Sarojini Naidu: Makers of Indian Literature

SAROJINI NAIDU (1879-1949) carved herself a niche in the annals of English poetry, not as an Indian writing in English but as one to whom English came as the most natural medium. Sarojini was, however, no alien to India and wrote about her country with the pen of a pure Indian, a patriotic daughter, who was an integral part of her great nation.

She was a child of the Hindu-Muslim structure of Hyderabad with a strong background of Brahmo philosophy, tolerance and love for humanity. Being herself a product of the English-speaking system of education, she deplored the denationalized Indian youth for their blind intellectual bondage to the West. Yet she was taught from earliest childhood to East-West comradeship.

Sarojini always reminded us that there was the moon for us to reach, and we were to work for the good of a united world.

Sarojini Naidu is truly the Nightingale of India, whose golden voice still vibrates in the ears of those who had an opportunity to listen to any of her eloquent speeches.

This monograph by Srimati Padmini Sengupta, who knew Sarojini as a friend of her illustrious mother, is an attempt to introduce the Bharat Kokila to the general Indian readers, who may have known something of Sarojini Naidu as a polician but not so much as a poet.