Tuesday, April 15, 2014

437. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900-1990)

Grand father (top), father (boottom) of Vijaya Laxmi Pandit
(Gangadhar Nehru allias Ghiyasuddin Ghazi)
(Motilal Nehru)

NEHRU FAMILY TRUTH

The Nehru family starts with the Mughal man named Ghiyasuddin Ghazi. (pic I-top) He was the City Kotwal i.e. police officer of Delhi prior to the uprising of 1857, under the Mughal rule. After capturing Delhi in 1857, in the year of the mutiny, the British were slaughtering all Mughals everywhere. The British made a thorough search and killed every Mughal so that there were no future claimant to the throne of Delhi. So, the man Ghiyasuddin Ghazi (the word means kafir-killer) adopted a Hindu name Gangadhar Nehru and thus saved his life by the subterfuge. Ghiyasuddin Ghazi apparently used to reside on the bank of a canal (or Nehr) near the Red Fort. Thus, he adopted the name ‘Nehru’ as the family name. The 13th volume of the “Encyclopedia of Indian War of Independence” (ISBN:81-261-3745-9) by M.K. Singh states it elaborately. The Government of India have been hiding this fact.
Gangadhar or Ghiyazuddin Ghazi 
The fact on the scion of the dynasty, namely Ganga Dhar, had been kept a secret from the Indian public, primarily, the Hindus. It is now quite clear, as you will soon see, that Ganga Dhar was an assumed name. The man we now know as the paternal grandfather of Jawahar Lal (son of Moti Lal) was in reality a sunni Mohammedan; in fact he was a related to the Mogul Dynasty , a Mughal nobleman. The important question is why did he then adopt a Hindu kafir's name? In this case a Kashmiri Brahmin's name?Jawahar Lal had referred to when he wrote in his autobigraphy that he had seen a picture of his grandfather Ganga Dhar , which protrayed him as a Mogul nobleman. Krishna Hutheesing (Jawahar's second sister) had also mentioned in her memoirs, that their grandfather Ganga Dhar was the city Kotwal of Delhi (an important post) prior to 1857's uprising. Bahadur Shah Zafar was still the sultan of Delhi. It was extremely unlikely that he would hire a Hindu for that very important post.
Update 5: You will read the full story in these two books : (1) A Tale of Two Lals, and (2) The Real Story of Gangadhar, Father of Motilal. These stories have appeared in : Sword of Truth.com , now closed down by the Khan Ghazi Government.





Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit,  inherited from her mother great physical beauty and the family name Swaroop. was an Indian political leader and diplomat, one of the world's leading women in public life in 20th century. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was born on August 18, 1900, in Allahabad, India. She became active in the Indian nationalist movement and was imprisoned three times by the British authorities in India. With Indian independence, Pandit entered on a distinguished diplomatic career, leading the Indian delegation to the UN, serving as India's ambassador to Moscow, Washington and Mexico, and becoming the first woman to become president of the UN General Assembly.

Personal Life
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was born in Allahabad in what was then the United Provinces (later, Uttar Pradesh) on August 18, 1900, and was given the name Swarup Kumari ("Beautiful Princess") Nehru. She was the eldest daughter of a distinguished lawyer, Motilal Nehru, and eleven years younger than her brother, Jawaharlal. Accustomed to luxury and educated at home and in Switzerland,All the three children-Jawaharlal, Vijayalaxmi and Krishna- were put in charge of an English governess, Miss Hooper. Vijayalaxmi was brought up by her very carefully. The children were given ponies for riding. In accordance with the custom of the time, Swaroop never went to school and received all education at home.
In May 1921 she married Ranjit Sitaram Pandit ( a successful barrister from Kathiawad and classical scholar who translated Kalhana's epic history Rajatarangini into English fromSanskrit. He was arrested for his support of Indian independence and died in Lucknow prison jail on 14 January 1944.
Her daughter Nayantara Sahgal, who later settled in her mother's house in Dehradun, is a well-known novelist.
Gita Sahgal, the writer and journalist on issues of feminism, fundamentalism, and racism, director of prize-winning documentary films, and human rights activist,is her granddaughter. She is a member of Alpha Kappa AlphaSorority.) , a foreign-educated barrister from Kathiawar. At that time she changed her name to Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. The Pandit's had three daughters, including the novelist Nayantara (Pandit) Sehgal. Her husband died on January 14, 1944.


(Ranjit Sitaram Pandit)- Husband of Bijaya Lakshmi Pandit.


view all

Ranjit Sitaram Pandit's Timeline




Political Life 
In 1915 Vijayalaxmi went with her father to the Bombay Session of the Congress and returned unimpressed. She met Gandhiji in 1919, when he came to Ananda Bhavan, in Ananda  Bhavan she was greatly influenced by Mohandas Gandhi and became identified with the struggle for independence. She was imprisoned by the British on three different occasions, in 1932-1933, 1940, and 1942-1943.
In 1934 Pandit's long career in politics officially began with her election to the Allahabad Municipal Board. In 1936 she was elected to the Assembly of the United Provinces, and in 1937 became minister of local self-government and public health - the first Indian woman ever to become a cabinet minister. Like all Congress party officeholders, she resigned in 1939 to protest against the British government's declaration that India was a participant in World War II. Along with other Congress leaders, she was imprisoned after the Congress' "Quit India" Resolution of August 1942.
Forced to reorient her life after her husband's death, Pandit traveled in the United States from late 1944 to early 1946, mainly on a lecture tour. Returning to India in January 1946, she resumed her portfolio as minister of local self-government and public health in the United Provinces. In the fall of 1946 she undertook her first official diplomatic mission as leader of the Indian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. She also led India's delegations to the General Assembly in 1947, 1948, 1952, 1953, and 1963.
Pandit was elected to India's Constituent Assembly in 1946. Following India's independence from the British in 1947 she entered the diplomatic service and became India's ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1949, the United States and Mexico from 1949 to 1951, Ireland from 1955 to 1961 (during which time she was also the Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom), and Spain from 1958 to 1961. Between 1946 and 1968, she headed the Indian delegation to the United Nations. In 1953, she became the first woman President of the United Nations General Assembly 
In November 1951 she returned to India to contest successfully for a seat in the Lok Sabha (India's parliament) in the first general elections. In September 1953 she was given the honor of being the first woman and the first Asian to be elected president of the U.N. General Assembly.
For nearly seven years, beginning in December 1954, Pandit served as Indian high commissioner (ambassador) to the United Kingdom, including a tense period in British-Indian relations at the time of the Suez and Hungarian crisis' in 1956. From March 1963 until August 1963 she served as governor of the state of Maharashtra.
Jawaharlal Nehru's death on May 27, 1964 came as a great shock to her. In November, she was elected to the Lok Sabha in a by-election in the Philpur constituency in 1964 of Uttar Pradesh, which her brother had represented for 17 years. She was re-elected in the fourth general elections in 1967, but resigned the following year for "personal reasons" in 1970.
In India; she served as governor of Maharashtra from 1962 to 1964. In 1979, she was appointed the Indian representative to the UN Human Rights Commission.
Furious at Indira Gandhi's (whose maiden name was Nehru) state-of-emergency suspension of democratic processes from 1975 to 1977, she came back again to politics and campaigned against her niece in favour of Janata Party. Her efforts resulted in an electoral defeat for Gandhi.
Pandit had not been politically active for several years when she died in Dehru Dun, India on December 1, 1990. On the occasion of her death, President Ramaswami Venkataraman described Pandit as a "luminous strand in the tapestry of India's freedom struggle. Distinctive in her elegance, courage, and dedication, Mrs. Pandit was an asset to the national movement."
Further Reading
Pandit's own writings include So I Became a Minister (1939); Prison Days (1946); a touching essay, "The Family Bond, " in Rafiq Zakaria, ed., A Study of Nehru (1959); many interviews and articles, and innumerable published speeches. Her daughter, Nayantara (Pandit) Sahgal, presented revealing portraits in Prison and Chocolate Cake (1954) and From Fear Set Free (1963). There is no good biography of Pandit, but three books by professed admirers are interesting: Anne Guthrie Madame Ambassador: The Life of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1962); Vera Brittain Envoy Extraordinary (1965); and Robert Hardy Andrews A Lamp for India: The Story of Madame Pandit (1967). She is often referred to in books on the Nehrus and in biographies of her brother, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Obituaries for Pandit appear in the Chicago Tribune (December 2, 1990) and the Washington Post (December 2, 1990).
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/vijaya-lakshmi-pandit#ixzz2z0MiwcWe



(Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit in the Netherlands in 1965)  


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