Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet. A proponent of civil rights, women’s emancipation, and anti-imperialistic ideas, she was an important figure in India’s struggle for independence from colonial rule. Naidu’s work as a poet earned her the sobriquet ‘the Nightingale of India’, or ‘Bharat Kokila’.
This poet-freedom fighter born in 1879 was the first of several children to Dr. Aghore Nath Chattopadhyay, Principal of Nizam College, Hyderabad, and Barada Sundari Devi, a Bengali poet. As a student, Sarojini was bright and soon she excelled in many languages including Bengali, Urdu, Telugu and Persian besides English. The Nizam of Hyderabad on reading Sarojini’s Persian play, Maher Muneer, sent by her father was so impressed with the young woman he granted her a scholarship to study in King’s College and later she went on to Girton College in Cambridge.
She was introduced to Gopal Krishna Gokhale who in turn put her on to other prominent political figures of the time like Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, C. P. Ramaswami Iyer and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Sarojini famously referred to Gandhiji once as “Mickey Mouse”. She played a leading role in the Civil Disobedience Movement and was imprisoned thrice.
She worked alongside Nehru for the welfare of the Indigo workers of Champaran in Bihar and fought vehemently with the British for rights. Sarojini Naidu travelled all over the country and held forth on dignity of labour, women’s emancipation and nationalism.
Sarojini was made President of the Indian National Congress in 1925. She founded the Women’s Indian Association with Dr Annie Besant. She travelled to Europe, the US and UK. After Independence, she became the first woman governor of an Indian state, the United Provinces now known as UP.
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