Ranjit Sitaram Pandit (1893 – 14 January 1944) was an Indian barrister, politician, author and scholar from

Rajkot Rajkot () is the fourth-largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat after Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Surat, and is in the centre of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. Rajkot is the 35th-largest metropolitan area in India, with a population of ...

in the Kathiawar region of British India. He is known for his role in the Indian non-cooperation movement, and for translating the Sanskrit texts ''

Mudrarakshasa The Mudrarakshasa (मुद्राराक्षस, IAST: ''Mudrārākṣasa'', ) is a Sanskrit-language play by Vishakhadatta that narrates the ascent of the king Chandragupta Maurya ( BCE) to power in India. The play is an example of ...

'', '' Ṛtusaṃhāra'' and Kalhana's ''

Rajatarangini ''Rajatarangini'' ("The River of Kings") is a metrical legendary and historical chronicle of the north-western part of India, particularly the kings of Kashmir. It was written in Sanskrit by Kashmiri historian Kalhana in the 12th century CE. Th ...

'' into English. He was the husband of

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (''née'' Swarup Nehru; 18 August 1900 – 1 December 1990) was an Indian diplomat and politician who was the 6th Governor of Maharashtra from 1962 to 1964 and 8th President of the United Nations General Assembly, Presiden ...

, the son-in-law of

Motilal Nehru Motilal Nehru (6 May 1861 – 6 February 1931) was an Indian lawyer, activist and politician belonging to the Indian National Congress. He also served as the Congress President twice, 1919–1920 and 1928–1929. He was a patriarch of the Neh ...

, brother-in-law of

Jawaharlal Nehru Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat— * * * * and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20t ...

and father of Nayantara Sahgal. Until 1926, he was a barrister in Calcutta, a position he resigned to join the Indian non-cooperation movement. In 1930, he was the Secretary of the Peshawar Enquiry Committee, which investigated the troubles in the North West Frontier Province. Later, he was appointed a

Member of the Legislative Assembly A member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected by the voters of a constituency to a legislative assembly. Most often, the term refers to a subnational assembly such as that of a state, province, or territory of a country. S ...

(MLA) of the

United Provinces of Agra and Oudh The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh was a province of India under the British Raj, which existed from 1902 to 1921; the official name was shortened by the Government of India Act 1935 to United Provinces (UP), by which the province had been ...

(UP). Pandit died in 1944, shortly after being released from his fourth imprisonment by the British.

Early life and education

Ranjit Sitaram Pandit was born in 1893, to the wealthy British-educated lawyer Sitaram Narayan Pandit, in

in the

Kathiawar Kathiawar () is a peninsula, near the far north of India's west coast, of about bordering the Arabian Sea. It is bounded by the Gulf of Kutch in the northwest and by the Gulf of Khambhat (Gulf of Cambay) in the east. In the northeast, it ...

district of British India.Mehta, Chandralekha. (2008
''Freedom's Child: Growing Up During Satyagraha''
UK: Puffin Books. p. 35. Frank, 2010, p. 168 His ancestors came from Bambuli village in the

Ratnagiri district Ratnagiri District (Marathi pronunciation: �ət̪n̪aːɡiɾiː is a district in the state of Maharashtra, India. The administrative headquarter of the district is located in the town of Ratnagiri. The district is 11.33% urban. The district ...

of Maharashtra and his family consisted of a number of lawyers and Sanskrit scholars. Amongst his siblings was a brother, Pratap,Sahgal, Nayantara. (2010
''Jawaharlal Nehru: Civilizing a Savage World''

Viking Press Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquir ...

. p. 110. and two sisters, Ramabai and Tarabai. He was a linguist and spoke eleven languages, including Hindi, Persian, Bengali, English, French and German, and like his father, he studied law in England. Prior to entering the

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn ...

, he attended Christ Church, University of Oxford.Vaidya, Shruthi (1994
Nayantara Sahgal's Prison and Chocolate Cake: An Autobiographical Saga
Shodhganga. Chapter III, Part 1, pp. 75-105. He had also attended the

Sorbonne University Sorbonne University (french: Sorbonne Université; la Sorbonne: 'the Sorbonne') is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de So ...

and the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, B ...

. He had an interest in

horticulture Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

, could play the violin and was proficient at tennis, polo, cricket, swimming and hunting. In 1920, Mahadev Desai, a friend of Pandit's from college, recommended that Sarup Nehru,

's daughter, read Pandit's article published in '' Modern Review'' titled "At the Feet of the Guru".Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi. (1945
’''Prison Days''
Calcutta: The Signet Press. p. 19-20. Desai was then secretary to

Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, Anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure ...

, who was a family friend to the Pandits in Kathiawar. Pandit and Sarup Nehru were subsequently introduced to each other and he proposed to her the following day, writing in one note that "I have come many miles and crossed many bridges to come to you—but in the future you and I must cross our bridges hand in hand". On 10 May 1921, the anniversary of the

Indian Rebellion of 1857 The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...

, they married, Nanda, Bal Ram (1962)
''The Nehrus Motilal and Jawaharlal''
New York: The JohnDay Company, p. 192.Sahgal, 2004, p. 29. upon which, she adopted the name

. With the Nehrus now involved in the Indian non-cooperation movement and in boycotting British goods, the wedding was the last event in the Nehru household "approaching opulence at

Anand Bhavan The Anand Bhavan is a historic house museum in Prayagraj, India, focusing on the Nehru family. It was bought by Indian political leader Motilal Nehru in the 1930s to serve as the residence of the Nehru family when the original mansion Swaraj ...

". Their first daughter, Vatsala, died at the age of nine months. Subsequently, they had three daughters; Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sahgal and Rita Dar, born in 1924, 1927 and 1929 respectively.

Non-cooperation movement

On 1 March 1926, Pandit, together with his wife Vijaya Lakshmi, his brother-in-law

, sister-in-law

Kamala Nehru Kamala Nehru (''née'' Kaul; ; 1 August 1899 – 28 February 1936) was an Indian independence activist and the wife of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. Her daughter Indira Gandhi was the first female Prime Minister of Indi ...

and niece Indira, sailed to Europe on the Lloyd liner ''

Triestino The Triestine dialect ( it, triestino, Triestine: ) is a dialect of Venetian spoken in the city of Trieste. Many words in Triestine are taken from other languages. As Trieste borders with Slovenia and was under the Habsburg monarchy for almost s ...

''. He returned with Vijaya Lakshmi the following November.Sahgal, 2004, pp. 30-31.Nehru, Jawaharlal. (1936)
''Jawaharlal Nehru. (1936) An Autobiography''
New Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 147 Until this European trip, Pandit was a successful lawyer who practiced in what was then called

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comm ...

with Sir B. L. Mitter. Against the wishes of his family in Rajkot, he became a Satyagrahi and joined Mahatma Gandhi and Motilal Nehru in the Indian non-cooperation movement and settled in

Allahabad Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the admin ...

, where he took up cases in the courts. Later, they moved to Khali, in the hills near Almora.Frank, 2010, p. 187-189 When the

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British ...

's 1928 proposal for

Dominion status The term ''Dominion'' is used to refer to one of several self-governing nations of the British Empire. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State at the 19 ...

was rejected by the British, the party took a pledge of non-cooperation and demanded "complete independence". Vijaya Lakshmi later recorded in her autobiography, that on 29 December 1929, upon the

declaration of independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of ...

by the Congress's then president Jawaharlal Nehru, Pandit joined him in the celebrations. In 1930, Motilal Nehru appointed Pandit the Secretary of the Peshawar Enquiry Committee, to investigate troubles in the North West Frontier Province. Its report was published by Allahabad's Law Journal Press. In 1937, he was listed in ''The Indian Annual Register'' as a

(MLA) of

(UP), to which he was elected along with Vijaya Lakshmi.Frank, 2010, p. 121 He served several prison terms, including two prison sentences with Jawaharlal Nehru, one in Naini Central Jail in 1931 and another at

Dehradun Dehradun () is the capital and the most populous city of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and is governed by the Dehradun Municipal Corporation, with the Uttarakhand Legislativ ...

.Sahgal, 2010, p. 7
/ref>Nehru, 1936, p.235
/ref>Nehru, Jawaharlal, (1962)
Glimpses of World History
New York: Asia Publishing House. Second edition. p. 27 His daughter, Nayantara, later described how she ate chocolate cake the day her father first went to prison. She later became a writer, and associating chocolate cake with prison, wrote a book titled ''

Prison and Chocolate Cake ''Prison and Chocolate Cake'' is the first of two early memoirs by Nayantara Sahgal, first published by Alfred A. Knopf (New York) and Victor Gollancz (London) in 1954, and includes her childhood experiences of her family during the Indian indepe ...

''.

Translations

While in prison,Gandhi, 2004, p. 326.
/ref> Pandit translated into English

Kalhana Kalhana ( sa, कल्हण, translit=kalhaṇa) was the author of ''Rajatarangini'' (''River of Kings''), an account of the history of Kashmir. He wrote the work in Sanskrit between 1148 and 1149. All information regarding his life has to be ...

's ''

'', the 12th century history of the kings of Kashmir, written in Sanskrit, and described the poem as one of "great scope, a more or less complete picture of society, in which the bloody periods of the past are delightfully relieved by delicate tales of love, by episodes of marvel and mystery and by interesting digressions which the author permits himself". The foreword to the translation was written by Jawaharlal Nehru. He translated from Sanskrit to English, the play ''

'' and in 1942 completed the translation of '' Ṛtusaṃhāra''.Pandit, 1945, p.100
/ref>

Death

In 1943, he was reported to have had

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

pleurisy Pleurisy, also known as pleuritis, is inflammation of the membranes that surround the lungs and line the chest cavity ( pleurae). This can result in a sharp chest pain while breathing. Occasionally the pain may be a constant dull ache. Other s ...

and a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which m ...

in Bareilly Central Jail. Vijaya Lakshmi visited him, and later described how "it was a tremendous shock to see Ranjit brought in to the superintendent's office on a stretcher. His head had been shaved and he was emaciated and almost unrecognisable”.Sahgal, 2010, p. 18
/ref> He had been arrested that year by British authorities and was serving his fourth term in prison. He died shortly after being released. On 18 January 1944, Nehru wrote to his daughter

Indu Indu or INDU may refer to: * $INDU, a symbol for the Dow Jones Industrial Average * Chandra, the Hindu moon deity * South Asians, peoples of the South Asian background in South Asian and West Indian regions. (I.E. Indu-Chinese & Indo-Trini) *A fil ...

, that he was informed that Pandit (Pupha to Indu) died in

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and divisio ...

on 14 January 1944,Gandhi, Sonia, (Ed.) (2004)
''Two Alone, Two Together: Letters Between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru 1922-1964''
New Delhi:

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.reformation of personal law which was completed after independence,Sahgal, 2004, pp. 299-300 leaving his widow to raise their three daughters without an inheritance. Pandit's brother, Pratap, had frozen their assets. Author Katherine Frank wrote in her biography of Indira Gandhi, that Pandit's death "was an unnecessary death directly attributable to the poor conditions and treatment he had received in jail. Winston Churchill was later reported by Pandit's widow, on a visit to England after

independence of India The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British Raj, British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged ...

, to have said to her that “we killed your husband didn't we”.Sahgal, 2010, p. 59
/ref> Pandit's daughter, Nayantara, wrote in her biography of Nehru that her mother replied "no, every man lives only to his appointed hour" and Churchill replied "nobly spoken".

Selected publications

''Indian National Congress Peshawar Enquiry Committee''
Working Committee of the Indian National Congress. Bombay: Government Press (1930) * ''Rājataraṅgiṇi; the saga of the kings of Kaśmīr''. New Delhi:

Sahitya Akademi The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India. Founded on 12 March 1954, it is supported by, though independent of, the Indian government. Its of ...

(1935)
Mudrarakśasa : (The signet ring)
With Viśākhadatta. Bombay: New Book Company (1944)
''Ritusamhara Or The Peageant Of The Seasons''
Bombay: The National Informations & Publications Ltd. (1947)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pandit, Ranjit Sitaram Nehru–Gandhi family 1944 deaths 1893 births People from Maharashtra Indian National Congress politicians Uttar Pradesh politicians Prisoners and detainees of British India Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Indian barristers Indian translators Members of the Central Legislative Assembly of India 20th-century Indian linguists Sanskrit scholars 20th-century translators