Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, statesman, secular humanist, social democrat, and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a principal leader of the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Upon India's independence in 1947, he served as the country's first prime minister for 16 years. Nehru promoted parliamentary democracy, secularism, and science and technology during the 1950s, powerfully influencing India's arc as a modern nation. In international affairs, he steered India clear of the two blocs of the Cold War. A well-regarded author, the books he wrote in prison, such as Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), An Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946), have been read and deliberated upon around the world.
Feroze Jehangir Gandhi was an Indian freedom fighter, politician and journalist. He served as a member of the provincial parliament between 1950 and 1952, and later a member of the Lok Sabha, the Lower house of Indian parliament. He published the The National Herald and The Navjivan newspapers. His wife, Indira Gandhi, and their elder son Rajiv Gandhi were both prime ministers of India. He was a member of Indian National Congress.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was an Indian freedom fighter, diplomat and politician. She served as the 8th President of the United Nations General Assembly from 1953 to 1954, the first woman appointed to this post. She was also the 3rd Governor of Maharashtra from 1962 to 1964. Noted for her participation in the Indian independence movement, she was jailed several times during the movement.
Nayantara Sahgal is an Indian writer who writes in English. She is a member of the Nehru–Gandhi family, the second of the three daughters born to Jawaharlal Nehru's sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.
Kamala Nehru was an Indian independence activist and the wife of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. Their daughter Indira Gandhi was the first female prime minister of India.
Durgabāi Deshmukh was an Indian freedom fighter, lawyer, social worker and politician. She was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India and of the Planning Commission of India.
Mohan Lal Sukhadia was an Indian politician, who served as the Chief Minister of Rajasthan state for 17 years (1954–1971). He became chief minister at the age of 38 and was responsible for bringing major reforms and developments in Rajasthan. For this, he is still widely revered as the "founder of modern Rajasthan".
Penal Reform International, founded in London in 1989, is an international nongovernmental organization working on penal and criminal justice reform worldwide.
Jhalkaribai was a woman soldier who played an important role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. She served in the women's army of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. She eventually rose to a position of a prominent advisor to the queen, Rani of Jhansi. At the height of the Siege of Jhansi, she disguised herself as the queen and fought on her behalf, on the front, allowing the queen to escape safely out of the fort.
Sukhadeo Thorat an Indian economist, educationist, professor and writer. He is the former chairman of the University Grants Commission. He is professor emeritus in Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is an expert on B. R. Ambedkar.
Aditi Shankardass is a British neuroscientist.
Abdul Majeed Khwaja was an Indian lawyer, educationist, social reformer and freedom fighter from Aligarh. In 1920, he along with others founded Jamia Millia Islamia and later served its vice chancellor and chancellor.
Susan Visvanathan is an Indian sociologist, social anthropologist and a fiction writer. She is well known for her writings on religious dialogue and sociology of religion. Her first book Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual among the Yakoba is a pathbreaking work in the field of sociology of religion.
Shanti Swaroop Dhavan was an Indian statesman, diplomat and jurist who was the 6th Governor of West Bengal from 19 September 1969 to 21 August 1971.
Shyam Kumari Khan née Nehru was an Indian lawyer, freedom fighter, politician and social worker. She was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1963 to 1968.
Swarup Rani Nehru was an Indian independence activist. She was the wife of barrister and Indian National Congress leader Motilal Nehru and the mother of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Ranjit Sitaram Pandit was an Indian barrister, politician, author and scholar from Rajkot 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, Ṛtusaṃhāra and Kalhana's Rajatarangini into English.
Amita Singh is an Indian political scientist, currently serving as a professor of law and governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in Delhi, India. She is also a member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. She is the recipient of numerous awards, and has published widely on public administration in India. Singh has been criticized for controversial statements made regarding Dalits, Muslims, and Jammu and Kashmir.
Prison and Chocolate Cake is the first of two early memoirs by Nayantara Sahgal, first published by Alfred A. Knopf and Victor Gollancz (London) in 1954, and includes her childhood experiences of her family during the Indian independence movement in the 1930s and '40s. It was written during the winter of 1952–53 when she was 25, married and with two young children.
Shobha Nehru, commonly known as Fori Nehru and Auntie Fori, was a Hungarian-born Indian social worker and the wife of the Indian civil servant Braj Kumar Nehru of the Nehru family.
