On September 12, 1946, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit arrived in Washington, D.C., as India's first ambassador to the United States — or rather, as the representative of the Indian National Congress to Washington, since India was not yet independent and the position had no official diplomatic standing. She had already served as a cabinet minister in the Congress-led provincial government of the United Provinces, making her one of the first women to hold a ministerial office anywhere in British-controlled India.

Pandit was born in 1900 in Allahabad, the sister of Jawaharlal Nehru and the daughter of Motilal Nehru. The family connection defined how she was received in some quarters and diminished in others. American newspapers in 1946 described her variously as "Nehru's sister," "the gracious diplomat," and occasionally as his "secretary." She had been imprisoned three times by the British for her independence activism. She was fluent in English, Hindi, and had working knowledge of several other languages. She was not his secretary.

After independence in 1947, Pandit became India's first ambassador to the Soviet Union, then to the United States (with full diplomatic status), then to Ireland and Spain simultaneously. In 1953 she was elected president of the United Nations General Assembly — the first woman to hold that position. She later served as governor of Maharashtra.

In her memoirs, she described the experience of representing India at the UN during its first decade as one of constant calibration: she was representing a new nation, a non-Western power, and herself simultaneously — each of which was viewed with suspicion by different factions in the Assembly.