Chapter - III Writing Differences: Jawaharlal Nehru and Vijayalakshmi Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru ( 1889 - 1964), popularly called Pandit Nehru, was the son of a wealthy Indian barrister and freedom fighter Motilal Nehru. After completion of his education in England, he joined India's independence movement under Gandhi's leadership and emerged as one of the prominent leaders of the Congress Party. Eventually Nehru came to be recognized as Gandhi's political heir. In 1947, he became the first Prime Minister of independent India. His inaugural address while assuming the office of the Prime Minister - "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny" is famous for its poetic charm. Nehru's long tenure was significant in shaping the political traditions and economic policies of independent India. His contribution to international politics was in form of the Non-Aligned movement. Nehru was 47 when he wrote An Autobiography ( 1936). The autobiography has 68 chapters and 616 pages in total. Praising Nehru's An Autobiography, C D Narasimhaiah says that it is: ... the most distinguished Indian autobiography ... indeed unsurpassed by any autobiography coming out of the heat and dust of public life anywhere in living history. (Narasimhaiah, 3) Vijayalakshmi Pandit (nee Swarup Kumari Nehru) (1900 - 1990), an Indian political leader and diplomat, was one of the world's leading women in public life in the twentieth century. A sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, she was eleven years younger to
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Chapter - III
Writing Differences: Jawaharlal Nehru
and Vijayalakshmi Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru ( 1889 - 1964), popularly called Pandit Nehru, was the son
of a wealthy Indian barrister and freedom fighter Motilal Nehru. After completion of
his education in England, he joined India's independence movement under Gandhi's
leadership and emerged as one of the prominent leaders of the Congress Party.
Eventually Nehru came to be recognized as Gandhi's political heir. In 1947, he
became the first Prime Minister of independent India. His inaugural address while
assuming the office of the Prime Minister - "Long years ago we made a tryst with
destiny" is famous for its poetic charm. Nehru's long tenure was significant in
shaping the political traditions and economic policies of independent India. His
contribution to international politics was in form of the Non-Aligned movement.
Nehru was 4 7 when he wrote An Autobiography ( 1936). The autobiography has 68
chapters and 616 pages in total. Praising Nehru's An Autobiography, C D
Narasimhaiah says that it is:
... the most distinguished Indian autobiography ... indeed unsurpassed
by any autobiography coming out of the heat and dust of public life
anywhere in living history. (Narasimhaiah, 3)
Vijayalakshmi Pandit (nee Swarup Kumari Nehru) (1900 - 1990), an Indian
political leader and diplomat, was one of the world's leading women in public life in
the twentieth century. A sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, she was eleven years younger to
him. A member of the Nehru family, Vijayalakshmi's involvement in India's
independence movement and politics seems to have been a part of her destiny. She
married a promising lawyer of the Kashmiri brahmin community, Ranjit Sitaram
Pandit in 1921 but lived mostly with her family at Anand Bhavan, the home of the
Nehrus in Allahabad. Vijayalakshmi's participation in the Civil Disobedience
Movement of 1930 brought her in association with Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders
of India's freedom struggle. She became an active worker in the Indian nationalist
movement and was imprisoned three times by the British authorities in India. She
entered elective politics in 1937 by winning a seat in the United Provinces (now Uttar
Pradesh) legislature. She had the distinction to be the first Indian woman to hold a
cabinet post from 1937-39. Her husband died in 1944. In 1946, she was elected to the
Constituent Assembly.
In her individual capacity, Vijayalakshmi led an "unofficial" delegation to the
San Francisco Conference where the Charter of the United Nations was drafted in
1945 and proved more appealing than the official British-Indian delegation. In 1953,
she was elected the first woman President ofthe UN General Assembly. After Indian
independence, Vijayalakshmi served in several countries, including the erstwhile
USSR (1947-49) and the USA (1949-51), as an ambassador. Vijayalakshmi served as
the Governor of Maharashtra from 1962 to 1964. From 1964 to 1968, she was a
Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) and represented her brother's constituency after
his death. She did not take an active part in the Indian politics after 1969. In 1978,
Vijayalakshmi was appointed the Indian representative to the UN Human Rights
Commission. She was 78 when she wrote her autobiography The Scope of Happiness:
A Personal Memoir (1979). The autobiography has 40 chapters and is somewhat more
48
than half the size of her brother's autobiography. Nayantara Sahgal, the well-known
novelist, is Vijayalakshmi's daughter.
It is interesting to study the writing differences in the autobiographies of
Jawaharlal Nehru and Vijayalakshmi Pandit who, being brother and sister, were
brought up in the same family. We have already discussed in foregoing pages how
female autobiographers display quite a different orientation towards the self and the
others then their male counterparts. The critical theories established by the male
tradition, however, tend to misread and marginalize women's autobiography-writing.
Feminist critics vehemently oppose these theories and create a poetics of difference.
After a detailed discussion on the theory of writing differences in the earlier chapter
this chapter proposes to apply the theory to the practice of autobiography-writing
through two texts: Jawaharlal Nehru's An Autobiography and Vijayalakshmi Pandit's
The Scope of Happiness. The pattern of the present chapter is based on the earlier
chapter. The four subtitles under which the differences were discussed in the earlier
chapter are further split into eight subtitles in the present chapter with a meaningful
change in their order. These subtitles highlight the writing differences in almost
binary oppositional terms like association, dissociation; personal, public; self
conscious, self-confident, and fragmented, structured. The first of the pair stands for
the male trait while the latter for the female one.
Association
In a sharp contrast to the theories of Gusdorf and Olney, the psychoanalysts
like Freud and Lacan focus on the development of the female self through an intense
49
interaction with others, particularly like mother and father. The concept of
autobiographical self, self-creation and self-consciousness is profoundly different for
women and minorities. This kind of intense interaction with others, be it family or
society, is evident in Vijayalakshmi Pandit's The Scope of Happiness:
We were all one family living together in the manner of those days.
The joint family has ceased to exist, but it had its uses since it was a
form of social security and insurance and no one was abandoned.
Every boy was provided with an education and a job, a suitable
husband was found for every girl, and widowed aunts, grandmothers,
and others belonging to the family were integrated into it. They were
wanted and respected. There was, as always, another side of this
picture that was less pleasant. Many a young man who could have
made good on his own was content to remain a parasite under the
sheltering care of a more prosperous relative.
The children of the family belonged equally to every member of it, and
it was usual to see one sister-in-law bringing up and even nursing the
child of another along with her own. The grandmother had a special
status, and respect and affection for her grew with age. There was no
fear in the minds of the older men and women in the family that they
would be denied the love and shelter of the home at any time or for any
reason. And they, in their tum, gave the children and young people a
sense of perspective. Obligations and responsibilities were as
important as privileges- there had to be a balance. In some ways these
elders were anchors that kept the domestic boat steady and on an even
keel. They also kept the best traditions alive in the family, and it would
be unfair to brush aside the contributions they made. Obviously there
were some who did not give as much as they received, but this is the
way of life. (Vijayalakshmi: 29-30)
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Vijayalakshmi Pandit, in her autobiography The Scope of Happiness,
associates herself with her father at the initial stage. She elaborately discusses the
various dimensions of her father's character, the tenderness he showed towards his
family and his interest in the smallest experience of the youngest member, his
exquisite courtesy, his biting sarcasm, etc. Vijayalakshmi further notes that no two
people could be more unlike each other than her parents. The only thing they shared
in common were their children, and even in that her mother did not get her fair share
for she declares:
No two people could have been more unlike each other than my
parents. The only things they shared in common were their children,
and even in this my mother did not get her fair share, for I was my
father's child in all respects. He was the dominating influence in my
life. I loved him deeply and he was my ideal of all that was great, good
and honourable. Even his fits of anger, which shook the whole house,
passed me by. He was a loving and too-indulgent a parent and I never
remember a harsh word from him even when my own conduct had
distressed him. His outstanding quality was his love of life and of his
fellowmen, and it is my good fortune to have inherited these. I have
been in love with life since I was born. I got the most out of every
experience, and living to me means involvement with the human race
and its problems. (Vijayalakshmi: 40).
Later, Vijayalakshmi associates herself with her brother, Jawaharlal Nehru.
She confesses that her unreasoning love for her brother did her considerable harm in
her political life. She however notes that it was 'Bhai' who encouraged her to discuss
things, read Shaw and poetry. He made her write essays and introduced her to subjects
that had not until then much meaning for her. Vijayalakshmi's views on the brother
sister relationship are also applicable to her own relationship with Jawaharlal:
51
Bhai made me write essays and brought into my life topics that had not
until then had much meaning for me. He also opened a door for me to
Buddhism, in which he was at that time much engrossed. As I have
already mentioned, a brother occupies a very special position in the
Indian family and the brother-sister relationship is a cultivated and
meaningful one. He is the "protector" of his sister and in many cases
their hero. To me Bhai was a knight sans peur et sans reproche
The major event in our life in 1916 was Bhai's wedding. There was not
a family in the community which would not have been happy if their
daughter had been chosen as the bride of Jawaharlal Nehru. The
wedding was lavish to the point of ostentation - again one of those
contradictions in Father's personality difficult to reconcile with the
kind of man he really was. His love for my brother was deep- nothing
in the world was too good for him, and his bride must have the best of
everything. (Vijayalakshmi: 55).
Thus, we note that Vijayalaksmi Pandit associates first with her father and
then with her elder brother. However, from our point of view, the associations that
really develop her personality are the ones with the female members of the family and
the All India Women's Conference in particular. Women like Annie Besant and
Sarojini Naidu filled her with the ambition to be like them, "To be an Orator, to be
able to sway people with my words, this was my great ambition" (59) she notes. The
first time Vijayalakshmi attended a women's meeting was the one organized by her
cousin, Rameshwari Nehru, at the Mayo Hall of Allahabad University, to publicize
the South Africans' issue, to persuade women to leave their homes for one afternoon
and go out to hear other women speak.
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Vijayalakshmi also tells us about her grandmother; lndrani, known as
'Jiyomaji', a remarkable woman, a matriarch. She enjoyed a special status in the
family. The younger women of the family her cousin, or 'bhabhis' as they were
called, were forward-looking for those days. Most of them spoke English and were
interested in various activities outside the home. Her cousin Rameshwari Nehru had
started a woman's magazine called Stree Darpan, The Woman Mirror which dealt
with subjects important to the Indian woman such as the need for better education,
inheritance, abolition of child marriage, divorce, remarriage of windows, and the right
to vote. We realize that there is strong 'female bonding' between Vijayalakshmi and
these female members of the family, especially with her daughter Chandralekha,
Nayantara and Rita. Vijayalakshmi further associates herself with Madame Chiang:
The Chiangs' visit at this time moved Indians. Their sympathy for
Indian aspirations for freedom was obvious and Indians supported this
Asian leader fighting against odds. Madame Chiang's impact on the
women was immense. We saw in her a symbol. The All India
Women's Conference in Particular, Composed as it was of educated
women, found in Madame Chiang an Asian woman leader of whom
they felt proud. I had gone to Delhi with Lekha to see the Chiangs, had
several meetings with them and, like most others, admired what they
were doing to defend their country. Madame Chiang told me that my
young daughters should not be kept in the country at this period, and
she suggested Wellesley College, of which she was an alumna, saying
that she would make inquiries when she reached the United States and
let me know if the girls could go there. (Vijayalakshmi: 155-156)
Thus, we note that Vijayalakshmi Pandit seeks her individuality through an
intense association with others.
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Vijayalakshmi's autobiography further testifies the canonical belief that there
is always a man at the centre of a woman's autobiographical writing, and that she
herself is always in the periphery. The first half of her autobiography, The Scope of
Happiness clearly gives an impression that first Motilal Nehru and then Jawaharlal are
at the center and Vijayalakshmi is in the periphery; but the second half of her
autobiography seems to defy this notion as she projects herself as much stronger a
character. As the president of the All India Women's Conference, she passed a
resolution demanding immediate codification of the Hindu Law giving Hindu women
the right to inheritance and divorce. Besides this, the 'Chocolate Cake' (108) incident
presents her as a very strong character and an imaginative mother. This is the incident
from her autobiography which describes how her three young daughters were
introduced to the parents' jail-going during the freedom struggle. In 1930 when the
police team arrived with an arrest warrant for her husband for his disobedience to the
British Raj by joining the freedom fighters, Vijayalakshmi ordered a chocolate cake,
which turned a frightful incident into a celebration. Thus the jail-going was looked
upon as a reason to rejoice by all her daughters. Years later when Nayantara Sahgal,
Vijayalakshmi's -daughter and known Indian English novelist writes her
autobiography in two volumes, she names the first volume as Prison and Chocolate
Cake ( 1954 ). A sequel to the first volume was published in 1962 under the title -
From Fear Set Free.
Nayantara Sahgal was one of the first female Indo-English writers to receive
wide recognition internationally. Her fiction deals with India's elite responding to the
crises engendered by political change. Though part of the Nehru-Gandhi family,
Sahgal attained a reputation for maintaining her independent critical sense. Her
54
independent temperament led to her falling 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 cancelled Sahgal's scheduled appointment as
India's Ambassador to Italy within days of her return to power. Not one to be
intimidated, Sahgal wrote in 1982 a scathing, insightful account of Mrs. Gandhi's rise
to power - Indira Gandhi: Her Road to Power. Sahga1 authored other political
writings like The Freedom Movement in India (1970) and a collection of essays, Point
of view: A Personal Response to Life, Literature and Politics (1997).
Her novels bring out Nayantara Sahgal as a writer with feminist concerns
seeking an independent existence for women. She sees women as victims of
conventional Indian society engaged in their quest for identity. In her last novel
Mistaken Identity ( 1988) her concept of emancipation reaches its pinnacle where her
female character is an out-and-out rebel.
Nayantara Sahgal served as an advisor to Sahitya Akademi's Board for English
from 1972 to 1975. She was a member of Verghese Committee for Autonomy to
Radio & TV in 1977-78. In 1978, she was member of the Indian delegation to U.N.
General Assembly. She has also held the post of Vice-President of People's Union for
Civil Liberties. She received the Sinclair Prize (Britain) for fiction in 1985, Sahitya
Akademi Award in 1986, and Commonwealth Writers Award (Eurasia) in 1987. She
was also a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars,
Washington from 1981 to 1982.
Vijaya1akshmi's work as the Municipal Chairperson of the Education
Committee, as the first woman minister, her achievements as a diplomat at the U.N.
55
and as the Indian High Commissioner in England shows her as a stronger person in
the second half of The Scope of Happiness. The typical 'feminine' self of the
autobiographer gets transfonned into a 'female' self (both terms used in Showalterian
sense). Not only that she becomes confident, but she also shows an awareness of the
power that she holds. To substantiate this point one may tum to the delegation that she
led at the U.N. which included Raja Maharaj Singh, ex-chief Justice Chagla, P.N.
Sapru, V. K. Krishna Menon and Mr. K.P.S. Menon. Vijayalakshmi comments on her
experience of leading all-men delegation as under:
That night I went to meet the Viceroy. It was the first time I had been
in the Viceroy's House. I told Lord Wavell I was pleased to be able to
thank him personally for his previous help. I also wanted to thank him
for the privilege of sending me on such an important mission for India,
and I asked him to tell me something about it. He said my name had
come to mind as soon as Gandhiji suggested inscribing the South
African item on the agenda. "The Mahatma and I are fully in accord
with this. I have also told the Prime Minister you will make a good
Ambassador. I hope he will take my advice when the time comes." He
spoke a little about my recent tour in the United States and wanted to
know if I had enjoyed it. I told him I had, but I was much happier with
my present work in the Ministry. It was not at all the difficult evening I
had anticipated.
Next day I sat with Bhai and Sir Girja while a list of delegates was
drawn up. It was an all-star cast. The delegates were: Raja Maharaj
Singh, Ex-Chief Justice Chagla, Mr. Frank Anthony, the leader of the
Anglo-Indian community, and Nawab Ali Yawar Jung. The alternates
were: Mr. V. K> Krishna Menon, Mr. P. N. Sapru, Mr. G. S. Pathak
(later Vice President), and Mr. K. P. S. Menon. And once again I found
myself with a group of men, nearly all specialists in their own line but
56
friendly and ever helpful. Never did anyone of them show the least
resentment at being led by a woman. On the contrary, they were rather
proud of me (Vijayalakshmi: 206-7).
Her presence at the U.N. continued to surprise people who could not equate
her and the position she held with their traditional mind-set about Indian women.
Vijayalakshmi was also the first woman to hold the office of the U.N. President. At a - ..
Press conference in the U. N. Building following the election, her answer to the
question asked by reporters projects her as an individual asserting female rights-
female space. When asked: "How would you describe the sari you are wearing?" she
replied: "Did you ask my predecessor to describe his suit?" (276)
The tendency to associate with others to seek individuation is evident in the
other Nehru women's autobiographies as well. Like Vijayalakshmi, Krishna
Hutheesing, her sister and Nayantara Sahgal, her daughter also associate with others
in their autobiographies. Krishna Hutheesing (nee Nehru) was the youngest child in
the Nehru family. In her autobiography With No Regrets: An Autobiography (1943),
she associates herself with her parents, her brother and sister, and her husband. She
associates herself even with Anand Bhavan, the family home of the Nehrus in
Allahabad. In prison she associates herself with fellow women prisoners. Nayantara
Sahgal associates with her family - her mother, her father, and her sisters in her
autobiography Prison and Chocolate Cake. She associates with the servants at Anand
Bhavan and devotes a chapter to their description. Despite a vast difference in their
background, she associates herself with her husband Gautam and his family. In From
Fear Set Free, the second part of her autobiography Nayantara associates with her
children, Noni and Ranjit.
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If we accept autobiography as a genre which celebrates centrality and success
of the autobiographer, as does the canonical theory advanced by Gusdorfian School of
thought, then we may feel that such traits are missing from women's autobiography.
Compared to many of the simple, home-maker autobiographers like Rasa Sundari