| Sarojini Nadu (Chattopadhyay) (1879 - 1949) |
Saroji Naidu, the Indian Nightingale took birth in Hyderabad, in a Bengali Brahman family. Sarojini was the eldest daughter of Aghorenath Chattopadhayay who was principal of the Nizam's College, Hyderabad. She entered Madras University at the age of 12 and studied (1895-98) at King's College, London, and later at Girton College, Cambridge.
After some experience in the suffragist campaign in England, she was drawn to Mahatma's Satyagraha and Non Violence Philosophy.
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In 1924 she travelled in eastern Africa and South Africa in the interest of Indians there and the following year became the first Indian woman president of the National Congress. She toured North America, lecturing on the Congress movement, in 1928-29. Back in India her anti-British activity brought her a number of prison sentences (1930, 1932, and 1942-43). She accompanied Gandhi to London for the inconclusive second session of the Round Table Conference for Indian-British cooperation (1931). Upon the outbreak of World War II she supported the Congress Party's policies, first of aloofness, then of avowed hindrance to the Allied cause. In 1947 she became governor of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), a post she retained until her death.
Sarojini Naidu, "the Nightingale of India," also led an active literary life. Her first volume of poetry, The Golden Threshold (1905), was followed by The Bird of Time (1912), and in 1914 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her collected poems, all of which she wrote in English, have been published under the titles The Sceptred Flute (1928) and The Feather of the Dawn (1961).
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| Category filed under: Political |
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