Sarojini Naidu- Life, Work and Achievements

1. SAROJANI NAIDU
LIFE , WORK AND ACHIEVEMENTS
By Rahila Khan, GGPC QUETTA

2. CONTENTS
Personal Life01
Education02
Marriage03
Political Career04
Writing Career05
Awards06
Work07
Themes of Work08

3. Personal life
• Sarojini Naidu was born on February 13, 1879,
in Hyderabad.
• Her Father Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, was a
Bengali Brahmin, and Principal of the Nizam's
College in Hyderabad.
• Her mother, Barada Sundari Devi Chattopadhyay,
was a Bengali poet.
• She was the eldest of the eight siblings.
• Her brother Virendranath Chattopadhyay was a
revolutionary, and another brother Harindranath
was a poet, a dramatist, and an actor.
• Their family was well-regarded in Hyderabad, not
only for leading the Nizam College of Hyderabad
but also as Hyderabad's most famous artists at that
time.

4. Education
• Sarojini Naidu, passed her
matriculation examination from the
University of Madras.
• Later, took a four-year break from
her studies.
• In 1895, the Nizam's Charitable
Trust gave her the chance to study in
England, first at King's College,
London and later at Girton College,
Cambridge.

5. Marriage
• Sarojini met Paidipati G. Naidu-a physician,
at the age of 19, after finishing her studies,
she married him.
• Sarojini was from Bengal, while Paidipati
Naidu was from Andhra Pradesh, this was
an inter-regional marriage of East and
South India.
• The couple had 5 children. Their daughter
Paidipati Padmaja also joined the
independence movement.She was appointed
the Governor of the State of Uttar Pradesh
soon after Indian independence.

6. Political Career
• Naidu joined the Indian independence movement in 1905. She soon met
other such leaders as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rabindranath Tagore,
Mahatma Gandhi.
• Between 1915 and 1918, Naidu travelled to different regions in India
delivering lectures on social welfare, emancipation of women and
nationalism. She also helped to establish the Women's Indian Association
(WIA) in 1917.[
• Later in 1917, Naidu also accompanied her colleague Annie Besant, who
was the president of Home Rule League and Women's Indian Association,
to present the advocate universal suffrage in front of the Joint Select
Committee in London, United Kingdom.
• Naidu again went to London in 1919 as a part of the All India Home Rule
League as a part of her continued efforts to advocate for freedom from
the British rule. Upon return to India in 1920, she joined Gandhi's
Satyagraha Movement.
• Naidu presided over the 1925 Annual Session of the Indian National
Congress at Cawnpore (now Kanpur). She was the first Indian woman
and second woman overall (after Annie Besant) to do so. Naidu said in
her address, "In the battle for liberty, fear is one unforgivable treachery
and despair, the one unforgivable sin".

7. Political Career (Continued…)
• Naidu also presided over East African Indian Congress' 1929
session in South Africa.
• Naidu was arrested, along with other Congress leaders
including Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Madan Mohan
Malaviya for participating in 1930 Salt March.
• In 1931, Naidu and other leaders of the Congress party
participated in the Second Round Table Conference headed by
Viceroy Lord Irwin in the wake of the Gandhi-Irwin pact.
• Naidu was one of the major figures to have led the Civil
Disobedience Movement and Quit India Movement led by
Gandhi. She faced repeated arrests by the British authorities
during the time and even spent over 21 months in jail.
• Following India's independence from the British rule in 1947,
Naidu was appointed as 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.

8. Writing career
• Naidu began writing at the age of 12. Her play,
Maher Muneer, written in Persian, impressed the
Nizam of Kingdom of Hyderabad.
• In 1905, her first collection of poems, named The
Golden Threshold was published. Her poems were
admired by prominent Indian politicians like Gopal
Krishna Gokhale.
• Naidu poem "In the Bazaars of Hyderabad" was
published as in 1912. It was well received by critics,
who variously noted Naidu's visceral use of rich
sensory images in her writing.
• The Feather of The Dawn which contained poems
written in 1927 by Naidu was edited and published
afterward in 1961 by her daughter Padmaja Naidu.

9. Kaisar-i-Hind
Medal
In 1908, Naidu was
awarded Medal by
King Edward VII
for her work
during the plague
in India.
"Nightingale of
India"
For her work in
the field of poetry
writing, Naidu was
given the title of
"Nightingale of
India".
Google
Doodle
In 2014, Google
India observed
Naidu's 135th birth
anniversary with a
Google Doodle.
150 Leading
Women
In 2018, Naidu
was listed among
"150 Leading
Women" list by the
University of
London
Awards
"Asteroid 5647
Sarojininaidu
In 1990, an asteroid
discovered by
Eleanor Helin at
Palomar
Observatory was
named in her
memory

10. 1905 1912 1917 1919
1943
The Golden
Threshold
The Bird of Time The Broken Wing Muhammad
Jinnah:
An Ambassador of
Unity
The Sceptered
Flute
WORK
19 The Feather
of the Dawn 05
The Indian
Weavers1912
1961 1971

11. Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was a versatile woman
personality of twentieth-century India. She was a highly
cultured woman, a freedom fighter, a theosophist and a
poetess. The themes and imageries of her poetry are
primarily Indian.
Three loves- love to man, love to her motherland and
love to Nature are the main themes of her poetry.
Her language is lyrical, alliterative and full of individual
similes. Moreover, her poems sometimes bend to
mysticism. Indian myths and legends also meet in her
poems with a romantic outlook.
Sarojini Naidu as a romantic poetess is a combination of
Wordsworth, Blake, Keats and Shelley with something of
them in her though not in full.
Themes of her
work

12. Love is the primary theme of her poems. Her love poems are passionate to
the point of eroticism. The poetess is very deep in love with her mate. In
the poem ‘If You Call Me’ she says that she is willing to have a call from
her mate. She is very eager to meet and join her mate defying all the
obstacles. She writes:
‘If you call me, I will come
Swifter than desire,
Swifter than the lightning’s feet
Shod with plumes of fire.
Life’s dark tides may roll between,
Or Death’s deep chasms divide-
If you call me I will come
Fearless what betide.”
LOVE
LOVE

13. The bulk of her poems deal with the theme of Nature. Her Nature is full of
trees, woods, birds, peace, freedom and beauty. She desires to take shelter
in Nature being tired and wearied of man-made society and its
artificiality. In the poem poem ‘Summer Woods’ she says:
”O I am tired of painted roofs and soft and silken floors,
I am tired of strife and song and festivals and fame
And long to fly where cassia woods are breaking into flame.”
In the same poem she says again:
”You and I together Love in the deep blossoming woods
Engirt with love-void silence and gleaming solitudes.
Companions of the lustrous dawn, gay comrades of the night.
Like Krishna and like Radhika, encompassed with delight.”
NATURE

14. Another theme of her poetry is her love to the motherland. The
poetess is very aware of India’s slavery under the British and
she is very passionate and emotional to free India from the
yoke of the English. Sarojini Naidu believes that to get
freedom, the people irrespective of caste and creed must come
out. In the poem entitled ‘Awake’ she says:
Waken, O mother, thy children implore thee,
Who kneel in thy presence to serve and adore thee!
The night is a flush with a dream of the morrow,
Why still dost thou sleep in thy bondage of sorrow?’ LOVE FOR
MOTHERLAND

15. Some of her poems are bent to mysticism though not apparently. Her heart and
soul are so much sensitive that she feels the human soul be akin to the soul of
Nature. In the poem Caprice she says:
”You held a wildflower in your finger tips,
Idly you pressed it to indifferent lips,
Idly you tore its crimson leaves apart…
Alas! It was my heart.”
Like a true mystic, she makes communication of her soul with the Divine Soul.
In the poem ‘The Soul’s Prayer’ she shows to have a communication with God
and dramatically her soul speaks to and converses with the Divine Soul.
”I bending from my sevenfold height
Will teach thee of My quickening grace
Life is a prism of My light
And Death is the shadow of my face.’‘
MYSTICISM

16. The poetess takes some themes and
allusion from Indian myths and
portrays them with a romantic
outlook. ‘Songs of Radha Kanhaya’
and ‘Songs of Radha the Quest’ are
some poems dealing with mythical
themes.
In ‘Songs of Radha Kanhaya ‘she
speaks of Lord Krishna’s childish
frolic. It is a poem dealing with the
theme of love of Radha to Krishna. INDIAN MYTHS

17. The linguistic style of Sarojini Naidu is lyrical, alliterative and full of similes. She
often employs two-lined rhyme schemes (couplet) and sometimes uses the rhyme
scheme as- ababcc of six lines. Her use of alliteration is praiseworthy. She uses it
often with skill as-” soft and silken”, “festivals and fame”, “praise and prayers” etc.
She is very artful in the use of similes with the touch of novelty, such as-
(i) Seven queens shone round her ivory bed, Like seven soft gems on a silken
thread.
(ii)Her glides and fillets gleam, Like charming fires on sunset seas.
(iii) A young queen eyed like the morning star.
Her imageries are also exquisite, though not often, but sometimes. For example, we
can quote the following lines from the poem entitled ‘The Purdah Nashin’, as-
”From thieving light of eyes impure,
From coveting sun or wind’s caress
Her days are guarded and secure
Behind her cavern lattices:
Like jewels in a turbaned crest,
Like secrets in a lover’s breast.”
LINGUISTIC STYLE

19. SAROJANI NAIDU
FAMOUS QUOTES

25. REFERENCES
Anand, Renu; Alurkar, Sudha (1964). Techniques of counseling guidance, counseling and student
personnel in education McGraw-Hill series in education. Tata McGraw-Hill Education. pp. 66–70.
Augestine, Seline (17 June 2017). "Nightingale of India". The Hindu.
"Google Doodle celebrates Sarojini Naidu's 135th Birthday". news.biharprabha.com.
"Leading Women 1868–2018", University of London.
Lilyma Ahmed. "Naidu, Sarojini". Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh.
Lyer, N Sharada (1964). Musings on Indian Writing in English: Poetry. Sarup & Sons. p. 150.
Sarkar, Amar Nath; Prasad, Bithika, eds. (2008). Critical response to Indian poetry in English. New Delhi:
Sarup & Sons.
Sharma, Kaushal Kishore (1 January 2003). "Sarojini Naidu: A Preface to Her Poetry". Feminism,
Censorship and Other Essays. Sarup & Sons. pp. 56–57

26. THANK YOU