Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World (Session 2)

The World Citizen Book Club’s second session on Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World continued the four-part series with author Manu Bhagavan joining for discussion and a special Q&A. This session, held on the second Saturday of the month, deepened the exploration of India’s role in shaping post-war international institutions.

About the Book

Set against the backdrop of World War II, Indian independence and decolonization, and the Cold War, this first-of-its-kind international history — based on seven years of research in twenty archives on three continents — tells the story of India’s quest to build consensus around the framework of human rights, bridge the divisions between East and West, and create “one world” free of empire, poverty, exploitation, and war. In the years leading up to independence from Great Britain, Jawaharlal Nehru envisioned bridging ideological differences between capitalist and communist systems. His sister, Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, led the fight in and through the United Nations, travelling across continents as an electric orator and outstanding diplomat. Together they sought to lay the foundation for global governance that would check uncontrolled state power and put an end to endemic poverty, taking Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy global.

About the Author

Manu Bhagavan is Professor of History, Human Rights, and Public Policy at Hunter College and the Graduate Center-The City University of New York, and Senior Fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. He is author or editor of seven books, including The Peacemakers (HarperCollins India, 2012; Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and India and the Cold War (Penguin India and UNC Press, 2019). His biography of Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was published by Penguin/Viking India. He is the recipient of a 2006 fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and Hunter’s 2023 Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarship.

Discussion Highlights

This second session built on the foundational context established in the first meeting, examining in greater detail how India’s independence movement was intertwined with the broader project of building a new international order. Participants discussed the specific diplomatic strategies employed by Nehru and Pandit to advance their vision of global governance grounded in human rights and self-determination for all peoples.