yet, it’s Nayantara’s credit that she refused cheap publicity or declined to play the political game of an equally discredited opposition. She wouldn’t trade her freedom for money or power. In a way, she has spurned the three to retain her independence.

“She may prove to be the best of the remarkable women writer’s today,” Spectator’s Olivia Manning had remarked as Nayantara Sehgal’s autobiographical From Fear Set Free and just got past the publishers. That was many years ago, before novels like Plans For Departure and Rich Like Us evolved, with the latter bringing her both the £5,000 Sinclair prize for fiction and the Sahitya Akademi Award. Nayantara Sehgal was in Delhi recently to collect the Sahitya Akademi Award in recognition of her work. Though she lives in the placid surroundings of Dehradun, that hasn’t hampered her in any way in creating fiction rooted in protest and freedom, being close to the most famous family in the subcontinent. In fact, Plans For Departure is her only novel which is not grounded in her experience.