In this extract from a 1966 radio recording, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit remembers attending a meeting chaired by Gandhi in the early days of the Indian independence movement. She recalls being fascinated by Gandhi’s ability to captivate a crowd and convince people to contribute whatever they could spare to the movement.

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was an Indian politician and diplomat. She held various political offices in local government pre-independence and joined the movement fighting for independence from British rule alongside her brother, Jawaharlal Nehru. After 1947 she entered the diplomatic service and became the first woman to be appointed president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1953.

This sound clip is an extract from a recorded talk on Gandhi and India, which is held at the British Library as part of the BBC Sound Archive.

VIJAYA LAKSHMI PANDIT:

When Gandhi spoke at this meeting, he literally mesmerised the crowd, and when he appealed for funds for the Satyagrahi volunteers they poured in. People emptied their pockets, women tore off their earrings and their jewellery, and seemed to be compelled to do it. And here was this little frail, almost insignificant person, taking on the might of the greatest empire in the world, and what did he have to hand? He had a country where there was overwhelming poverty, illiteracy, superstitions of every kind, religious taboos, untouchability. In fact, every dividing factor that you can think of was there, and yet out of this he welded a nation. And the greatest gift that he gave us was not freedom. It was our freedom from fear, not political freedom, freedom from fear. Because from that stemmed everything else. It was Gandhi who made every Indian hold his head up, and walk erect and face any situation.