Lakshmi Krishnamurti (1 August 1925 – 14 June 2009) was an Indian author and politician. She is the daughter of Indian independence activist

S. Satyamurti Sundara Sastri Satyamurti (19 August 1887 – 28 March 1943) was an Indian independence activist and politician. He was acclaimed for his rhetoric and was one of the leading politicians of the Indian National Congress from the Madras Presidenc ...

Early life

Lakshmi Krishnamurti was born on 1 August 1925. in

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

. Her father

was one of the leading politicians of the

Swaraj Party The Swaraj Party, established as the Congress-Khilafat Swaraj Party, was a political party formed in India on 1 January 1923 after the Gaya annual conference in December 1922. Chauri Chaura The Swaraj Party was formed on 1 January 1923 by Indi ...

at that time. While in the General Hospital in Madras and in the penitentiary in Madras, Satyamurti wrote a series of letters to his daughter. These letters can be found in the book ''At the threshold of life''S. Satyamurti. "At the Threshold of Life". 1951. Asia Publishing House, Bombay.

Career

Lakshmi was a member of the

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party, or simply the Congress, is a political parties in India, political party in India with deep roots in most regions of India. Founded on 28 December 1885, it was the first mo ...

in her early days though she did not actively associate herself with the organisation. In 1964,

K. Kamaraj Kumaraswami Kamaraj (15 July 1903 – 2 October 1975), popularly known as Kamarajar was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Madras from 13 April 1954 to 2 October 1963. He also served as the pr ...

nominated her to the

Madras Legislative Council Tamil Nadu Legislative Council was the upper house of the former bicameral legislature of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It began its existence as Madras Legislative Council, the first provincial legislature for Madras Presidency. It was initia ...

. As member of the council, Lakshmi championed educational reforms and was member of the committee which regularised private colleges. Lakshmi played a more active political role during the

Indian Emergency The Emergency in India was a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency across the country by citing internal and external threats to the country. Officially issued by President Fakhruddi ...

of 1975 and was jailed by

Indira Gandhi Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (Given name, ''née'' Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and stateswoman who served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 un ...

. She co-founded the

Janata Party The Janata Party (JP, ) is an unrecognised political party in India. Navneet Chaturvedi is the current president of the party since November 2021, replacing Jaiprakash Bandhu. The JP was established as an amalgam of Indian political partie ...

and unsuccessfully contested from Mylapore in the 1977 Legislative Assembly election. In her later years, Lakshmi wrote a biography of her

father A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. A biological fat ...

, ''The Satyamurti Letters'' which is considered to be the most authoritative book on the leader. She also founded the Satyamurti Centre for Democratic Studies on the occasion of Satyamurti's birth centenary in 1987.

Death

Lakshmi died on 14 June 2009 after a brief illness. She was 83.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Krishnamurti, Lakshmi 1925 births 2009 deaths Politicians from Chennai Writers from Chennai Indian National Congress politicians from Tamil Nadu Indian women non-fiction writers Indian women biographers 20th-century Indian biographers Women in Tamil Nadu politics 20th-century Indian women writers Women writers from Tamil Nadu 20th-century Indian women politicians 20th-century Indian politicians