Sarojini naidu photo

Amritsar, May 2: Addressing a mammoth gathering of twenty five to thirty thousand men and women of the Panjab assembled in the Market of Batala Srimati Sarojini Naidu, in the course of a thrilling oration in Urdu, said for three long years she had been restless to see her suffering Panjabi brothers. She had suffered in their suffering; she had partaken of their agony. Today after the lapse of three years, her wounds were still fresh. When she was away in England, she considered herself unlucky that she could not go on a pilgrimage to the Jallianwalla Bagh. But she did not think, for one moment of mourning for those living martyrs who had quitted this earth for Swarga (heaven). She could not weigh her grief in the scales that grief was so overwhelming. She did not know how to console them, what consolation could she offer their crumpled hearts, what balm could she lay on their lacerated wounds?

The first ever woman to become the Governor of an Indian state, Sarojini Naidu was born on February 13, 1879, in Hyderabad of British India. Born as Sarojini Chattopadhyay in a Bengali family in Hyderabad, she went on to become a poet, a politician and most importantly an Indian independence activist. Her father Aghore Nath Chattopadhyay held a doctorate of Science from Edinburgh University while her mother Sundari Devi was a Bengali poet. Sarojini Naidu Photo credit: Twitter Eldest of eight siblings, Sarojini Naidu studied at King's college London and Girton college, Cambridge. She wrote a play "Maher Muneer", as a child and it earned her a scholarship to study abroad. Sarojini was proficient in English, Bengali, Urdu, Telugu and Persian. While her father wanted her to become a scientist or a mathematician, Sarojini Naidu took to poetry. At the age of 19, Sarojini met Dr Govindarajulu Naidu and went on to marry him at a time when inter-caste marriages were taboo. Sarojini Naidu joined the Indian national Movement during 1905 partition of Bengal. Her interactions with stalwarts of the Indian Independence Movement like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Annie Besant, C P Ramaswami Iyer, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru inspired her to tour the length and breadth of the country. Between 1915 and 18, she delivered lectures on social welfare, women's empowerment and nationalism in various parts of the country. She helped to establish the Women'...