Copyright: Jagjivan Ashram Trust.

Autobiographical memoirs of the wife of Jagjivan Ram, 1908-1986, politician and minister from India. By the early 1950s, there were indications of a strong awakening among India's socially oppressed. The heart-warming story of Indrani Devi's life unfolds with her happy childhood, her education, the political rumblings in the 1920s, and her family’s interest in the freedom movement. The wife of Jagjivan Ram, the renowned freedom fighter and statesman, she was a keen observer who was privy to the unfolding of modern Indian history. Spanning five decades, her memoir is a poignant insight into the important political developments and events in the country even as she shares wonderful and intimate moments of her family life. This is also her account of a great visionary, one who worked tirelessly for the marginalized. The revolutionary changes that Jagjivan Ram introduced and his persistent fight against social discrimination, made a difference to so many lives. This memoir brings alive Jagjivan Ram’s phenomenal rise and his path-breaking role in national politics. Milestones are a refreshingly candid revelation of the intrigues and machinations that shaped the political parties of India and of the important developments during 1937–47 that influenced India’s destiny. Indrani Devi gives an insider’s take on the perseverance of the freedom fighters, the role of the Congress Party and later its split, and much more, until the time of the Pakistani aggression, and the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. Milestones are not just a memoir but also an important historical document.