Great Achievers - Nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu

One of the most distinguished poets and renowned freedom fighters in the struggle for India's independence, Sarojini Naidu was born on February 13, 1879. Her parents were brilliantly erudite her father, scientist-philosopher, Aghornath Chattopadhyaya was the founder of Nizam College in Hyderabad, and her mother, Varada Sundari Devi, was a Bengali poetess.

Naidu who was the eldest among a family of eight siblings, inherited much of her parents exceptional brains. A superlative student, she was proficient in languages like Urdu, Telugu and Persian. Her brilliance was proved when she topped the matriculation examination at the Madras University. Her English poetry so impressed the Nizam of Hyderabad that he funded her studies abroad. Thus it was, that at the age of 16, Naidu travelled to England to study first at King's College, and later at Cambridge. Her writing flowered even more now, and her collections like The Golden Threshold (1905), The Bird Of Time (1912) attracted a huge readership of both Indian and English origin and earned her the name ‘The Nightingale of India'.

When she was 19, Naidu met and married Dr. Govindarajulu Naidu, a step that was revolutionary at a time when inter-caste marriages were frowned upon. In 1905, Naidu joined the Indian National Movement in the wake of the Partition of Bengal. She set about awakening the women of India, bringing to them a sense of their own worth. From 1915 to 1918, she lectured all over India on the welfare of youth, dignity of labour, women's emancipation and nationalism. In 1925, she was elected the President of the Congress, the first Indian woman to hold the post.

She joined the Non-Cooperation and the Civil Disobedience movements and spent long months in jail.

After India attained Independence in 1947, Sarojini Naidu went on to become the Governor of Uttar Pradesh. The Nightingale of India, as she was so popularly called, died in office on March 2, 1949.