Remembering the Nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu on her death anniversary

Sarojini Naidu was the second woman to become the president of the Indian National Congress in 1925. She was the first woman to be the president of the INC.

Sarojini Naidu fondly called the Nightingale of India, was a renowned freedom fighter, great orator and distinguished poet and a politician. She had served had the first governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949. She was the first woman to become the governor of an Indian state.

She was the second woman to become the president of the Indian National Congress in 1925. She was the first woman to be the president of the INC.

Birth and family:

Sarojini Naidu was born in Hyderabad on February 13, 1879. Her father Aghore Nath Chattopadhyay was a doctorate of science from Edinburgh University. He was the founder and administrator of Hyderabad College which later was called Nizam's College. Her mother Barada Sundari Devi used to write poetry in Bengali. Naidu had seven younger siblings. One brother of hers was a revolutionary and one was a poet, dramatist and an actor.

In 1895 she got scholarship from the Nizam Scholarship Trust and went to England to study. She first studied at King's College London and then at Girton College Cambridge. Sarojini met her husband Govindarajulu Naidu a physician when she was 19. Her inter-caste marriage had approval of her father. They had five children. Their daughter Padmaja ad also joined freedom struggle and was appointed the Governor of West Bengal soon after independence.

Freedom struggle:

Naidu joined the freedom movement after the partition of Bengal in 1905. She had an opportunity to work with Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Annie Besant, C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. From 1915 to 1918 she travelled across India and delivered lectures on various subjects like social welfare, women's empowerment and nationalism. She also established the Women's Indian Association in 1917 to carry forward the cause of women empowerment.

Leadership skills:

Sarojini Naidu presided over the annual session of INC at Kanpur in 1925 and in 1929 she presided over East African Indian Congress in South Africa. In 1930 during the salt satyagraha she was one of the women protesters.

Death:

Sarojini Naidu died of a heart attack while working in her office in Lucknow on 2 March, 1949. She is commemorated through the naming of several institutions including the Sarojini Naidu College for Women, Sarojini Naidu Medical College, Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital and Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad.

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