Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (née Sarup Kumari Nehru)

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (née Sarup Kumari Nehru)

by Bassano Ltd
bromide print, September 1938
7 5/8 in. x 5 5/8 in. (195 mm x 144 mm)
Purchased, 1996
Photographs Collection
NPG x84424

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  • Bassano Ltd (active 1901-1962), Photographers. Artist or producer associated with 42746 portraits.

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  • 100 Pioneering Women, p. 109 Read entry

    Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (née Swarup Kumari Nehru, 1900-90), born in Allahabad, was an Indian diplomat and politician, whose trailblazing career paved the way for others. Sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, she was imprisoned for activism during India’s independence struggle. For two years from 1937, she became the first woman to hold a cabinet position in pre-Independence India, in the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh), and was the leader of the All Indian Women’s Conference from 1941 to 1943. After the death in prison in 1944 of her barrister husband, Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, who had been arrested for Independence activism, she supported her children alone, since, as a woman, she had received no inheritance. She was Indian ambassador in Moscow (1947–9) and in Washington and Mexico (1949–51). She was also leader of the Indian UN delegation (1946-8, 1952-3); first woman president of the UN General Assembly (1953), and Indian High Commissioner to London (1954-61). She returned to India, first as governor (1962-4) to Maharashtra, then as a member of the parliamentary lower house (1964-8), and became the Indian representative to the UN Human Rights Commission in 1978.

  • Birkett, Dea; Morris, Jan (foreword), Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers, 2004 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 7 July to 31 October 2004), p. 138

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Current affairs

Britain pursues its policy of appeasement. At the Munich Agreement, Britain, France and Italy agreed to allow Hitler to seize the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia. The agreement was seen at the time as a triumph for peace, with Neville Chamberlain returning home brandishing the paper agreement and saying 'peace for our time.' Within six months Germany had occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Art and science

Graham Greene publishes Brighton Rock. The novel follows the descent of Pinky, a teenage gang leader in Brighton's criminal underworld. The book examines the criminal mind and explores the themes of morality and sin - recurrent concerns for the Roman Catholic Author.
Glasgow hosts the Empire Exhibition; an £11 million celebration of the British Empire visited by 13 million people.

International

In its pursuit of 'Lebensraum' (living space), Germany annexes Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia with little opposition from the League of Nations. At home, the Nazis continued their escalating persecution of the Jews with 'Kristallnacht' (the Night of Broken Glass), attacking Jewish homes, shops, businesses and synagogues, and taking Jewish men to concentration camps.

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