Sarojini Naidu: Facts about India’s nightingale

Sarojini Naidu, also known as the Nightingale of India (or Bharatiya Kokila) was a political leader, independence activist, poet, and a feminist, and played a vital role in India’s struggle for freedom and in promoting women’s rights in India.

• Birth Date: February 13, 1879
• Death Date: March 2, 1949

Sarojini Naidu was born to Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, a Bengali Brahmin who was the principal of the Nizam’s College in Hyderabad. Right from a young age, she wrote poetry and plays, a hobby she kept throughout her life. She later studied in England, and in 1916 she met Mahatma Gandhi which sparked her interest in the fight for India’s freedom.

Sarojini Naidu displayed exemplary skills in literature when she wrote a play namely “Maher Muneer” when she was just 12 years old; for this work, she earned recognition from all quarters. A few years later, she got a scholarship from the Nizam of Hyderabad and went to London King’s College for further studies.

There, she got some sound advice from Nobel Laureates, who suggested that she stick to Indian themes, which Naidu did, and went on to become a revered poet of the 20th century.

In London, while in college, she fell in love with Padipati Govindarajulu Naidu (a non-Brahmin and a physician). Back in those days, inter-caste marriages were not very common; despite that, she got married to Padipati Naidu when she was 19 years old, and that is how she got the name Sarojini Naidu.

Naidu was also known as the Nightingale of India because of the several beautiful poems and songs that she wrote. Naidu wrote several poems throughout her lifetime, which were published. The Golden Threshold, The Bird of Time, The Broken Wing, The Magic Tree, The Wizard Mask, and A Treasury of Poems were some of her notable collections of poems. In 1916, she published a biography of Muhammad Ali Jinnah titled The Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity.

Naidu was also an independence activist. From 1905 onwards she became a part of the Indian National Movement, and her political career started. Over the next few years, she travelled extensively across India giving lectures on social welfare, dignity of labour, nationalism and women’s empowerment. In 1917, she helped establish the Women’s Indian Association (WIA).

To protest the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (1919), she even returned the Kaiser-i-Hind medal, which the British had awarded her for her outstanding work during the plague epidemic.

In 1924, she travelled to South Africa to support Indians living there and also presided the East African Indian Congress. She was elected as the first female President of the India National Congress (INC) in 1925.

Later, she also participated in Salt Satyagraha in 1930, which was helmed by Mahatma Gandhi. She was sent to prison in 1930-32 for being re-elected as Congress president after the party was declared an illegal institution by the British (and again in 1942–43).

Many considered her to be a great peacemaker, and she even accompanied Mahatma Gandhi to the inconclusive Second Round Table Conference held in 1931 in London (Naidu represented Indian women).

Naidu was the strongest advocate of Gandhi’s principles and ideologies, and even referred to Gandhi as the ‘Chocolate-coloured Mickey Mouse’

In 1942, she was arrested during the “Quit India” movement and was put in jail for 21 months. After India’s independence, Naidu became the Governor of Uttar Pradesh, the first Indian woman to become the Governor of any state in India.

Sarojini Naidu died on 2 March, 1949 due to cardiac arrest (heart attack) at the Government House in Lucknow. She was 70.

In 1961, several years after Naidu’s demise, Naidu’s daughter Padma published a collection of her poems that were titled, ‘The Feather of The Dawn’.

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