17 Facts about Sarojini Naidu- Nightingale of India

Posted on : June 21, 2018 By
History 
  1. Sarojini Naidu was born in a Bengali Hindu family on  13 February 1879 in Hyderabad.

    Young Sarojini Naidu
    Young Sarojini Naidu
  2. Her father was administrator of Hyderabad college. Her mother was a notable Bengali poet.
  3. Sarojini Naidu began writing at the age of twelve. Her Persian play, Maher Muneer, impressed the Nawab of Hyderabad.
  4. Sarojini Naidu passed her matriculation examination from the University of Madras.
  5. In 1895, she was sponsored by Charity Trust founded by the 6th Nizam to study in England.
  6. In 1898, Sarojini married Paidipati Govindarajulu Naidu, a physician. Her marriage was a inter caste marriage. The families of bride and groom approved the marriage.Naidu joined the Indian national movements in the wake of partition of Bengal in 1905.
  7. In 1915–18, she travelled to different regions in India delivering lectures on social welfare, women’s empowerment and nationalism.

    Sarojini Naidu with Mahatma Gandhi
    Sarojini Naidu with Mahatma Gandhi

  8. She also helped to establish the Women’s Indian Association (WIA) in 1917.

  9. In 1925, Naidu presided over the annual session of Indian National Congress at Kanpur. In 1929, she presided over East African Indian Congress in South Africa.
  10. British government awarded her the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for her work during the plague epidemic in India.
  11. In 1931, British government arrested and sent to jail for participating in salt march along with Mahatma Gandhi.
  12. She played a leading role in the Civil Disobedience Movement and Quit India Movement. In 1942, British government arrested and put her in jail  during “Quit India Movement”.
  13. Her first collection of poems, named The Golden Threshold was published in 1905. In 1961, Padmaja Naidu, daughter of Sarojini Naidu, published her second collection of ‘The Feather of The Dawn’ written in 1927.
  14. People often referred to her as the ‘Nightingale of India’,
  15. She was the first woman to become the governor of an Indian state and president of the Indian National Congress.
  16. Google celebrated her 135th birth anniversary (2014) with Google Doodle on Google India’s homepage.
  17. Naidu died of cardiac arrest on 2 March 1949 at the Government House in Lucknow.

1 thought on “17 Facts about Sarojini Naidu- Nightingale of India”

  1. Sarojini Naidu is my great grand aunt. She was my grandfather ‘s aunt.
    She used to fondly call him Deena, short for Deen Dayal. My grandfather had very fond memories of her. Not a day would pass without him , nostalgically remembering her, she was permanently etched in his memory. My grandfather was a landscape artist , hence our residence was an artistic splendour, the media called it Shantiniketan of Hyderabad. Sarojini
    Naidu described it as a place of beautiful thoughts and high ideas! The
    famous aunt and equally popular nephew had a beautiful bond.

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