Quote by Nayantara Sahgal: “Conscience demands a voice, especially when the powerful seek to stifle it.”

This quote asserts that one's inner moral compass compels active expression, particularly in the face of suppression by authority. It highlights the importance of speaking truth to power, emphasizing that ethical conviction requires vocalization even when it means challenging established forces, upholding integrity.

Throughout the late 20th century, Sahgal remained a fierce defender of civil liberties and free speech in India, continuously speaking out against governmental overreach and suppression of dissent in her essays and public addresses.

Indian novelist and political writer, niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, whose fiction and essays have engaged critically with Indian politics, democratic decline, and authoritarianism since independence. She returned her Sahitya Akademi Award in 2015 in protest against rising intolerance in India. Her novel Rich Like Us won the Sinclair Prize in 1986.