An Indian politician 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.
Born in 1879, in a Bengali family in Hyderabad, Naidu was educated in Madras, London and Cambridge. She married Govindarajulu Naidu, a general physician, and had five children with him. Naidu died of cardiac arrest on 2 March 1949 at the Government House in Lucknow.
Sarojini Naidu was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature In 1914. She was appointed as the President of the Indian National Congress in 1925 and later became the Governor of the United Provinces in 1947, becoming the first woman to hold the office of Governor in the Dominion of India.
In the field of poetry, Sarojini Naidu wrote children’s, patriotic and social poems. In 1912, “In the Bazaars of Hyderabad” was published, which is considered one of her most popular poems. Her other poetic works are The Golden Limit (1905), Bird of Time (1912), and poems written in English have been published as The Sceptred Flute (1928) and The Feather of the Dawn (1961). Naidu otherwise known as The Nightingale of India earned this nickname for herself because of her contribution to poetry.