Sarojini Naidu

01The poet

Sarojini was the eldest daughter of Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, a scientist who headed the Nizam College in Hyderabad. She passed the Madras matriculation at twelve and studied at King’s College, London, and Girton College, Cambridge. Her three books of verse, The Golden Threshold (1905), The Bird of Time (1912) and The Broken Wing (1917), were full of Indian bazaars, weavers, palanquin-bearers and festivals, and made her famous in England. In 1898 she married Dr Govindarajulu Naidu, across lines of caste and region.

02Into the struggle

Gokhale turned her towards public life, and from 1914 she was at Gandhi’s side. She presided over the Kanpur Congress in 1925. During the Salt Satyagraha, after Gandhi’s arrest in May 1930, she led the march on the Dharasana salt works, where the police beat the unresisting volunteers row by row. She went to the Round Table Conference in London with Gandhi in 1931 and was jailed again in the Quit India movement in 1942. After freedom she became Governor of the United Provinces, the first woman governor of an Indian state, and died in office at Lucknow in 1949. Her birthday is kept as National Women’s Day.

Battle · 12 March 1930 – March 1931Salt SatyagrahaGandhi walked about 385 kilometres to the sea at Dandi to make salt in defiance of the British salt tax, and the whole country followed him into civil disobedience.Read →