Long before everything from COVID to air travel had proved our unity on Spaceship Earth, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was pioneering a global consciousness. It’s high time you met her. -- Gloria Steinem, writer and activist

Sidelined by the “great men” school of history writing, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit is brought to life in this vividly written and painstakingly researched biography. You’ll find yourself eagerly turning the pages to learn what happens next in a story you thought you already knew. -- Daisy Rockwell, International Booker Prize-winning translator of Tomb of Sand

With this illuminating biography, Manu Bhagavan restores Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit to the pantheon of extraordinary individuals who created a modern India according to their noble vision of international human rights. Written in lucid prose with a scholar’s unflinching eye, this is yet a deeply affectionate portrait of a complex woman, and a masterful recreation of a thrilling period in history. -- Kiran Desai, Booker-prize winning author of The Inheritance of Loss

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit is not merely a biography; it is a captivating exploration of a life that shattered barriers and challenged conventions. Manu Bhagavan skilfully honours Pandit’s legacy, inviting us to re-evaluate history through a new lens and inspiring us to envision a more inclusive, just and interconnected world -- Indra Nooyi, former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo

Rigorously researched and engagingly written, Manu Bhagavan’s Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit: A Biography presents a highly readable portrait of one of India’s earliest, and perhaps, most influential women diplomats. By adroitly highlighting her sterling contributions in defining the paradigms that anchored Indian foreign policy post-Independence, Bhagavan has crafted a much-needed intervention into the debates over the evolution of our place in the world -- Shashi Tharoor, MP

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit’s extraordinary and eventful life is the story of India and its women, of the international order, and of Indian foreign policy, at a very consequential time in the twentieth century. Her life was a series of firsts and innovations: India’s first woman cabinet minister, president of the UN General Assembly, ambassador to Moscow and Washington, India’s leading voice abroad in the first decade after Independence?her list of firsts is longer than I can mention here. Her contributions to building the post-World War II order were acknowledged internationally. And her social conscience led her to pioneer much that we now take for granted. This remarkable lady has finally found a fitting biographer in Manu Bhagavan, whose historical sensibility and rigour is on full display in this sensitive and objective biography, which is also a contribution to intellectual history. I could not put it down until I had read it through. -- Shivshankar Menon, former national security adviser of India

 

Manu Bhagavan teaches at Hunter College and the Graduate Center-CUNY, where he is a professor of history, human rights, and public policy and Senior Fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. He is the author or editor of seven other books, including the critically-acclaimed The Peacemakers. He frequently appears in the media to comment on global affairs. Manu lives in New York City.