This book is a comprehensive critical re-reading of Nayantara Sahgal’s oeuvre. One of the most significant Indian English writers, her fictional and non-fictional engagement with historical events and political dilemmas inextricably links her to the colonial, anti-colonial and post-colonial discourse in India. Drawing transcontinental connections with the ideas of Fanon, Foucault, Said, Beauvoir, White, Beck and Habermas the monograph juxtaposes recurring themes in her writing with the ideas of significant Indian post-colonial commentators. Tracing the subliminal tendencies in her writing to Gandhian humanity and Nehruvian pragmaticism, the book moves beyond clichés of feminist criticism and genealogical ties to unveil a unique artist who has folded nearly a century of Indian experience in her work. Drawing on novels, essays, speeches, journalism and interviews by Nayantara Sahgal, this volume will be of great interest to scholars of South Asian literature, post-colonialism, politics and contemporary history/culture/change.

New Delhi, one month after the declaration of the Emergency, is the setting for Nayantara Sahgal's novel Rich Like Us, an ironic, tender and exquisitely crafted study of India and its people in the aftermath of Independence.The Emergency in India meant many things to many people - profit and power for some; jail for others; mobile vasectomy clinics for thousands more. For idealistics like Sonali it meant the end of a dream, the extinguishing of a bright flame of promise for the country's future that had burned since Independence. An unmarried woman, proud of her senior ranking in the civil service, she finds herself demoted and humiliated through a corrupt deal at governmental level. For opportunists like Dev, a beneficiary of the deal, it means a chance to quite his ailing father's business and make it on his own as a leader of the New Entrepreneurs. Sonali's colleague, Ravi Kachru, once a passionate Marxist, makes himself indispensable to the "royal line". Meanwhile, the stubborn shopkeeper, Kishori Lal, bloodied survivor of Partition, lands in a filthy prison cell for a non-existent crime.Rich Like Us is many individual histories, and many voices, in one - a compelling and vivid tapestry of India's past and present. Above all it is the story of Rose the cockney memsahib, brought by the worldly Ram from London forty years before to a family that neither wants nor welcomes her. In Nayantara Sahgal's tale, with its humour and tragedy, is mirrored some of the grandeur and folly of the Indian experience itself.

How did Indira Gandhi reach the pinnacle of Indian politics? Did India move away from freedom under her leadership? What kind of woman was she? Indira Gandhi made unorthodox use of power and possessed a highly individual style of functioning. In this book, Nayantara Sahgal persuasively argues that authoritarianism was the inevitable outcome of Indira’s personality and temperament. Her leadership marked a drastic break with the democratic tradition of her family and of Indian politics. During her regime, the political landscape of India underwent profound changes.The Emergency of 1975–77 was used to promote her son Sanjay as her ultimate successor. The entry of her elder son, Rajiv, into politics after Sanjay’s death, and his immediate political prominence showcased Indira’s essential belief in her family’s right to rule. Nayantara Sahgal’s personal knowledge of her cousin, in combination with her unparalleled access to letters exchanged between Nehru and her mother,Vijaylakshmi Pandit, makes for an unusually penetrating psychological and political portrait from an intimate family viewpoint.

Sahgal, Mistaken Identity. A fable concerning the implacable workings of Karma.

'Seldom does one get a chance to become acquainted with India's great leaders through a young woman so intimately associated with them.'-New York Times Book ReviewA dramatic portrait of the spirit of sacrifice that carried India through the years of the struggle for independence, this evocative memoir of an unusual childhood ends with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.Nayantara Sahgal describes what it was like growing up in Anand Bhavan, Allahabad, the home of her parents shared with her maternal uncle, Jawarlal Nehru, during the years when Gandhi was leading the movement for independence. It describes in loving detail the lives of a family for whom the country's fight for freedom was more important than anything else, certainly coming before comfort and riches.The book is particularly delightful for its picture of Nehru who springs from these pages as a man of friendly humanity and a joy in life that made him a beloved uncle, yet with an inborn greatness that inspired awe and admiration in the little girl who played with him.'She is brilliant...complex and questioning.' - Pearl S. Buck

Nayantara Sahgal's life folds history into experience. Ritu Menon unfolds that experience into a historical narrative of surpassing appeal.' - Gopalkrishna Gandhi 'Nayantara Sahgal's personal life was enmeshed with historical events in India: Ritu Menon's biography of her is a delicate exploration of both. I enjoyed reading it very much.' - Leila Seth Nayantara Sahgal, born into the first family of Indian politics, is one of India's finest writers. Novelist, essayist, political commentator and memoirist, everything she wrote, whether political or literary, followed the evolution of democracy in post- Independence India. What connects Sahgal's fiction and non-fiction is politics; what propels her politics is the idea of India. The three strands of personal, political and literary are inextricably woven in her writing, and just as it is impossible to separate a writer's life from her text, Nayantara Sahgal cannot be read without reference to the political life of the country. Charged with stepping out of line in her political writing, Sahgal displayed a similar tendency in her personal life, risking both social disapproval and political displeasure. She carried on regardless. This literary, personal and political biography of this important writer is a first, based on interviews, private papers and letters, first-hand information and archival research.

In this exchange of letters dating from an extremely turbulent period of their lives, Nayantara Sahgal and E.N. Mangat Rai, two very public figures who had remained at the same time intensely private, broke their self-imposed silence for the first time.When Relationship was first published in 1994, it was received with varying degrees of shock and appreciation. This newly revised edition includes all of the correspondence carried in the previous one, with a short but significant addition: Diary from Chandigarh is an honest and often emotionally wrenching account of Nayantara's life with her husband and children before the break-up.Both the diary and the letters highlight one woman's endeavour to remain true to herself, her writing, her ideals and relationships, both outside and within marriage. They speak of a growing and passionate involvement, of the author's joy and pain at discovering an intellectual companionship while recognizing the difficulties of keeping such a relationship alive. They reflect too, on the dilemmas and compulsions that bind men and women into particular relationships, and the exigencies of public life and its implications for the private sphere.A mirror of the times when a kind of idealism and commitment still seemed possible, Relationship gives the reader an insight into the life and thoughts of one of India's most successful writers, and one of the most distinguished civil servants of his generation

A Time To Be Happy: A Novel is a story about people of the upper middle class in the India that was struggling for, achieving, and then testing independence on one level it is a charming, intimate family chronicle; on another it is a comedy of manners a

&Lsquo;She Missed The Sense Of Values Shivraj Had Planted Like Roses With His Two Hands. It Was Their Fragrance, Something As Ephemeral As That, That Had Bound The Country Together In A Unity, Not Any Hidebound Principle Or Rule From A Book.&Rsquo; Shivraj Is Dead And With Him The Values With Which He Had Governed The Country For Over A Decade. While His Successors Destroy The Idealistic World He Had Built, Shivraj&Rsquo;S Circle Of Intimate Friends&Mdash;His Sister Devi, The Education Minister; Usman Ali, Vice Chancellor Of Delhi University; And Michael Calvert, An English Writer&Mdash;Struggle To Find Order In The Chaos, Even As Rishad, Devi&Rsquo;S Son, Loses Himself In It. Juxtaposing The Conflict Of Personal Relationships With The Larger Canvas Of Corrupt Politics In A Situation In New Delhi, Nayantara Sahgal Masterfully Weaves A Tale That Grips The Reader From Start To Finish. &Lsquo;A Brilliant And Provocative Piece Of Fact-Based Fiction&Rsquo;&Mdash;Financial Times &Lsquo;A Moving, Even Inspiring Novel&Rsquo;&Mdash;Sunday Times