Nayantara Sahgal is among those Indian writers who deal with the issues and problems concerned with women in her novels. She is a feminist with a different attitude and perspective who wants a change in the attitude of men towards women. She seeks a reexamination of the old values by which she strongly believes that all the distinctions would vanish. Sahgal’s marital morality is based on honesty, mutual trust, consideration and freedom. In her works the female characters show their urge for identity. Her female protagonists are depicted realistically with their emotional, psychological, spiritual aspects of personality. Sahgal strongly focuses individual freedom that plays a pivotal role in all her fiction. She depicts individual wakefulness of the connotations of liberty, their struggle to free themselves from the shackles of patriarchal society. Her women characters represent the Indian feminism in the true sense. To her, marriage without love is meaningless. She boldly rejects the age old notions of being inferior to men. The protagonists in her novels present a challenge to the patriarchal society when the women were judged as mere a doorstep to be trod upon or an attendant of male commands. She rejects the age old institution of marriage as epicenter of a woman’s life without which she has no identity. Sahgal maintains that woman is not a bonded laborer to be sold daily or a slave. She is the human being who has equal rights, freedom and her own identity as of a man in the society. The success of a marriage depends upon mutual compassion and understanding. Sahgal’s novels like This Time of Morning, Rich Like Us, The Day In Shadow, A Time To Be Happy are counted among the most celebrated and applauded works where she is at her best in the depiction of culture and history, the desire for self-realization, a combination of tradition and modernity, self-fulfillment and various others.

The novel The Day In Shadow deals with the protagonist Simrit Raman, a married woman, whose world is confined within the four walls of her house. She belongs to a traditional Brahmin family who willingly chose a non-Brahmin businessman Som. Marriage is all about compatibility at not only emotional but sexual and most importantly intellectual level as well. Through the years, Simrit realizes the vast differences between them; on the other hand Som is happy and content. Som demonstrates the picture of patriarchal self-centered male who caters only his needs while Simrit shows the life of a woman who feels vacuum within her life as well as herself. Their outlook towards life is a great contrast where Som is materialistic and ambitious whereas Simrit is simple and emotional. Even their political ideologies are contrary to each other. The events and consequences that happened in their life shook the roots of their married life. The disparity in the mental attitude of these two is clearly the sole reason for the break-down of their marriage.  Their marriage breaks down and both separated from each other. Egoistic Som, having no sense of guilt, totally cuts off himself from Simrit and Simrit, despite being divorcee, lives proudly with her child facing the attitude of the society who treat her ‘as if divorce were a disease that left pock mark.

In her another novel This Time of Morning, Sahgal tries to present not only the women’s psychological suffering but also her awareness to fight for her psychological and emotional needs. The novel presents before us a modern woman who does not yield before the patriarchal forces and is ready to revolt against the oppression and constraints. In this novel, Nita and Rashmi are struggling to make their identity in a male centric society. They are modern educated women so reject traditional taboos. Rashmi comes out from her broken matrimonial relation with Dalip and finds comfort in the arms of Neil. She thinks separation or divorce does not mean end of life for woman.  “I’m not lost. Something will work out. It’s not the end of life.”[p.45] Nita expresses her thinking about marriage and she does not want to marry till forty five. She has a picture of her would be husband in her mind but it does not suit to her father. She does not want to marry with a man whom she is not familiar. Through the character of Nita, Sahgal explores the place of a woman in Indian society before marriage. Nita’s parents want to settle down their daughter in marriage. They do not give any importance to the wishes of their daughter and force her to marry the man of their choice whom she neither loves nor admires. Finally she agrees to her parents’ choice of Vijay as groom. Though she is aware that Vijay thinks her as a possession not as an individual and this kind of marriage has no prospects of fulfillment. Through the character of Nita, Sahgal shows the conventional narrow-minded Indian society, where life partners are chosen by their parents. Nita stands for modern educated woman who not only wants to achieve her identity in the society but she is in search of true love also. When Nita and Saleem won during a dance in the party, Saleem says:

“If you’re always as lucky as this, Nita, we must take you to the races next time.”[p.45] She at once expresses her female agony in the following words: “That’s my trouble. I’m always lucky except in love.”[p.45] 

New Indian woman rejects the relational identity, i.e. to be known as her father’s daughter, husband’s wife and children’s mother. She is well educated, independent and capable to understand the artificiality of this relational identity. Sahgal’s ‘New Woman’ is in search of self identity, seeking liberation in all walks of life replacing the traditional image of Indian woman. The need for woman to seek identity is the core message in her novels. Women who are conscious of their emotional needs and strive for self fulfillment rejecting the existing traditions and social set-up and long for a more liberal and unconventional way of life finds their place in the novels of Nayantara Sahgal. Her novels portray women trampled and oppressed because of their dependence upon men. They have to face bitter experiences in their struggle to come out of the bondage and stand on their own feet. The hardships and sufferings in fighting against an established order, the shattering experience of divorce and the resultant alienation between parents and children form the thematic concern of her novels. Sahgal is deeply concerned with the failure of marital relationships and the loneliness of living; hence most of her women remarry. Sahgal’s women characters suffer because they refuse to submerge their individuality and cling to their personal identity at all costs.

  Her novel Rich Like Us also deals with the theme of individual self in the contemporary Indian socio-political setting with economic disparities and rampant corruption. The protagonist Sonali Ranade, an upright civil servant in the Ministry of Industry is pitted against the contemporary bureaucratic regime. Sonali heroically fights the malice in the bureaucratic machinery. She has the intellectual strength to rebel against the hackneyed thoughts, outdated customs and anachronistic rituals that is quite different from the stereotyped image of woman presented by most of the women novelists. Sahgal invests reality as a spring board to realize her vision of fulfillment in the life of her characters. She explores the spirit of freedom through the consciousness of heroine, and its significance in the lives of other less important characters.

In the novel Storm In Chandigarh, Saroj suffers because of the brutishness of an uncompromising and fickle husband, Inder. Saroj does not feel free to talk to Inder because he does no encourage any communication and this is the main problem in their relationship. When Saroj tells him that she ‘needs people to talk to’, he gets agitated and quips back,” talk about what? What is the mania for talk?”[207]. There is no mutual understanding, intimacy and emotional love between them. Saroj expects equality and a liberal atmosphere of freedom but she fails to get it from Inder. The advent of Vishal Dubey becomes the liberating agent for Saroj. She moves out of Inder’s house which was like a prison for her where she was incarcerated both physically and spiritually.

Sahgal’s women characters portray their struggle against subversive force and continue their journey towards self discovery. Sahgal harshly criticize and disapproves the patriarchal mentality, male dominance, hypocricy, owner-servant relationship between husband and wife, different codes of behavior and morality for male and female and too much emphasis on sexual purity of female while completely overlooking such behavior for males. She castigates the society that considers it a serious deviation and moral lapse and puts high premium on sexual purity.

1. Sahgal, Nayantara. 1965. This Time Of Morning. New  Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, Print. 1971. The Day in Shadow. New Delhi: Paguine Books, Print

2. Jain, Jasbir. Nayantara Sahgal. PrintWell, 1994

3. Kanupriya. Feminist Consciousness in the Novels of Nayantara Sahgal: New Lights on Indian Women Novelists in English. Ed. Amarnath Prasad. Sarup and Sons, 2004

4. M.K. Naik. “The Indian English Political Novel” Dimensions Indian English Literature, [New Delhi: Sterling. 1985] PP-130-131.

5. Asnani, M. Shyam . “The Novels of Nayantara Sahgal,” Indian Literature. Vol. 16, no.1/2, 1973. Pp. 36-69

6. Menon, Ritu. Out of Love: A Literary and Political Biography of Nayantara Sahgal. Noida, Harper Collins Publishers, 2014

7. Rao, A.V. Krishna. Nayantara Sahgal: A Study of Her Fiction and Non- Fiction. Madras: M. Seshachalam &Co.  p.6. Print