A popular Indian Diplomat and Politician who stamped out to be the first elected President of the United Nations General Assembly. Hailing from a politically concentrated background with Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru as brother, Smt. Indira Gandhi as her niece and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi as her grand-nephew, Pandit revolutionized every space she worked for. Carrying on the legacy, she even outlanded in the Indian political space actively. Vijaya ji was the first Indian woman to hold a cabinet post in pre-independent India.
Extending her space in the provincial legislatures of the United Provinces, she was elected as a designated minister of local self government and public health in 1937. She continued working in the post for one year and resumed again from 1946 to 1947 when in 1946 she was elected to the Constituent Assembly of the United Province. Later, she entered in the diplomatic services and became Indian’s ambassador in the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1949, the United States and Mexico from 1949 to 1951, Ireland from 1955 to 1961 and Spain from 1958 to 1961. During this period, she was also the High Commissioner of the United Kingdom. A lady who walked on her own terms, she also served as the Governor of Maharashtra from 1962 to 1964
Being a leading figure in the public life of the 20th Century, Pandit earned a distinguished career in diplomacy which famed her as the lady of that age. She was a figure of her own principles which could be testified by her stance against her own niece Ms Indira Gandhi at the hour of emergency. She later contested for the post of president. She has played a crucial role in strengthening the relationships between India and Britain in the early period of India’s independence, soon after the nationalisation of the Suez canal and the aftermath crisis in 1956.
The role played by Pandit in Indian freedom struggle will be commemorated till eternity. Even after being imprisoned on several occasions, she furiously participated in the Quit India Movement in several other movements. Walking on her own discretion, she resigned from the Congress Office when English government announced India’s participation in World War II. She even discharged her dedicated duties to the job of drafting Indian Constitution. This woman in politics was well informed about the obstacles of her activism in the political space as a woman and she overcame all of them with utmost courage.
Pandit’s writings:
So I Became a Minister (1939)
Prison Days (1946)
A touching essay, "The Family Bond
A Study of Nehru (1959)
There have been even three books dedicated to Pandit by her admirers:
Anne Guthrie Madame Ambassador: The Life of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1962)
Vera Brittain’s Envoy Extraordinary (1965)
Robert Hardy Andrews A Lamp for India: The Story of Madame Pandit (1967)
Author:
Antisha Nigam
An overwhelmingly exhausted student majoring in Commerce and minoring in Economics from the University of Delhi; passionately struggling for all the answers to “Why” rather than settling like the earlier times with “What” and “How” One can always reach out to me for a ceaseless conversation over the platter of food, finance and a cup of hot poetries.
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