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 from 1953 to 1954, the first woman appointed to either post. Hailing from the prominent Nehru-Gandhi political family, her brother Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of independent India, her niece Indira Gandhi the first female Prime Minister of India and her grand-nephew Rajiv Gandhi was the sixth Prime Minister of India. Despite her minimal education, Nehru showered her with diplomatic favours, sending Pandit to London as India's most important diplomat after serving as India's envoy to the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Nations. Her time in London offers insights into the wider context of changes in Indo–British relations. Her High-Commissionership was a microcosm of inter-governmental relations. Personal life Vijaya Lakshmi's (born Swarup) father, Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), a wealthy barrister who belonged to the Kashmiri Pandit community, served twice as President of the Indian National Congress during the Independence Struggle. Her mother, Swaruprani Thussu (1868–1938), who came from a well-known Kashmiri Pandit family settled in Lahore, was Motilal's second wife, the first having died in child birth. She was the second of three children; Jawaharlal was eleven years her senior (b. 1889), while her younger sister Krishna Hutheesing (b. 1907-1967) became a noted writer and authored several books on their brother. In 1919, she secretly married Syud Hossain, a Muslim journalist and later first Indian Ambassador to Cairo, but Mahatma Gandhi and, family members like Pandit Nehru, separated the couple. In 1921, she was married to Ranjit Sitaram Pandit (1921–1944), a successful barrister from Kathiawar, Gujarat and classical scholar who translated Kalhana's epic history Rajatarangini into English from Sanskrit. Her husband was a Maharashtrian Saraswat Brahmin, whose family hailed from village of Bambuli, on the Ratnagiri coast, in Maharashtra. He was arrested for his support of Indian independence and died in Lucknow prison in 1944, leaving behind his wife and their three daughters Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sehgal and Rita Dar. She died in the year of 1990. Her daughter Chandralekha was married to Ashok Mehta and has three children- Arjun, Minakshi and Manjari. Her second daughter Nayantara Sahgal, is a well-known novelist. She was married to Gautam Sahgal and had three children - Nonika her eldest daughter,