Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu (née Chattopadhyay) (; 13 February 1879 – 2 March 1949) was an Indian political activist and poet who served as the first Governor of United Provinces, after India's independence. She played an important role in the Indian independence movement against the British Raj. She was the first Indian woman to be president of the Indian National Congress and appointed governor of a state.

Born in a Bengali family in Hyderabad, Naidu was educated in Madras, London and Cambridge. Following her time in Britain, where she worked as a suffragist, she was drawn to the Congress party's struggle for India's independence. She became a part of the national movement and became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and the idea of swaraj (self-rule). She was appointed Congress president in 1925 and, when India achieved its independence, became the Governor of the United Provinces in 1947.

Naidu's literary work as a poet earned her the nickname the "Nightingale of India" by Gandhi because of the colour, imagery, and lyrical quality of her poetry. Her oeuvre includes both children's poems and others written on more serious themes including patriotism and tragedy. Published in 1912, "In the Bazaars of Hyderabad" remains one of her most popular poems.

Personal life

Sarojini Naidu was born in Hyderabad on 13 February 1879 to Aghorenath Chattopadhyay. Her father was from Brahmangaon, Bikrampur, Bengal (now in Munshiganj, Bangladesh). Her father was a Bengali Brahmin and the principal of Nizam College. Another sister, Suhasini, was an Indian communist leader. Their family was well-regarded in Hyderabad.

Education

Sarojini Naidu passed her matriculation examination to qualify for university study, earning the highest rank, in 1891, when she was twelve. In England, she met artists from the Aesthetic and Decadent movements.

Marriage

Chattopadhyay returned to Hyderabad in 1898. That same year, she married Govindaraju Naidu (who hailed from Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh), a doctor whom she met during her stay in England, She was the first Indian woman President of the Indian National Congress and first Indian woman to preside over the INC conference.

With Reddy, she helped established the Women's Indian Association in 1917. Later that year, Naidu accompanied her colleague Annie Besant, who was the president of Home Rule League and Women's Indian Association, to advocate universal suffrage in front of the Joint Select Committee in London, United Kingdom.She also supported the Lucknow Pact, a joint Hindu–Muslim demand for British political reform, at the Madras Special Provincial Council. In 1906, Naidu spoke to the Social Council of Calcutta in order to advocate for the education of Indian women. In her speech, Naidu stressed that the success of the whole movement relied upon the "woman question". Naidu claimed that the true "nation-builders" were women, not men, and that without women's active cooperation, the nationalist movement would be in vain. The women's movement developed parallel to the independence movement for this reason. That same year, Naidu served as a spokesperson for a delegation of women that met with Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, and Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy of India, in order to discuss reforms. The delegation expressed women's support for the introduction of self-government in India and demanded that the people of India should be given the right to vote, of which women must be included. The delegation was followed up with public meetings and political conferences supporting the demands, making it a huge success.

In 1918, Naidu moved a resolution on women's franchise to the Eighteenth Session of the Bombay Provincial Conference and to the special session of Congress held in Bombay. In her speech at the Conference, Naidu emphasized "the influence of women in bringing about political and spiritual unity" in ancient India. She argued that women had always played an important role in political life in India and that rather than going against tradition, women's franchise would simply be giving back what was theirs all along.

In her speech at the Bombay Special Congress, Naidu claimed that the "right of franchise is a human right and not a monopoly of one sex only." She demanded the men of India to reflect on their humanity and restore the rights that belonged to women. Throughout the speech, Naidu attempted to alleviate worries by reassuring that women were only asking for the right to vote, not for any special privileges that would interfere with men. Despite the increasing support of women's suffrage in India, which was backed by the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and others, the Southborough Franchise Committee, a British committee, decided against granting franchise to women. In 1919, Naidu, as representative of the WIA, went to plead for the franchise of women before a Joint-Select Committee of Parliament in London. The resulting Government of India Act 1919, however, did not enfranchise Indian women, instead leaving the decision to provincial councils. Naidu became the first Indian female president of the Indian National Congress in 1925, demonstrating how influential she was as a political voice. To Naidu, it was women's duty to help in the fight against Britain.

Nonviolent resistance

Naidu formed close ties with Gandhi, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani. to represent the state of Bihar, however died before the Constitution was finalized and put to vote. She gave her only speech at the Constituent Assembly on 11 December 1946.

Governor of United Provinces

Following India's independence from the British rule in 1947, Naidu was appointed the governor of the United Provinces (present-day Uttar Pradesh), making her India's first woman governor. She remained in office until her death in March 1949 (aged 70). She was well-regarded as a poet, considered the "Indian Yeats".

Her first book of poems was published in London in 1905, titled "The Golden Threshold". The publication was suggested by Edmund Gosse, and bore an introduction by Arthur Symons.<!-- The last book of new poems published in her lifetime, The Broken Wing (1917). It includes the poem "The Gift of India", which exhorted the Indian people to remember the sacrifices of the Indian Army during World War I, which she had previously recited to the Hyderabad Ladies' War Relief Association in 1915.<!-- After her death, Naidu's unpublished poems were collected in The Feather of the Dawn (1961), edited by her daughter Padmaja Naidu.

Naidu's speeches were first collected and published in January 1918 as The Speeches and Writings of Sarojini Naidu, a popular publication which led to an expanded reprint in 1919 and again in 1925.

Works

1905: The Golden Threshold, London: William Heineman
1915: The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring, London: William Heineman and New York: John Lane Company
1919: "The Song of the Palanquin Bearers", lyrics by Naidu and music by Martin Shaw, London: Curwen
1920: The Speeches and Writings of Sarojini Naidu, Madras: G.A. Natesan & Co.
1922: Editor, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, An Ambassador of Unity: His Speeches & Writings 1912–1917, with a biographical "Pen Portrait" of Jinnah by Naidu, Madras: Ganesh & Co.
1928: The Sceptred Flute: Songs of India, New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co. She subsequently died, and her last rites were performed at the Gomati River.

Legacy

Naidu is known as "one of India's feminist luminaries".

Composer Helen Searles Westbrook (1889–1967) set Naidu's text to music in her song "Invincible." In 2021-2022, Indian-American composer Shruthi Rajasekar created a large musical work called Sarojini on Naidu's life and the Independence movement, using text from Naidu's poetry and speeches.

As a poet, Naidu was known as the "Nightingale of India". Edmund Gosse called her "the most accomplished living poet in India" in 1919.

thumbnail|Golden Threshold in 2015

Naidu is memorialized in the Golden Threshold, an off-campus annex of University of Hyderabad named for her first collection of poetry. Golden Threshold now houses the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts & Communication in the University of Hyderabad. Also, Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital in Hyderabad is named after her.

Asteroid 5647 Sarojininaidu, discovered by Eleanor Helin at Palomar Observatory in 1990, was named in her memory.

Works about Naidu

The first biography of Naidu, Sarojini Naidu: a Biography by Padmini Sengupta, was published in 1966. A biography for children, Sarojini Naidu: The Nightingale and The Freedom Fighter, was published by Hachette in 2014.

In 1975, the Government of India Films Division produced a twenty-minute documentary about Naidu's life, "Sarojini Naidu – The Nightingale of India", directed by Bhagwan Das Garga.

In 2020, a biopic was announced, titled Sarojini, to be directed by Akash Nayak and Dhiraj Mishra, and starring Dipika Chikhlia as Naidu.

References

External links

Nightingale of India: a Sarojini Naidu biopic
The poetry of Sarojini Naidu: A fusion of English language and Indian culture
The Golden Threshold in The Internet Archive
Biography and Poems of Sarojini Naidu
Letter written by Sarojini Naidu
Sarojini Naidu: An introduction to her life, work, and poetry By Vishwanath S. Naravane
Sarojini Naidu materials at the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)