Novel as Biography A Study of the Select Novels of Nayantara Sahgal

Abstract

Nayantra Sahgal is one of the prominent novelists with national consciousness, who recreates the Indian social and political scene just before and after the Independence in India in her writings. The political consciousness which dominates her literary creations explicitly is inseparable from herself and her surroundings. She, being the first Indian woman novelist, wrote novels and political commentaries in English with contemporary Indian political themes. All the novels of Sahgal reflect the contemporary Indian political themes and portray the various social and cultural changes that take place in India. Her work has a strong realistic base and reflects not only her personal values but also the changing values of a society. newlineNayantara Segal was born in a family of freedom fighters, which had politics in its very blood; Sahgal has indeed written political novels of high quality. Authors like Kamala Markandaya, Shashi Deshpande and Anita Desai have chosen the problems and issues faced by the women in today s male dominated world as the main theme of their works. The novels of Nayantara Sahgal foregrounds her as a writer with feminist concerns seeking independent existence of women. She sees women as victims of conventional Indian society struggling in their quest for identity. She has a political background and it helps considerately her political news. She is also different from the feminist novelist because most of these writers speak about feminism in a domestic way. But Nayanara Sahgal perspective is a political views. She is the only woman to outspokenly and boldly write about politics. newlineNayantara Sahgal is usually considered as an exponent of the political novel. She herself has declared that each of her novels more or less reflects the political era we are passing through . Nayantara Sahgal is the daughter of Vijayalakshmi Pandit and nice of Jawaharlal Nehru naturally had an upbringing in which politics was inevitably a strong ambience. Sahgal s uniqueness lies in her ability in combining the political and