Roxna Swamy

Born in Pune, with an all India childhood spent in pre-Partition Sindh, Gujarat, Delhi and Mumbai and in undergraduate colleges in Ahmedabad and Mumbai, Roxna Swamy is now an advocate. It was a late entry into the profession. A mathematician by training, she did post graduate studies in applied mathematics at Harvard University in the U.S.A. and the Indian Institute of Technology at Delhi. She received her doctorate in 1972 from the latter Institute with a thesis entitled "Stability of Plane Poiseulle Flow of a Slightly Elastico-Viscous Liquid". Thereafter, faced with the prospect of no job in her field of expertise, she wrote articles for an RSS newspaper that got closed down during the Emergency, where after she studied law at the Law faculty of the Delhi University. Since then she has been practicing law, in Delhi, mainly in the Supreme Court of India. She is married to the subject of this book, (who she succeeded in educating into the legal world where, without benefit of a law degree, he is now considered as something of an expert in serious public interest litigation) has two daughters, both professionals, both happily married; and has three grand daughters, all presently in their teens. For nearly half a century she has been a keen but quiet follower of the political situation in India, which forms the background of this book, which covers her own experiences there for the first half of this period.