Feminist Issues in the Novel of Nayantara Sahgal’s Storm in Chandigarh

Abstract

Storm in Chandigarh is a work by Nayantara Sahgal, an Indian English writer with elite political lineage. She is the second daughter of Vijayalakshmi Pandit, the sister of the first Prime Minister of India Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru. Nayantara Sahgal was born in an aristocratic family in New Delhi with a strong political clout. Being part of a family at the centre of Indian polity, Nayantara Sahgal has the first hand experience of witnessing some of the most talked about political events of her times.  From the literary point of view too, her maternal uncle Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, who himself was a great English writer, and Krishna Hutheesingh (younger sister of Vijayalakshmi Pandit) who was a great exponent amongst English writers from India, establish the genetic linkage to Nayantara Sahgal's emergence as a prodigy in English novelists from India.  Nayantara Sahgal was married twice – first to Gautam Sahgal, who was a British official in pre-independence India, and was totally absorbed in British culture. After that she started to live with Mangat Rai, while both of them were married to other persons. It was a kind of outrageous act in those times and traditionally against the societal norms. Thus, Nayantara Sahgal to some extent was ahead of her times – at least in breaking the established norms of her times as far as man and woman relationship was concerned.