Jawaharlal Nehru presents an intimate view of the influences, encounters and defining historical moments that forged the vision of India’s first prime minister. Drawing from the Nehru and the Vijayalakshmi Pandit Papers, and from Nehru’s letters to Sahgal, his niece, this book combines history with personal recollections to show how Nehru helped navigate India’s transition from a colony to an influential, modern nation. \nDiscussing the significant issue of independent India’s foreign policy—characterized by the non-alignment principle and the establishment of relations with the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China—Sahgal reveals much about Nehru’s political astuteness, realism and aversion to rigid economic doctrines, as well as the profound impact India’s non-aligned policy had on the world of that time. \nPerceptive, original and stimulating, Jawaharlal Nehru draws much-needed attention back to the man and his unmatched ability to engineer a consensus among seemingly irreconcilable sides.\n
ABOUT THE BOOK
Nayantara Sahgal is an award-winning writer of nine novels and eight non-fiction works. She is associated with the founding of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sahgal has held fellowships at many prestigious institutes in the US and is the recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (1987), the Sahitya Akademi Award (1986), which she returned in 2015, and the Sinclair Prize (1985).
