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The 132nd birth anniversary fell on April 10:
Sarojini Naidu: Nightingale of India
Chelvatamby Maniccavasagar
Sarojini Naidu, who was a patriot, freedom fighter, poet, orator and
a crusader for women’s rights, was born in 1879 and her 132nd birth
anniversary was observed recently in India.
In fact Sarojini Naidu deserves to be remembered particularly by the
younger generation, who perhaps may not have known her song and poetry.
It was Mahatma Gandhi who called her ‘Bharat Kokila’.
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Sarojini Naidu |
Jawaharlal Nehru paying a tribute in Parliament after her demise
stated that she infused artistry and poetry into the national struggle
for ‘Swaraj’. Her brother Harindranath Chattopadhyaya observed that she
was called the ‘Nightingale of India’ not because of her poetry, ‘but
because of her extraordinary oratory which poured through her like
music, silver shot with gold cataracting from the summits of sheer
inspiration’.
Indeed she was one colourful personality in the fight for India’s
freedom. Like many others she too was drawn into the struggle by the
spell of Mahatma Gandhi and suffered imprisonment many times.
In 1925, Naidu became President of the Indian National Congress and
was for many years. She was a member of the Working Committee. In 1931,
she went to England as one of the delegates to the Round Table
conference.
In 1932, she was a member of the Indian Government’s delegation to
South Africa. In 1947, she presided over the Asian Relations Conference
held in Delhi.
With the advent of the Indian Independence, she became Governor of
the United Provinces – the first woman ever to hold such post. She was
one of the most popular Governors and strong advocate of Hindu-Muslim
unity and played a great part in creating communal harmony in the
province.
Further, she was a pioneer in the women’s movement of India and
helped Indian women to take their rightful place in the public life and
in the national affairs of the country. She contributed much towards the
social and educational progress of the country. In the course of these
activities she once went on a lecture tour of the United States and
Canada.
Sarojini Naidu never ran for any elected political office as she had
no strong base in any part of India. Her contribution to the great
national struggle ‘was that of a celebrity, publicist and public
relations officer of the Indian National Congress in general and Gandhi
in particular’. She was not a radical like Annie Besant. However like
Annie Besant she could keep the audience spell bound by the ‘Niagara’ of
her words.
Furthermore, Sarojini was born in Hyderabad of the Nizams of Bengali
parents. Her distinguished father Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya was a Doctor
of Science of the University of Edinbourgh. One of her brothers Viren
who went to Oxford was a revolutionary who lived in exile in Europe,
another brother was a poet, was married to Kamala Devi, the well-known
promoter of Indian art and drama.
Sarojini was a prodigy. She passed the Madras Matriculation
Examination at the age of 12 years. She fell in love at the age of 14
years and started writing poetry at the age of 11 years. When she was 16
years of age she received a scholarship from the Nizam of Hyderabad for
study in England. She attended lectures at Kings College, London
University and subsequently Girton College, Cambridge.
Sarojini was a great orator who could sweep her audience of her feet.
Her outpourings on the platform was more emotional than thought
provoking. They were ‘Silver shot with gold’. It was her delivery and
her magnetic presence that created the spell and impact. She was the
purveyor of the sublime, transforming public speaking into poetry. She
was frank, audacious and had a fine sense of humour. She once called
Mahatma Gandhi as ‘Micky Mouse’.
Sarojini’s speeches were extempore and most of them not recorded. As
the ‘orator-in-chief’ of the Congress, she spoke on national political
themes. Education in general and education of women in particular were
her pet themes.
Her speeches were welcomed with rounds and rounds of cheering. One
such speech was a beautiful one when she addressed the Law students in
colonial Ceylon in 1928 when she accompanied Mahatma Gandhi on his tour
of our island.
Further, she was engaged in various public activities and causes. In
1917 she headed a delegation to Whitehall to espouse the cause of
women’s educational, social and political rights.
This was followed by another visit as a member of the Indian Home
Rule League to England where she spoke of the crisis in Punjab and
Khilafat Movement in 1924. She visited Kenya and South Africa and spoke
against white racism.
In 1928, she was a delegate to the Pan Pacific Women’s Conference in
Honolulu and toured US and Canada in 1931. She accompanied Gandhi to the
round table conference at Whitehall. She was a founder of the All India
Women’s Conference in 1927 and Lady Irwins College in New Delhi in 1933.
In the field of poetry, Naidu achieved abiding fame while she was in
England she published the first volume of a verse which was her
immediate recognition and the the patronage of Arthur Symonds and Edmund
Gosse.
She also published in all three volumes of poems: ‘The Golden
Threshold’, the ‘Bird of Time’ and ‘The Broken Wing’. Her poems have
been translated in all important Indian and many European languages. The
musical cadence of her poetry won her the title ‘The Nightingale of
India’. |
