“The Woman Who Swayed America”:

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 1945

by

Julie Laut*

Abstract: This essay demonstrates the ways in which Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit’s gendered
performance on the periphery of the United Nations Conference on International Organization
(UNCIO) in San Francisco (1945) established her diplomatic celebrity and lay the foundations
of India’s Congress nationalist aspirations for postwar global moral leadership. Her calls to end
colonial rule and discrimination were not new additions to the discourse of international
diplomacy, but her self-conscious performance of a modern, ideal Indian womanhood with
intimate ties to both her brother, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Gandhi was new, and it captured the
imagination of contemporary observers near and far. Pandit’s elite, cultured, and charismatic
self-representation provided the perfect future tense for the nearly-postcolonial India.

The skilful timing and unremitting energy of Mrs.

Vijayalakshmi Pandit and her supporters in the United States
have ensured a floodlight of publicity for India’s claims at a
time when the peoples of the world are looking anxiously to the
conference for formulation of principles and policies which are
intended to shape their destinies.
Times of India, 7 May 1945

With such puppets representing India at San Francisco people

were naturally disappointed and did not expect much from the
Conference, so far as India’s interest was concerned. The only
ray of hope was the presence of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit in
America.
R. L. Khipple, The Woman Who Swayed America:
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Lion Press, Lahore 1946,
p. 79.

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900-1990) was one of the highest ranking and most
visible female diplomats of her generation. A member of perhaps the most prominent
political family in India – her father was the wealthy Kashmiri politician and
Ghandian nationalist Motilal Pandit, her brother was Jawharlal Nehru – Pandit had
become active in the nationalist movement as a young woman. Sarojini Naidu was a
mentor to Pandit through her work in the All-India Women’s Congress in the 1920s.
*
Julie Laut works in outreach and development at the University of Illinois Press. She completed her
Ph.D. in History at the the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016 with a focus on
transnational feminist history and the history of empire. She published ‘Chasing Me Over the Globe’:
Kamaladevi and the Limits of Imperial Surveillance and Passport Controls, 1939-41 in A Passionate
Life: Writings by and on Kamaladevi Chattopadyay, Zubaan, New Delhi 2017.

© DEP ISSN 1824 - 4483

 Julie Laut DEP n. 37 / 2018

Pandit also looked to Mahatma Gandhi as a mentor and father figure, particularly
after the death of her own father in 1931. Her elder brother, Jawaharlal, remained a
close confident throughout his life. During the mass movements of the 1930s, Pandit
served three prison sentences for political action against British imperialism, the
final time alongside her twenty-year-old daughter at Naini prison in Allahabad.
Pandit led the first Indian delegation to the United Nations in 1945, and during her
brother’s terms as Prime Minister of India (1947-1964), she continued to head
India’s UN delegation. She served as the first woman and first Asian president of the
UN General Assembly in 1953. In addition, she was India’s first ambassador to the
Soviet Union (1947-48), and was ambassador to the U.S. and Mexico (1949-52) and
England (1954-61).

Introduction
This essay demonstrates the ways in which Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit’s gendered
performance on the periphery of the 1945 UN Conference on International
Organization in San Francisco established her diplomatic celebrity and at the same
time lay the foundations of India’s aspirations for postwar global moral leadership
in the post-war world. Politically experienced within a national context but a novice
on the international stage, Pandit took advantage of the opportunities presented to
her to gain increased media attention for her cause. Her calls to end colonial rule and
discrimination were not new additions to the discourse of international diplomacy,
but her self-conscious performance of a modern, ideal Indian womanhood with
intimate ties to both her brother and Gandhi was new, and it captured the imagination
of contemporary observers near and far. Pandit’s elite, cultured, and charismatic self-
representation provided the perfect future tense for the almost-postcolonial India.
Her physical presence and embodied difference attracted an orientalist gaze directed
toward her by western observers fascinated with this “diminutive, silvery-haired
woman”, dressed always in a sari, who could speak with such force as she “Twist[ed]
the Tail of the British Lion”1. Pandit’s ability to garner support from both well-heeled
America supporters and the India lobby in the U.S. meant she was well positioned
to represent the Indian cause at the UNCIO that spring. This essay shows how
Pandit’s propaganda in San Francisco bolstered the notion that the All-India National
Congress was the only legitimate inheritor of the postcolonial Indian state. Despite
some challenges to this predominant position, the voices of other Indian nationalist
interests were effectively drowned out: figuratively by the overwhelming press
coverage of Pandit that reiterated her legitimacy, and literally when a heckler at a
press conference (an Indian Muslim attached to the official UNCIO delegation) was
forced out of the room by other attendees. In these ways, Pandit’s iteration of Indian
aspirational postcoloniality abroad pushed aside the very real contests for power at
home and reinforced the legitimacy of the Gandhi-Nehru dyad prominently on the
global stage.

1
William Moore, “Indian Woman Twists the Tail of British Lion”, April 27, 1945, Chicago Daily
Tribune, p. 6.

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“A star-making turn”
The most important thing to emerge out of the 1945 UN Conference on
International Organization (UNCIO) for the Indian nationalist cause was the geo-
political and international diplomatic experience gained by Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.
As a founding member of the United Nations, India had an official delegation at the
conference, but the three knighted Indian men selected by the British to represent the
colony were considered “stooges” by the large number of anticolonial and antiracist
individuals and organizations gathered in San Francisco. The irony of a dependent
state joining an organization ostensibly made up of sovereign nations only helped
boost attention for Pandit’s anti-imperial public speech. Pandit was no novice to
politics. As the eldest daughter in India’s most famous Indian National Congress
(INC, or Congress) family, she had been steeped in the language and action of
nationalist politics since childhood. But her debut on the international stage in 1945
provided her with a formative education in diplomacy on a larger scale and
foreshadowed the contradictory nature of UN postcolonialism, which would develop
in the coming years. In the making of international diplomatic celebrity, her
performance on behalf of Indian independence and anticolonialism writ large in the
months surrounding the conference was at the time and continues to be considered
“a star-making turn.”2 She was a highly effective and affective avatar for the Indian
nationalist cause and she would use the lessons learned in San Francisco to great
success when she returned as India’s official head of delegation to the UN in 1946
and beyond. The combination of anticipation surrounding the formation of the UN
in San Francisco, a savvy political propaganda machine supported by the India lobby
in the United States, and characteristics specific to Pandit as an individual, helped
launch a political and cultural force.
Pandit’s presence in the United States in the spring of 1945 was both personal
and political. The majority of the Congress leadership remained imprisoned for their
participation in the 1942 Quit India Movement, but Pandit had been released due to
health concerns in early 1944 shortly before her husband succumbed to illness
worsened by his own imprisonment. Because Indian law prohibited women from
inheriting, Pandit was left without significant income. She worked for some months
organizing famine relief in Bengal, but was personally adrift and in need of financial
stability. When lawyer and politician Tej Bahadru Sapru, with the support of
Mahatmas Gandhi, invited her to join the Indian delegation to the Pacific Relations
Conference to be held in Virginia, USA in February 1945, she combined this
opportunity with visits to see her two eldest daughters who were attending Wellesley
College in Massachusetts.
When she arrived in New York City in December 1944, Pandit was the first
prominent Indian National Congress figure to visit the United States since the start
of the war. In response to her arrival, individuals and organizations sympathetic to
the Indian cause welcomed her with open arms. Pearl S. Buck offered her practical
help finding accommodation and clothing appropriate to the New York winter. The
Chinese Consul General held a reception in her honor where Pandit met the British
2
Manu Bhagavan, India and the Quest for One World: The Peacemakers, MacMillan, New York 2013,
p. 31.

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author W. Somerset Maugham among others. Power couple Henry and Clare Luce
Booth gave a dinner-reception at the Waldorf-Astoria that drew “the elite of New
York”3. Eleanor Roosevelt hosted a luncheon in Pandit’s honor. New York’s Mayor
Fiorello H. LaGuardia received her at City Hall. And over 1000 people heard her
speak publicly for the first time at the Indian Independence Day celebration on
January 26, an event hosted by the India League of America4. It became apparent
quickly that Pandit was naturally adept at representing the Indian cause in gatherings
both large and small.
The social and political culture that undergirded postcolonial Indian politics at
the United Nations in 1945 was a “glittering” world made up of international and
internationally-minded elite diplomats, activists, and artists. While Pandit’s political
and familial lineage gave her entrée to this elite setting, her intelligence and personal
charisma assured her staying power. To observers, Pandit moved through this milieu
effortlessly, but throughout her first stay in the United States, Pandit was learning
how to utilize her political history and distinctive personal characteristics to move
her agenda forward. Over these months, Pandit self-consciously created a self-
representation that would allow her the most access to and success on the
international stage. Her savvy complicity in the appropriation of herself as a symbol
of modern India helped produce an especially effective diplomatic celebrity.
From childhood Pandit and her sister, Krishna Hutheesing, were groomed to
become exemplary models of the “educated, ‘modern,’ new woman” early twentieth-
century Indian nationalism desired5. For Pandit, her Anglophile education and elite
upbringing (made visible and audible through her comportment and speech), mixed
with the bravery, strength, and domesticated femininity required of the ideal
Gandhian satyagrahi was eminently transportable/translatable into the elite social
and political culture she encountered in the United States. She occupied a liminal
space, a gendered persona at once Eastern and Western that appealed to her
influential supporters as well as a broader audience. As an Indian admirer wrote after
the 1945 lecture tour:
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, in her self, combines all that is best in the two ways of life – the Eastern
and the Western…Her exterior beams with the manners and etiquette of…her European
governess – but her heart throbs with the Kashmiri Brahmin blood of her ancestor[s]6.

3
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness: A Personal Memoir, Crown Publishers, New York
1979, pp. 190-191; “Mrs. Pandit”, India Today, 5, 11, February 1945, p. 3.
4
“Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit”, India Today, 5, 10, January 1945, p. 4; “Events Today”, New York
Times, 26 January 1945, p. 19; “India is Visualized Seizing Independence”, New York Times, 27 January
1945, 4; “Display Ad 4-No Title”, Washington Post, 29 January 1945, p. 5.
5
See Partha Chatterjee, The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question, in Kumkum Sangari and
Sudesh Vaid (eds.), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, Kali for Women, New Delhi 1989,
pp. 233-253. For more on women and gender in the Gandhian movement, see Suresht R. Bald, The
Politics of Gandhi’s ‘Feminism’: Constructing ‘Sitas’ for Swaraj, in Sita Ranchod-Nilsson and Mary
Ann Tétreault (eds.), Women, States, and Nationalism: At Home in the Nation? , Routledge, New York
2000, pp. 81-97; Ketu H. Katrak, Indian Nationalism, Gandhian ‘Satyagraha,’ and Representations of
Female Sexuality, in Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger (eds.),
Nationalisms & Sexualities, Routledge, New York 1992, pp. 395-406.
6
R.L. Khipple, The Woman Who Swayed America, cit., p. 149.

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Perceived more as an approachable “British subject” than the less comprehensible

category of “Indian”, her performance could be consumed comfortably by American
audiences. Through her embrace of this self-representation, Pandit gave India its
toehold into UN culture even before Indian independence was achieved. And her
political legitimacy as the primary spokesperson for Indian interests was greatly
enhanced due to her close association with her brother, Jawharlal Nehru, and her
family’s decades long relationship with Gandhi. But when one US newspaper
declared her the “First Lady of India”7, it signaled the arrival of much more than a
familial representative; it telegraphed the arrival on the world stage of an Indian
woman who was to lay the very foundations of India’s ambitions for global moral
leadership in the post-war geopolitical order.

Setting the Stage

Pandit arrived in the United States in late 1944 via a circuitous route. With the
end of the war approaching, the Indian National Congress leadership felt it was time
to send a spokesperson to the United States to garner public support on behalf of
their cause. Widowed since January 1944, Pandit found herself alone and without
financial support for the first time in her life. Left with no sons and no will
guaranteeing her a portion of her husband’s inheritance, according to Indian
communal law their money and property reverted to her husband’s family. Pandit
was initially offered only the minimum Rs. 150 widow maintenance and Rs. 50 for
her daughters until they married. Nehru offered what support he could from his
prison cell at Ahmadnagar Fort: Rs. 2000 and his encouragement to keep working,
try not to worry, and to remember that he considered her and their younger sister,
Krishna, “joint-owners” of the family estate8. Pandit could have pursued a legal case
against her in-laws, but Gandhi, an important paternal figure since her own father
Motilal’s death in 1931, urged her to let the conflict with her in-laws go as “we had
more important things to do”9. Against her lawyer’s advice but with the intent of
ending the painful episode, Pandit agreed to accept a small settlement from her
brother-in-law. She “signed a document giving up [her] personal claims and that of
any unborn grandsons [she] might have, and the chapter was brought to a close”10.
The question of on-going financial resources remained pressing, and a lecture tour
in the United States held the potential for addressing that problem.
In spite of its financial constraints, Pandit’s status as a widow did open up new
possibilities for her activism and allowed her increased mobility. In a conversation
with Eleanor Roosevelt for McCall’s magazine during Pandit’s tenure as Indian
Ambassador to the United States in 1950, the two women mused about the particular
7
S.A. Haynes, “India Stands For Equality, Leader Tells Baltimoreans”, Afro-American, 7 April 1945,
p. 1.
8
Jawahar to Nan, 13 March 1944, in Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom: Nehru’s Letters to His
Sister, HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi 2000, p. 391 and 395. Letters in the volume date
from 1909-1947, with just one letter from 1956.
9
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, cit., p. 181.
10
Ibidem.

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pressures placed on female diplomats. Responsibilities were two-fold for a woman

who was expected to play the roles of both Ambassador and Ambassador’s wife,
demands that Pandit said caused physical and emotional strain. She acknowledged
that despite its added pressures, widowhood had made her international diplomacy
possible. While Minister of Health of the United Provinces from 1937-1939 (the first
Indian woman to hold such a position), Pandit traveled to see her husband every
weekend, even when they worked in different cities. But if he had been alive, she
surmised, she would not have been able to be a diplomat as it would be too awkward
for her husband. The timing of her husband’s death contributed to the serendipitous
timing of her emergence at the United Nations the following year. Married, she
would have been less inclined to perform a role that required independent travel
abroad; widowed, she was able to become one of the very few women active at the
highest levels of international diplomacy in the 1940s and 1950s.
Given these circumstances, when Gandhi, out of prison since June 1944, and
Sapru, President of the Indian Council for World Affairs, approached Pandit to speak
on behalf of India in the United States, she was free to go. The only hurdle remaining
was governmental permission to travel. As part of continued imperial control and
surveillance of Congress leaders, the British had confiscated her passport and
seemed unlikely to reissue it in the foreseeable future. Ultimately, she found a way
around British restrictions on her mobility and entered the United States without a
passport. In her memoirs Pandit describes Edith Pao, the American wife of the
Chinese Consul General in Calcutta, inviting her to attend a consulate dinner for the
American Air Force. There, Pandit was introduced to the chief of the Allied Air
Command in the Eastern region. With approval from US Undersecretary of State
Sumner Welles, she boarded a US army plane in December 1944, US visa in hand.
The British, highly concerned about the impact of Indian propagandists in America,
nevertheless were unable to prevent Pandit’s entry into the United States. If the
American government provided permission to enter the country, the best the British
could do was track her movements and send their own counter-propagandists to
lessen her impact11.
After Christmas holidays spent with her daughters, Pandit left for the Pacific
Relations Conference (PCR) in Virginia, one of five Indian delegates attending as
non-voting observers. She attended lectures and meetings and had the opportunity to
mingle with other delegates from all over the world. As she would do throughout her
travels, Pandit wrote to her brother about her experiences. In February, Nehru
responded to her letter about the conference and shared his insights about these types
of international meetings. Pandit having apparently expressed frustration with the
lack of definitive action at the conference, he conceded, “You are perfectly right in
saying that these conferences do not decide anything important or solve any of the
11
Pandit was also monitored throughout her trip. For example, someone who attended one of Pandit’s
debates forwarded a letter to the Foreign Office describing how the debate “quickly developed into a
discussion on whether England should give up India” (Marika Sherwood, India at the Founding of the
United Nations, in “International Studies”, 33, 4, 1996, p. 412. And in one letter Nehru mentions
Amarnath Jha being sent by the Indian Government to the United States “to put their side as unofficially
and gently…as possible” in a letter to Pandit (Jawahar to Nan darling, 20 March 1945, in Nayantara
Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom, cit., p. 465).

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world’s problems”12. Yet the conference was by no means a waste of Pandit’s

energies. It was during the PCR that she began to attract the media attention that
would become ubiquitous in the coming months and years. According to one
biographer, her few opportunities to talk in Virginia gained “favorable news releases,
which created interest in the woman from India”13. And a Washington Post columnist
predicted that the “brilliant, colorful Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit” was certain to be
“spotlighted”14. Even before the main event started in San Francisco, she had begun
to make an impression on observers, one that would propel her into international
diplomatic celebrity in service to the Indian nationalist cause.
Word of Pandit’s successes reached Nehru in prison half a world away via news
reports, friends’ updates, and the much-delayed letters she wrote to him throughout
her journeys. The letters Nehru wrote to her in this period provide a glimpse into
how he viewed her experiences as a training ground for future endeavors. Writing
from Ahmadnagar Fort (Maharashtra) and later Bareilly Jail (Uttar Pradesh),
government censors constrained Nehru’s ability to be explicit about political issues.
International mail delivery was also highly unpredictable; letters often were months
in transit. As a result, Pandit would not have received her brother’s letters in time to
act immediately on his advice. Nevertheless, the letters demonstrate Nehru’s
recognition of Pandit’s growing effectiveness on the global stage. In a letter dated
late January 1945, he wrote he had been following her travels in press accounts and
had “no doubt” she would improve the “minds and outlooks” of the American people
on the Indian issue. On a more personal note, he also hoped the experience would
help Pandit grow in confidence and develop new “ideas and energy” for the work
ahead15. In a letter from February, he mentioned that cables containing brief extracts
of her statements had “rather upset the composure of people in New Delhi and
Whitehall,” a testament to the wide circulation of her anticolonial critiques16. An
early April letter conveyed Nehru’s pleasure at that Pandit was “making good and
impressing people” and that she seemed to be “finding” herself:
You are growing in mind, in outlook, in self-assurance, and in a friendly and favourable
atmosphere your capacities are developing. One must of course have ability and capacity but
almost equally important is the chance and opportunity to develop them… Keep growing and
learning, flexible in mind and body, and yet always with that hard steel-like something which
tempers us and keeps us straight and anchored, and gives us a sense of real values17.

Even before Pandit made her most lasting impression at the UNCIO in San
Francisco, her talent at speaking effectively on behalf of the Indian cause to
audiences outside the subcontinent had become apparent.
12
Jawahar to Nan, 27 February 1945, in Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom, cit., p. 454.
13
Anne Guthrie, Madame Ambassador: The Life of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Harcourt, Brace, and
World, Inc., New York 1962, p. 120.
14
Genevieve Reynolds, “Berge Denounces Cartels”, Washington Post, 19 January 1945, p. 12.
15
Jawahar to Darling Nan, 31 January 1945, in Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom, cit., p. 445.
16
Jawahar to Darling Nan, 27 February 1945, in Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom, cit., p. 456.
17
Jawahar to Darling Nan, 10 April 1945, in Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom, cit., pp. 469-
470.

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Global 1945
Physically distant yet inextricably linked to the bloody battlefields of the Second
World War, San Francisco became an unlikely location of diplomatic import when
delegates from fifty countries met to debate the structure of the proposed United
Nations in late April 1945. Newspapers in the previous months had been filled with
momentous stories drawing readers’ attention to happenings in locations across the
globe embroiled in the war. The Allies had won the Battle of the Bulge, firebombed
Dresden and Tokyo, and freed Manila from Japanese occupation. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt died just weeks after being sworn in for an unprecedented third term,
leaving the untested Harry S. Truman to lead the emerging superpower. As battles
continued on numerous fronts in Asia, Europe, and the Pacific that spring,
concentration camps including Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, and Flossenbürg were
liberated, revealing the horror of genocide perpetrated by Germany. The war had
been long and grueling, and it had affected a large portion of the world’s population.
At the same time, governments and leaders were developing a forward-looking
vision for the postwar world. In February 1945, the United States, the Soviet Union,
and Great Britain had walked away from the Yalta Conference with a signed
agreement on the reorganization of postwar Europe. The Arab League formed in
Cairo in March, creating an important regional political power. Now, San Francisco
had been selected as the location for the United Nations Conference on International
Organization and invitations were sent to founding member states to convene at the
end of April18. With the reality of gruesome warfare and massive civilian casualties
in the sixth year of this global war as its backdrop, diplomats converged on the City
by the Bay. A second world war in a generation was ending and an international
organization was being built, in the words of President Truman at the opening
session, to “provide the machinery which will make future peace not only possible
but certain”19.
At the center of power in San Francisco were those delegations representing the
Big Four – China, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States – with the
reality of a bipolar power struggle emerging between the latter two increasingly
obvious. The document presented to member states for their consideration had been
hashed out amongst these powers during the Dumbarton Oaks talks (August 21-
18
It was a given the United States would host the conference for several reasons: Roosevelt’s passion
for the organization, the lack of active warfare in the country, and the fact that the US government
offered to pay all costs save the delegates’ personal expenses. San Francisco was chosen because of a
dream US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius had during the Yalta Conference. See: Stephen C.
Schlesinger, Act of Creation. The Founding of the United Nations, Westview Press, Boulder, 2003, pp.
111-112 and 61.
19
“Address by President Harry S. Truman”, 25 April 1945, The United States and the Peace, Part II:
Verbatim Record of the Plenary Sessions of the United Nations Organization on International
Organization, San Francisco, April-June 1945, The United States News, Washington, D.C, n.d., p. 29-
A.

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October 7, 1944)20. Invited delegations from the other founding nations were allowed
to put forward, debate, and vote on amendments to the Dumbarton Oaks proposals.
Unsurprisingly, the draft Charter reflected the contradictions of an organization
guided by powerful governments seeking to protect their own sovereignty while
simultaneously extending new powers to an international organization. A prime
example of this tension was the belief expressed by many smaller member states that
the power of the veto at the Security Council was a “defect” written into the draft
Charter21. With deference to the greater responsibility for the war and the enormous
power held by the Big Four, the other member states nonetheless resented the veto
and hoped for a larger, more inclusive Security Council with regional
representation22. Time would prove their fears well-founded: the insistence on the
part of the Big Four as well as France to maintain the veto in the Charter contributed
directly to frequent deadlock at the Council throughout the Cold War years23.
Though the fight over the veto was among the most heated of the conference, the
delegates faced many more disputes over the organization of the UN Charter. The
smaller countries submitted thousands of revisions to the Dumbarton Oaks proposal,
and the Big Four put forward more than 20 joint amendments of their own. In order
to address these questions, the conference was divided into four major commissions,
each with several sub-commissions tasked to discuss sections of the draft plan and
any relevant amendments. The commissions met for six weeks, working longer and
longer hours as the end of the conference neared. The official Indian delegation
submitted no substantive amendments, but it was honored with the selection of Sir
Arcot Ramaswamy Mudaliar (1887-1976), a lawyer and politician from southern
India, to serve as the first chair of the Economic and Social Council committee.
Debate over major issues was vigorous, including over the status of regional
organizations, the establishment of permanent members on the Security Council, and
the scope of the Economic and Social Council. But the deck was stacked against
smaller countries in more ways than one. Primarily, the Big Four had veto power
over any amendment. While they were willing to negotiate behind the scenes and
make some compromises, they would not allow their power to be undermined
considerably. Also, in Stephen C. Schlesinger’s assessment, most of the smaller
20
“The United Nations Dumbarton Oaks Proposals for a General International Organization (For the
Use of the Delegates)”, Doc. I, G/1, May 17, 1945, United Nations Conference on International
Organization, San Francisco 1945, Documents 1-2, Part 1 (1945). See also Robert C. Hilderbrand,
Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security, University
of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1990.
21
“Address by Alberto Lleras Camargo, Chairman, the Colombian Delegation”, The United States and
the Peace, Part II: Verbatim Record of the Plenary Sessions of the United Nations Organization on
International Organization, San Francisco, April-June 1945, The United States News, Washington,
D.C n.d., p. 42. Delegates from other South American countries, Australia, Egypt, and others also raised
concerns about the veto in their plenary remarks.
22
On the battle over the veto, see Stephen Schlesinger, Act of Creation cit., pp. 193-225.
23
Since 1989, the Security Council has made on average one decision per week, a drastic improvement
over roughly one decision per month in the first four decades of its existence (Peter Wallensteen and
Patrik Johansson, Security Council Decisions in Perspective, in David M. Malone (ed.), The UN
Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder 2004, p.
18.

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nations were “resigned to whittling down the dominance of the big nations, but not
driving them out of the organization”. A compromised system outweighed the
spectre of no organization at all24.
Many observers representing a wide variety of interest groups roamed the
meeting halls at the UNCIO. Their hope: to impact decisions on specific issues.
These individuals and organizations without official representation in the conference
halls hoped to wield some influence on the direction of the postwar world order even
in the face of great power dominance. British journalist Alistair Cooke described the
various groups as “unpopular crusaders for small nations and lost causes, drilling
away underneath the official whirl in the hope of deepening the foundations of the
peace”. These included the Serbian Orthodox church in Yugoslavia, spokesmen for
the Armenian question, the American League for a Free Palestine, and Friends of
Republican Spain25. Near the end of the conference the Christian Science Monitor
noted that those such as the Venezuelans calling for the repudiation of Spain’s
Franco, whether “Ill-timed or right-timed…have made it clear that multitudes are
seeking a peace based on moral considerations”26. Emerging from within the political
landscape of the United States, the NAACP also asked for a seat at the table during
the San Francisco conference. The US government ultimately granted access to the
NAACP along with 41 other interest groups, inevitably diminishing the influence of
any one organization when so many were allowed to attend. As private citizens these
representatives could observe and lobby from inside the meeting halls, but in reality
they had little to no influence on negotiations27.
These events in San Francisco echoed a similar phenomenon at the formation of
the League of Nations in 1919 when activists from across the globe had gathered in
Paris to speak out against racial and colonial oppression and create a “new order” as
the world emerged from the First World War28. The question of racial equality
became a highly contested issue as a result. Those “seeking to combat racial
discrimination in the world needed a powerful and officially recognized voice at the
peace conference itself”, and so they looked to the Japanese delegation29. These men
had received instructions from the Japanese government to make clear that
cooperation with the League would be predicated on the inclusion of a racial equality
24
Stephen Schlesinger, Act of Creation cit., p. 172.
25
Alistair Cooke, “Big News and Little News: Contrasts at San Francisco,” Manchester Guardian, 29
May 1945, p. 4.
26
“Peace and Justice Sought for Minorities”, Christian Science Monitor, 12 June 1945, 9.
27
See Carol Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for
Human Rights, 1944-1955, Cambridge University Press, New York 2003, pp. 50-51.
28
Both the US and the British attempted to restrict the mobility of activists suspected to stir the waters
in Paris. See Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial
Discrimination, Westview Press, Boulder 1988, p. 77; Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-
Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism, Oxford University Press,
New York 2007, pp. 59-60; and David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-
1919, Henry Holt and Company, New York 1993, p. 567.
29
Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice, cit., p. 79.

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clause in the covenant30. When the League of Nations Commission, designated to

produce the organization’s Covenant, sidestepped the first attempt to include such
language, the issue went global, drawing emotional reactions from both inside and
outside the meetings31. Japan’s initially nationalist proposal was transformed into a
“universal crusade”32 as millions around the world hoped for change, including
delegates to the Pan-African Congress organized by W.E.B. Du Bois to run parallel
to the Paris talks33.
For defenders of white supremacy from North America and the white British
settler colonies, even vague language on the subject of equality had been cause for
alarm in 1919. The Australian Prime Minister William Hughes put up the most vocal
opposition to the Japanese proposal, allowing US President Woodrow Wilson and
South Africa’s Jan Christiaan Smuts to lay the blame for the language’s omission on
Hughes’ shoulders34. Despite intense rounds of diplomatic talks and an “eloquent
and moving” final appeal by Japan’s Baron Makino, proposed language on racial
equality was left out of the final Covenant35. In the end, the dominance of white,
western male diplomacy in Paris won when the limited structure of the new
organization successfully excluded competing interests. The real decisions were not
made at the more democratic plenary meetings but “by the leaders of the great
powers, who met in an increasingly smaller group as the conference stretched on”36.
Small states could not override the intentions of the League’s framers, and in regards
to racial equality the great power statesmen were unwilling “to recognize that this
issue might be of intense concern to millions of people throughout the world”37.
Nevertheless, the debates did succeed in producing a “heightened emotional
awareness of race” and critiques of imperial power around the globe38.
While governments selected their delegations and gave permission to various
groups to have insider access in San Francisco in 1945, and news outlets assigned
reporters to cover the creation of the UN Charter, activists with a diverse array of
30
Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line: White Men’s Countries and the
International Challenge of Racial Equality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008, p. 287; and
Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race, and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919, Routledge, New
York 1998, pp. 16-17.
31
Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice, cit., p. 95.
32
Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line cit., p. 287.
33
Memorandum to M. Diagne and Others on a Pan-African Congress to be Held in Paris in February,
1919, in “Crisis”, 17, 3, 1919, pp. 224-225. For an extended discussion of Japan’s complicated
motivations for bringing the issue of racial equality to the Commission, see Naoko Shimazu, Japan,
Race, and Equality, cit., pp. 89-116. On Du Bois and the Pan-African Congress, see David Levering
Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois, cit., pp. 561-580.
34
Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line cit., p. 302; and Goolam Vahed,
Race, Empire, and Citizenship: Sarojini Naidu’s 1924 Visit to South Africa, in “South African
Historical Journal”, 64, 2, 2012, p. 330. See also Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race, and Equality, cit., pp.
125-136, and 154-157.
35
Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line cit., p. 301.
36
Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, cit., p. 57.
37
Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice, cit., p. 96.
38
Ivi, p. 102.

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political interests also mobilized on the fringes of this new conference. Among these
many interest groups were the India League of America and the National Committee
for India’s Freedom who were lobbying for Indian independence. Together, they
selected Pandit to represent their cause. The context for the discussion of race and
empire was quite different at the end of the Second World War than it had been in
1919. These issues no longer could be shunted aside so easily by European leaders.
Though in the words of Mark Mazower “the UN was designed by, and largely
operative as an instrument of, great power politics,” the make-up of the new
international organization and its rhetoric nevertheless was more inclusive than had
been the League of Nations and its Covenant39. The colonial nations had made many
promises to their dependencies to gain their participation in the war effort; the Allies
could not have triumphed without the financial support and enormous influx of
soldiers from the colonized world. Furthermore, the principles that emerged from the
Atlantic Charter, which formed the basis of the 1942 “Declaration of the United
Nations” and then were carried over into the Preamble of the UN Charter, stated a
commitment to a postwar world in which nation-states would work together
effectively not only to avoid war but also to promote human rights and justice.
The Preamble to the UN Charter was particularly idealistic, committing the new
organization to work to preserve international peace and affirming the dignity of all
through a commitment to human rights and the promotion of social and economic
progress. Born out of the hope for postwar peace as envisioned by geopolitically
dominant states, the ideals contained in the Preamble and the Charter formed a space
into which millions of colonized and oppressed peoples around the world could place
their hopes for a reconfiguration of power in the post war world. These millions
sought relief from the imperial power and racial subjugation that the League of
Nations had reinscribed. The UN Charter gestured toward these goals, but its
effectiveness would have to be put to the test. Questions of racial equality and
imperial power were addressed differently in 1945 than they had been in 1919,
though without satisfactory outcomes for those looking to the UN as an instigator of
real change. The question of colonies and trusteeships had not been on the
Dumbarton Oaks agenda. As for human rights, the Big Four “concurred that the most
innocuous place to insert language on the subject was in the section on the
responsibilities of the Economic and Social Council. The Council would ‘promote
respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,’ but have no power to enforce
them”40. In San Francisco, Du Bois and the NAACP were successful in getting the
United States’ delegation to submit proposals on human rights and colonialism, but
that delegation did little to get those proposals passed. A human rights commission
was established, but was years away from effective intervention. As for the question
of imperial power, though the rhetoric espoused the ideal of self-governance and
equality of nations, the UN Charter in the end did not include the goal of
independence for all. The new Trusteeship Council took over from the League’s
mandate system as a supervisory system, leaving power once again in the hands of
39
Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empires and the Ideological Origins of the United
Nations, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2009, p. 10.
40
Carol Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize, cit., p. 36.

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the imperial states. As Mazower points out, “European powers were reasserting their
control over their colonial possessions in Southeast Asia even as the San Francisco
conference met, and American anticolonial rhetoric dwindled as the war came to a
close and the importance of good transatlantic relations with major West European
powers,” especially Great Britain and France, “became obvious in Washington”41.
Anticolonial activists inside and outside the meeting halls were dissatisfied with
the continued dominance of imperial powers, garnering Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and
her arguments on behalf of the Indian question even broader interest and support.
The stage at San Francisco could not have been better set for Pandit’s introduction
to world diplomacy. April 1945 was a liminal moment in both world history and in
the history of South Asia. Much remained unsettled on both fronts, and yet the basic
outlines of the future were becoming increasingly clear: Germany’s defeat was
imminent and important gains were being made on the Asian-Pacific front. In India,
much of the Congress leadership remained imprisoned, but the devolution of
imperial control was clearly on the horizon. Nehru was released from prison in June,
and he immediately set about negotiating the terms of British withdrawal. The same
combination of uncertainty and hope contained in Indian nationalist’s desires also
infused the UN Charter conference. By making parallels between the UN’s goals and
India’s desire for freedom, Pandit would draw on the emotional center of this
threshold moment to gain support and attention from a wide array of observers.

The “Acid Test” of the UN Charter

Underpinning Pandit’s message at San Francisco was the assertion that India
represented “the pivot of the whole system of imperialism and colonialism.” How
India’s fate was addressed at this moment, she argued, was to be “an acid test” of the
principles of the United Nations, “and the continued denial of India’s freedom by
Britain [would be] a negation of those principles and of the sacrifices that have been
made” to win the war42. Pandit’s words echoed a statement Gandhi made to the press
in the days leading up to the conference: “The freedom of India will demonstrate to
all the exploited races of the earth that their freedom is very near and that in no case
will they henceforth be exploited”43. This theme linking India’s freedom to the ideals
of the United Nations would become a common one throughout Pandit’s tenure at
the UN in the coming years. But in 1945, it clashed with the goals of the official
British Indian delegation, the members of which also hoped to gain Indian
independence eventually, but were willing to cooperate in San Francisco on the
creation of the Charter without reference to specific colonies at that time.
Pandit’s highly visible presence outside the meeting halls of at the San Francisco
conference disrupted the script envisioned by the British and the official Indian
41
Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace, cit., p. 150.
42
William Moore, “Challenger: Indian Woman Twists the Tail of British Lion”, Chicago Tribune, 27
April 1945, p. 6; “Leaders Speak for Colored Peoples: Colonial Hopes Soaring Upward as the Result”,
Atlanta Daily World, 3 May 1945, p.1; P.L. Prattis, “Mme. Pandit Makes Stirring Plea for Freedom of
India at San Francisco”, Pittsburgh Courier, 5 May 1945, p. 5.
43
“Gandhi Disowns Parley Delegates”, New York Times, 18 April 1945, p. 15.

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delegation. As had happened at the League of Nations, India’s official

representatives to the UN Charter conference were not affiliated with either the All-
Indian National Congress or the Muslim League, the two most prominent Indian
nationalist organizations. The British instead selected delegates who were
sympathetic to continued colonial involvement in the subcontinent: three knighted
Indian men with long histories of cooperation with the metropolitan and colonial
governments. Sir V. T. Krishnamachari (1881-1964) was almost twenty years senior
to Pandit. He had been the Diwan (finance minister) of the Indian princely state of
Baroda throughout the inter-war period and had served as an Indian delegate to a
number of bodies including the League of Nations and several Round Table
Conferences. Sir Arcot Ramaswamy Mudaliar had been a prominent leader of the
nationalist Justice Party (est. 1916), which had it roots in the organized efforts to
curtail the dominance of the Hindu Brahmin caste in social, religious, and political
spheres beginning in the nineteenth century44. Mudaliar most recently had served as
one of two Indians appointed to Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet and would go on
to represent India at the UN after independence alongside Pandit. Sir Malik Firoz
Khan Noon (1893-1970), the youngest of the three representatives, was born in
Lahore and educated at Oxford45. Noon was the High Commissioner to the United
Kingdom from 1936 to 1941, and then became first Indian to hold the defense
portfolio on the British Viceroy’s Council (1942-45)46.
These three men, accomplished though they were, represented a stark contrast to
Pandit’s youthful appearance and more radical speech. Had it been up to the British
government, no Indian nationalists or Indian journalists would have been allowed to
attend the Charter conference to challenge the official delegation47. The British and
Indian governments had collaborated to prevent opponents from reaching San
Francisco, a policy that was only partially successful. Pandit was already in the
United States when the conference was announced, of course, and she had already
proven her effectiveness as a spokesperson for the Indian cause. As a result, the
conflict between the official delegation and independence activists could not be
prevented, and news of the conference and Pandit’s performance did circulate to
India.
Congress connections in the United States made Pandit’s work more effective.
With the support of the India League of America and the Committee for India’s
Freedom, she was invited to help make the San Francisco conference “India
conscious”48. Due to the inability of other Indian independence activists to leave the
subcontinent and the fact that the two main Indian lobby groups in the United States
44
Kasinath K. Kavlekar, Non-Brahmin Movement in Southern India, 1873-1949, Shivaji University
Press, Vidyanagar, Kolhapur 1979, pp. 121-133.
45
Wolfgang Behn, Concise Biographical Companion to Index Islamicus: An International Who’s Who
in Islamic Studies from its Beginnings down to the Twentieth Century, Bio-Bibliographical Supplement
to Index Islamicus, 1665-1980, Volume Three, N-Z, Brill, Boston 2004, p. 33.
46
Who Was Who in America with World Notables, Volume V, 1969-1973, With Index to All Who Was
Who Volumes, Marquis Who’s Who, Chicago 1973, p. 535.
47
“India Press Gag Implied; Plans for Sending Newsmen to San Francisco Canceled”, 16 April 1945,
New York Times, p. 24.
48
Marika Sherwood, India at the Founding of the United Nations, cit. p. 423.

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had political affiliations with the Gandhian tradition, the All-India National
Congress version of Indian nationalism dominated in San Francisco. Pandit’s
political speech and the printed propaganda released on her behalf claimed Congress
was the only legitimate representation of the Indian peoples’ desires, and presented
Pandit herself as a recognized spokesperson for the party. This nationalist narrative
denied the fact that the Congress faced stiff opposition at home from the Muslim
League in areas with large Muslim populations and in ongoing negotiations with the
British government. Also silenced were the many other organized political
organizations (both more radical and more conservative) that did not support the
Congress platform, including the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha and the Scheduled
Castes Federation representing the Dalit community. Therefore, the coherence of
Indian Congress nationalist dominance projected through Pandit’s unofficial
diplomacy at the San Francisco conference belied a much more tenuous reality on
the ground in India.
Three letters to the editor from the Times of India in May and June of 1945 outline
some of the expressed frustration at the idea of Pandit’s representation of the Indian
people as a whole given that she had not been elected by any Indian constituency.
Ramprakash Roy’s letter pointed out that Pandit did not represent the diverse
spectrum of political interests organized throughout India such as the Muslim
League, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Radical Democratic Party, or the Scheduled
Castes’ Federation.49 Other letter writers focused more specifically on the Congress-
League power struggle. Mahmud A. Wazifadar argued, “that unless the major
question of Congress-League unity is solved once and for all India cannot be
represented by any major party or individual”50. Another writer quoted “a
distinguished Indian publicist” as saying, “If the world Press seeks truth and not mere
sensation they will resist the propaganda wiles of this Indian ‘nationalist’ siren and
examine more closely the Muslim charge that the freedom for which the Indian
Hindu Congress so loudly clamours is freedom to oppress”51. This critique turned
the American press’s fascination with Pandit as a womanly warrior on its head,
depicting her instead as a femme fatale who was luring men to a dangerous
conclusion with her beauty and charm.
A heckler at Pandit’s biggest press conference at the end of April highlights
Pandit’s inability to remain insulated from the realpolitik of competing Indian
nationalisms. Just after she delivered a short statement to an estimated 200 journalists
and prepared to answer their questions, “a persistent Muslim” began asking
questions, insinuating that Congress had been responsible for “violence and
sabotage” during the Quit India movement in 1942. Rather than address the
accusation, Pandit asked if the questioner was a journalist. Admitting he was not, he
was forced to leave the room52. Speculation abounded about how he gained access
49
Ramprakash Roy, “Reader’s Views: Mrs. Pandit”, Times of India, 5 June 1945, p. 4.
50
“Letter to the Editor 1”, Times of India, 22 May 1945, p. 4.
51
J.D.J., “Freedom From Fear: To the Editor”, Times of India, 29 May 1945, p. 4.
52
“British Policy in India; Mrs. V. Pandit’s Criticism”, Times of India, 28 April 1945, p. 9; William
Moore, “Challenger: Indian Woman Twists the Tail of British Lion”, Chicago Tribune, 27 April 1945,
p. 6.

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to the press conference in the first place. Malik Firoz Khan Noon remembers in his
autobiography that this press conference held very high stakes for the Muslim man
who asked Pandit the “awkward question”. He was in fact a “brave stenographer”
for the Indian delegation, and when “he walked out all cameras clicked. No one ever
got such publicity as he did”. Noon claims that this man’s actions were so well-
known and so widely criticized by the Congress Party that the stenographer could
not find a job in government after independence and instead attempted to change his
identity, opening a store in Connaught Place in Delhi. “When Partition came”, Noon
writes, he became a victim of communal violence, and “was left for dead from sword
wounds. He still carries the mark of a sword would on his face”53. R. L. Khipple later
wrote that the stenographer’s efforts “boomeranged, and Mrs. Pandit received much
wider publicity than she would have otherwise received”54.
Noon was the only of the three Indian representatives reported to directly address
Pandit and others’ criticism of the delegation’s independence, though he chose to
engage more directly with Gandhi’s leadership in India than with Pandit’s
representation in San Francisco. When asked about her by reporters, Noon was
dismissive, referring to her as a “charming lady” without any direct comment on her
political positions55. He later refused to comment on the memo she submitted to the
UN steering committee saying “he did not want to criticise a lady”56. In early May,
at a press conference described “as one of the most animated at San Francisco”, Noon
presented his views on Indian independence. The journalists present, a majority of
whom seem to have been more sympathetic to the Congress position, challenged his
statements, and it was reported that the event sometimes felt like “a political debate
rather than a press conference”57. First, Noon accused Gandhi of being too influenced
by “reactionary and orthodox Hindus”, who made him “bigoted and narrow-minded”
with a political stance “half a century out of date”58. Noon blamed Gandhi for
rejecting the Cripps proposal, undermining the Allied war effort, and inciting
communal violence through the Quit India movement in 194259. He further
suggested the elder statesman should step aside and allow Nehru to take control of
the Congress since Nehru was “the one man in the Congress who is likely to have
the breadth of vision to see the Moslem point of view and come to an understanding
53
Firoz Khan Noon, From Memory, Ferozsons Ltd., Lahore 1966, p. 179.
54
R. L. Khipple, The Woman Who Swayed America, cit., p. 81.
55
“British Policy in India; Mrs. V. Pandit’s Criticism”, Times of India, 28 April 1945, p. 9.
56
“Sir F.K. Noon”, Times of India, 11 May 1945, p. 9.
57
“Pandit Nehru Should Supersede Mr. Gandhi: Sir F. Khan Noon’s Views”, Times of India, 4 May
1945, p. 5.
58
Ibidem. See also: William Moore, “Report India Settlement is Growing Near”, Chicago Tribune, 3
May 1945, p. 10.
59
This accusation should be considered at minimum disingenuous given that as a member of the
Executive Council Noon expressed his own criticisms of the Cripps plan in 1942 (Ayesha Jalal, The
Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge South Asian
Studies, Cambridge 1994, pp. 78-79). The Muslim League was as skeptical of the Cripps Plan as
Congress, though for different reasons, and both major parties officially rejected the plan (Ivi, pp. 72-
81).

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with the Moslems”60. When asked why Nehru was still in prison if his leadership
would be so effective, Noon replied that Congress’s civil disobedience had been “a
misnomer for rebellion”, and that he “sincerely” hoped Nehru would be released
soon. “[T]he final question shot challengingly at Sir Firoz as the conference broke
up was, ‘Is not the Government of India controlled by the British’? Reply (in an
equally challenging tone): ‘That is absolutely wrong’”61.
Noon’s comments circulated back to India and reportedly caused “great concern
among Indian nationalist circles”62. In response to the press conference, Gandhi said
he would fulfill Noon’s wish to step aside if the Congress prisoners were released63.
Further, he said there was no need for Nehru “to come to the front. He is in the front.
The Government of India would not let him work as he would. He and I are friends.
But we are no rivals. We are both servants of the people and the platform of service
is as big as the world”64. One “former member of the Congress Working Committee
said in an interview: ‘It is very amusing to see Sir Firoz Khan Noon deposing
Mahatma Gandhi. The people’s leaders are not appointed by some high authority, as
[he] has been appointed to represent India at San Francisco against the declared
wishes of the country”65. Shortly after the San Francisco conference, Noon joined
the Muslim League, and after independence he became special envoy to the first
prime minister of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah66. Noon himself served briefly as
Pakistan’s Prime Minister from December 1957 to October 1958, before being
ousted by the first declaration of martial law in Pakistan’s history67. Though he
gained some publicity in San Francisco in 1945, Noon remained less visible than
Pandit, who garnered much more positive coverage from the mainstream media in
the United States and India, her Congress-leaning calls for independence overriding
the statements of a vocal critic from outside the Congress’s circle of power.

“The Woman Who Swayed America”

From prison, Nehru tracked Pandit’s actions through North American newspaper
clippings as best he could. Simultaneously with US audiences, Nehru was a
consumer of what James W. Carey describes as an invented cultural form –
60
P.L. Prattis, “Charge and Counter…Delegate Labels Gandhi A Traitor to Allied Cause”, Pittsburgh
Courier, 12 May 1945, p. 12.
61
“Pandit Nehru Should Supersede Mr. Gandhi’: Sir F. Khan Noon’s Views” Times of India, 4 May
1945, p. 5.
62
“India Honoured At San Francisco”, Times of India, 3 May 1945, p. 5.
63
“’Fulfil Your Wish By Releasing Leaders’: Mr. Gandhi’s Offer to Sir F. Noon”, Times of India, p. 5
May 1945, p. 5; “Gandhi Agrees on Retirement with Proviso”, Chicago Tribune, 5 May 1945, p. 6.
64
“’Fulfil Your Wish By Releasing Leaders’: Mr. Gandhi’s Offer to Sir F. Noon”, Times of India, 7
May 1945, p. 8. The title used for this article was identical to one used two days earlier.
65
Ivi, p. 8.
66
Chronology of International Events and Documents 1:5 (August 27-September 9, 1947), p. 112. For
extended explanation of the ramifications of Noon’s action, see: Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman,
cit., pp. 144-145.
67
“Pakistan Horizon”, 19, 4, 1966, p. 339.

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American print culture – which conveys “dramatic action in which the reader joins
a world of contending forces as an observer at a play”68. Pandit’s savvy complicity
in the appropriation of herself as a symbol combined with the gaze of American print
culture to produce an especially effective diplomatic celebrity. Upon his release in
June, he began forming an interim government, and he wrote to her a personal
assessment of her successes: “You know that your work in the States has been very
greatly appreciated here by all kinds of people. You have done a splendid job, as
perhaps no one else could have done in the circumstances. The immediate
consequences of what you have done may not be obvious but I am sure that the
remoter consequences will be considerable”69. With this, he made a decidedly
accurate prediction. Pandit’s success at drawing both elite supporters and large
crowds to the Indian cause in the United States led her, Nehru, and others to
recognize the potential of her effectiveness on the world stage. San Francisco served
as a rehearsal for Pandit’s future diplomatic career, and she worked to negotiate a
persona fit for the task at hand.
One challenge Pandit faced was how to tread a course between representing the
whole of India through her speech and highlighting her own position in Indian
cultural and religious hierarchies. Nehru for one encouraged her to use Hindi when
speaking to Indian audiences in the United States, presumably to signal a level of
authenticity to the diasporic South Asian community there70. One US paper printed
a picture of her in a moment of “Calm Before the Storm” before one press
conference, an image that served to ground Pandit’s actions within a Hindu-inflected
spirituality strongly identified with the political symbolism of the Congress. In the
photo, Pandit and an unnamed man face one another across a narrow table. On the
right side of the image, the “sister of India’s great nationalist leader” smiles serenely
over clasped hands held close to her chin. With hands clasped at his chest, the man
bows to Pandit from the left of the image, eyes cast down71. He wears one of the
most ubiquitous symbols of individual Congress affiliation: the Gandhi topi. This
close-fitting cap made of white khadi (homespun cloth) and pointed in the front and
back, first became popular during the 1920-1922 Non-Cooperation movement as one
aspect of what Lisa Trivedi calls Gandhi’s contribution to the “visual vocabulary of
national community”72. By 1945, the topi was “an established visual symbol of
dissent” used widely by Indian nationalists73.
Pandit also negotiated her physical representation of modern Indian womanhood
and, by extension, the modern Indian nation. The relationship between Pandit and
her clothing offers one clear example of the co-production of a persona designed for
public consumption. While arranging her lecture tour with the New York-based
68
James W. Carey, A Cultural Approach to Communication, in James W. Carey, Communication as
Culture: Essays on Media and Society, revised edition, Routledge, New York 2009, p. 17.
69
Jawahar to Darling Nan, July 24, 1945, in Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom, cit., p. 490.
70
Jawahar to Darling Nan, 31 May 1945, in Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom, cit., p. 481.
71
“Calm Before the Storm”, Chicago Defender, 26 May 1945, p. 4.
72
Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington 2007, p. 40.
73
Ivi, p. 147. See extended description of the history of the topi, pp. 123-133.

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Clark Getts Lecture Bureau, Mr. Getts wanted to discuss her attire since the
“American public…would expect someone from India to look exotic and to wear
bright clothes and fine jewels”74. Though she refused to alter her rather subdued
style, her usual selection of gray or pastel saris, her wedding ring, and a watch, were
“exotic” enough in the US context to merit significant press attention.
Early in her lecture tour, Pandit articulated a level of frustration with the constant
comments on her attire and its links to gender differences between the United States
and India. Discussing the many women who hold high posts in India, she argued,
“’They got the jobs…not because they were women but because they were better
than the men. And these…are not women whose clothes are described every time
they enter the legislative assembly’”75. By refusing to alter her simple style to please
her lecture sponsor, Pandit established some distance between herself and the
orientalist gaze. However, in a 1949 interview Pandit was more reflexive about the
sari as a cultural symbol. “Everybody admits that the sari is the most graceful dress
for women”, she said. “But I find that in traveling, climbing in and out of airplanes,
the sari is a confounded nuisance, and I’d like to wear skirts or slacks. But society
demands that I wear a sari”. The male reporter refused to allow her the last word on
the issue. Despite her “silver hair” and nationalist politics, he assured his readers, the
“attractive younger sister of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru” remained beautiful.
“She looks as good in the sari as the sari looks on her”76. American, Indian, or
otherwise—it is apparent that the sari played an integral part in the performance of
an acceptable Indian womanhood in all of these contexts.
The more prominent Pandit became on the world stage, the more pronounced the
attention to her attire, culminating in a frenzy of attempts to describe her clothing
during her early days at the United Nations. William Moore’s coverage during the
Charter conference was the first by a US reporter to rely heavily on visual description
in order to emphasize Pandit’s visceral impact on contemporary observers. His first
article, combining political reporting with not so subtle sexually-charged language
was headlined, “Indian Woman Twists the Tail of British Lion”:
Folding her dazzling white robe [no buttons, no zippers] (sic) around some alluring curves, Mrs.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India moved into Anthony Eden’s hotel today and began twisting the
British lion’s tail…Thus was the Indian question which many say will be the test of the basic
principles of international organization brought out into the open as the conference was
beginning its work77.

Another article by Moore two days later featured an interview with Pandit who
warned that America should help India in the fight for independence in order to avoid
a war against imperialism. Invoking another prominent Eastern woman, Moore
described his interviewee as:
74
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, cit., p.192.
75
Leonard Lyons, “Broadway Bulletins”, March 10, 1945, Washington Post, p. 5.
76
Robert Trumball, “Mrs. Pandit Urges U.S.-Indian Links”, April 24, 1949, New York Times.
77
William Moore, “Indian Woman Twists the Tail of British Lion”, April 27, 1945, Chicago Daily
Tribune, p. 6.

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a diminutive, silvery haired woman who speaks with force that recalls the chill fury with which
Madame Chiang Kai-shek once brought the American congress to tears, was wearing a sheer
black robe, so folded that its silver edging fell about her wrists and spiraled downward78.

For Moore, Pandit’s political message was inextricably linked with her
appearance, made more exotic, and thus more intriguing, because of her “native”
costume. Wrapped in yards of silk or cotton cloth, Pandit embodied a certain type of
“Eastern” womanhood that made compelling “dramatic action” for consumers of her
as news79. The same would remain true throughout Pandit’s diplomatic career, with
her sari and her gender dominating initial coverage of her election as President of
the General Assembly in 1953.
Pandit’s voice was as significant as her appearance in translating Indian
womanhood to a Western audience. Nehru initially expressed some concern about
her speaking voice. He wondered in one letter, “how does your accent, intonation etc
go down there? You tell me that your voice has been liked. That I can understand
easily enough for you have a good speaking voice. But what of the special dislikes
of Americans regarding the English way of speaking”80. Her speaking voice did
merit attention, though not negatively. In one 1945 article she was described as
having an “Oxonian accent”. insinuating a connection to the upper-class education
her father, her brother, and other nationalist leaders obtained in England though
Pandit herself was not educated in England. A reporter at her first press conference
as Ambassador to the United States in 1949 expressed surprise that Pandit “spoke
flawless English…in a low, well-modulated voice ‘without a trace of accent”81.
Anyone familiar with Pandit’s personal history would have been wholly unsurprised
by her command of English. She spoke “with the cultured English” the “wealthy,
aristocratic Brahmin”, common to the Nehru family82. Pandit became literate in
English before learning to read and write Hindi, and her father, Motilal, insisted his
children speak with “a pure English accent”83. One of the most successful Oxford-
educated lawyers in India before converting to Gandhian nationalism after the First
World War, the family patriarch “was of the view that unless we all turned ourselves
into English people, there was no chance for us in the world”84. During her childhood
the entire family lived according to British standards Monday through Friday: they
ate European food with utensils while sitting at a dining room table, dressed only in
European clothing, and spoke English exclusively. Only on the weekend could the
78
Ibid., “Two Spokesmen of Freedom Denounce Reds and British”, April 29, 1945, Chicago Daily
Tribune, p. 10.
79
James W. Carey, A Cultural Approach to Communication, cit., p. 17.
80
Jawahar to Darling Nan, 10 April 1945, in Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom, cit., p. 465.
81
William Moore, “Indian Woman Twists the Tail of British Lion”, April 27, 1945, Chicago Daily
Tribune; Anne Guthrie, Madame Ambassador, cit., p. 140.
82
Poppy Cannon, in Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sahgal, and Rita Dar (eds.), Sunlight Surround
You, A Birthday Bouquet, Orient Longmans, New Delhi 1970, p. 154. The three editors of this volume
were Pandit’s daughters.
83
Pearl S. Buck, Woman of the World, in “United Nations World”, 1, 2,1947, p. 25.
84
Sri Prakasa, in Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sahgal, and Rita Dar (eds.), Sunlight Surround You
cit., p. 24.

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children experience the Kashmiri Brahmin food, language, and culture that their
mother continued to maintain in a separate portion of the family estate.
In addition to establishing an effective persona for herself, Pandit also worked to
cement her legitimacy as the main spokesman for Indian interests beyond her close
association with Nehru and Gandhi. One paper even declared her the “First Lady of
India”, as if Nehru were already prime minister85. In San Francisco, Pandit
consistently claimed to speak on behalf of all of India, taking for granted that her
political party already spoke as the representatives of the Indian people as a whole.
In one statement she declared she was “chosen by her compatriots in [the United
States] and Canada as the sole spokesman for their cause”. She also spoke, she said,
for the Indian National Congress, “’which represents an overwhelming majority of
all the peoples of India’”86. As the most visible of those aligned against the official
Indian delegation at San Francisco, she was described in the American press as a
more legitimate spokesman for India than Krishnamachari, Mudaliar, and Noon. She
contrasted her own status against that of the official Indian delegates who were not
representative of Indian interests at all, but were simply nominated by the British.
W.E.B. Du Bois agreed with this assessment of the three “Indian Stooges”. In an
article in the Chicago Defender, Du Bois described himself and the NAACP’s Walter
White running away from a photo-op with the official Indian delegates. Since they
“in no way” represented the Indian people, Du Bois wrote, “[i]t would have been a
calamity for us to be photographed with them”. Instead, the two activists lunched
with Pandit, who he described as “a charming woman in every way; physically
beautiful, simple and cordial, [who] represents as few people could, nearly 400
million people, and represents them by right of their desire and her personality, and
not by the will of Great Britain”87. Walter White heaped on even greater praise in his
assessment of Pandit at the end of the San Francisco conference, an extraordinary
passage worth quoting at length:
Imagine, if you will, an exquisitely featured face of lovely reddish brown surmounted by a
semi-circle of silver hair brushed backward and upward to that it looks like a halo when the sun
shines through it. Imagine laughter as spontaneous and gay as that of a healthy child filled only
with the joy of living and darkened by none of life’s heartaches and tragedies. Imagine
beautifully kept hands which dart and flash with the color and skill of a bird in flight, lending
just the need emphasis to words spoken with a throaty richness in flawless English. Imagine the
transition with unbelievable speed from gayety to somber, moody fury against the suave
exploiters of her people—a change of mood so startling that Helen Hayes, the great actress, was
moved to describe its possessor as ‘a bright shining flame’.

The relationships Pandit forged with Black American leaders such as Du Bois
and White in San Francisco because of her ability to present herself as the only
legitimate representative of the Indian cause translated into powerful solidarities
85
S.A. Haynes, “India Stands For Equality, Leader Tells Baltimoreans”, Afro-American, 7 April 1945,
p. 1.
86
P.L. Prattis, “Mme. Pandit Makes Stirring Plea for Freedom of India at San Francisco”, Pittsburgh
Courier, 5 May 1945, 5.
87
W.E.B. DuBois, “DuBois, White Run From Photo with India Stooges”, Chicago Defender, 12 May
1945, 5.

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around questions of racial equality and anticolonialism when Pandit returned to the
UN in 1946 as head of India’s delegation.

The Future
Pandit capitalized on her family history, natural charisma, and gripping oratory
in order to present a compelling personification of modern India at the birth of the
United Nations. To Western audiences this fair-skinned, sari-wearing Indian woman
with perfectly coiffed hair, the sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, and a non-violent protestor
who had been thrice imprisoned for civil disobedience embodied both the intriguing
otherness of India and the possibility of India’s future. Her future press attaché
referred to “her mass appeal in the Western world” as a “phenomenon”88. These
observers, perhaps most familiar with Katherine Mayo’s negative depiction of Indian
women in Mother India (1927) were struck by the particular combination of Pandit’s
charismatic femininity and powerful political speech89. For the Congress’s
nationalist project she embodied the ideal “modern Indian womanhood, lovely,
graceful, intelligent, poised and thoroughly feminine,” and thus reflected the position
the Congress leaders believed postcolonial India should assume in world politics90.
According to British diplomat Philip Noel-Baker, “if India could produce such
women, India could herself most assuredly control her national affairs”91. Pandit
embodied this space in a moment in which the contingencies of history combined
with the power of print culture allowed her to appropriate her own representation
and project herself, and India, as legitimate actors on the world stage. The San
Francisco conference was a major diplomatic event garnering attention from around
the world. But it was the drama taking place outside the meeting halls via Pandit that
predicted the nature of UN postcolonialism that would take root in the power of the
General Assembly in 1946 through the Indian delegation’s fight against racism in
South Africa. In other words, the Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of 1945 was the perfect
future tense for both the aspiring Indian postcolonial state and the ideals of the
United Nations itself.

88
Shiv Shastri, in Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sahgal, and Rita Dar (eds.), Sunlight Surround You,
cit., p. 84.
89
This was an argument made by Lyra Robero, a South African Indian observer at the UN in 1946
during Pandit’s debates with Smuts over racist policies in South Africa (Robero, “When All American
Went to Hear Mrs. Pandit”, The Passive Resister, 31 July 1947). On the transnational circulation of
Mayo’s book see Mrinalini Sinha, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire,
Duke University Press, Durham 2006.
90
J. R. D. Tata, in Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sahgal, and Rita Dar (eds.), Sunlight Surround You,
cit., p. 71.
91
Philip Noel-Baker, in Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sahgal, and Rita Dar (eds.), Sunlight Surround
You, cit., pp. 54-55.

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