Nayantara Sahgal Biography and latest books by Nayantara Sahgal

Nayantara Sahgal (born 10 May 1927) is an Indian writer in English. Her fiction deals with India\'s elite reacting to the crisis developed by political change. She is a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family, the second of the three daughters born to Jawaharlal Nehru\'s sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. She was awarded the 1986 Sahitya Akademi Award for English, for her novel, Rich Like Us. During the course of her life, Nayantara Sahgal has authored nine novels published in India and abroad, six works of nonfiction, and numerous articles and essays published around the world.

Early life

Nayantara Sahgal’s father was a successful barrister and classical scholar who translated the Kashmiri epic history Rajatarangini from Sanskrit to English. He was arrested for his support of Indian independence and died in Lucknow prison in 1944, leaving behind his wife and their three daughters Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sehgal and Rita Dar.

Sahgal attended a number of schools as a girl, given the turmoil in the Nehru-Gandhi family during the last years of the Indian freedom struggle. Her uncle Jawaharlal Nehru too was in and out of prison, as a political prisoner, in the 1930s and 1940s. She graduated from Woodstock School in the Himalayan hill station of Landour in 1943 and later from Wellesley College (B.A. 1947), which she attended along with her sister Chandralekha, who graduated in 1945. She has made her home for decades in Dehradun, a town close to Landour where she had been in boarding school.

Marriage and career

Sahgal, who has been married twice, was later married to E N Mangat Rai, a Punjabi Christian who was an Indian Civil Service officer. Rai died aged 87 in 2003 in Dehradun, where Sahgal and he had lived for several decades. Though part of the Nehru-Gandhi family, Sahgal developed a reputation for maintaining her independent critical sense. Her independent tone lead to a fall out with her cousin Indira Gandhi during the most autocratic phases of Mrs. Gandhi\'s time in office in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Indira Gandhi canceled Sahgal\'s scheduled appointment as India\'s Ambassador to Italy within days of her return to power. Not one to be intimidated, Sahgal (in 1982) wrote a scathing, insightful account of Gandhi\'s rise to power.

Gita Sahgal, writer and journalist (who focusses on issues of feminism, fundamentalism, and racism) along with being the director of prize-winning documentary films and human rights activist, is her daughter.

Her works

Indian politics and history form the backbone of Sahgal’s works. A feminist tone too can be seen in her novels as her women characters are victims of the conventional Indian society.

In an interview Sahgal stated: Politics is my natural material, I have seen it very closely. But another aspect of her writings that cannot be missed is the emergence of the heroine.  Be it her Maya, Ranee, Rashmi, Shonali, Saroj or the others, Sahgal’s women have grown from being subservient to learning how to assert themselves, first with a hint of guilt and then with the feeling of liberty.