Confluence of Diverse Currents of Tradition:
A Bengali by race, Sarojini Naidu was born and bred up in Hyderabad, Deccan. At Hyderabad she was a Hindu, who was very much at home in the Muslim environment and later a Brahmin, who chose to be tied to a non-Brahmin in bonds of love and marriage. A maker of exquisite garlands of song, she was drawn to actively participate in the tremendous national struggle, which stirred the country on all sides, and unhesitatingly deviated from poetry to politics.
 |
| Sarojini Naidu: Her Personality or Her Character and Temperament |
A woman in every way she played a part in the nation's affairs as few men can play. She had not less felicitous a tongue than her pen; she was an orator of great persuasiveness and power, as she was a lyricist of delicate fancy and haunting melody. She had in her a combination of dignity and mirth, gravity and gaiety. Her outlook and temper contained an amalgam of the old and the new, East and West, Hindu and Muslim without any incongruity or clash. She was a patriot whose sympathies embraced peoples and cultures other than her own. She belonged to the whole world and yielded to none in her attachment of the Motherland. She was an intellectual who had no hesitation to come down from the lofty heights to take delight in the gossip and small talk of daily intercourse. She was a public worker and national leader who elected to perform the homeliest duties of a housewife and mother and was held in high esteem as a hostess whose pleasure it was to attend to every detail of her guest's entertainment. She was throughout old in wisdom and understanding, but young in spirit and outlook.
Her Possessing a Remarkable Gift of Warm and Deep Humanity:
Mrs. Naidu possessed of a remarkable gift of warm and deep humanity. It will be relevant to cite Shrimati Lakshmi Menon's testimony to it in full, as there cannot be any more appropriate than this: "By some strange intuition, it might be poetic, she could notably judge the limitation of others, but also understand their needs. A woman in distress, whom she had perhaps encountered casually somewhere, would receive all too unexpectedly a letter of affectionate greeting, per- haps on Diwali day, and the joy of such remembrance would light a thousand lamps and bring joy into a gloomy home. Her memory for faces was astonishing. It is because she loved her fellow beings so truly and well that she could remember them as her own? "No physical inconvenience deterred her from doing a generous thing. On a cold morning she arrived at the Ahmedabad station to receive Mrs. Cousins who was the President-elect of the Women's Conference. When we remarked about the trouble she had taken, she simply said, It will make her happy.' Hansa Mehta was one of her favourites. And when she came to Hyderabad (Sind) she was far from well; in fact, she was very ill. But knowing how Hansa would feel to see her there, she came and did not mind in the least the inconvenience of the long journey or the semi-camp life one is forced to lead on such occasions. She would not miss an engagement if she could help it, because that would mean disappointment to others. Often when she was really ill against medical advice, she would attend a social function: and when I asked her why she did such a thing she gave this reason; she might meet somebody who could be made to help someone else in distress. Thus, she walked through life, trying in her own unconscious manner to bring sweetness and comfort to others."
Cheerful as well as sympathetic:
She was one of those persons about whom R. L. Stevenson once remarked that their entrance into a room was as though another candle had been lighted. She possessed the rare gifts of gaiety and vivacity, which were infectious and inexhaustible. She radiated them widely wherever she went. She could be serious, and even stern, but not for very long Her speech was punctuated at small intervals by some flash of witticism or playful turn, which not only relieved the hearer's tension, but her own also. She always burst upon her acquaintances round the festive board with a fountain of cheerfulness. Even on occasions most solemn she was apt to laugh and make others laugh. “Of all things that life or perhaps my temperament has given me", she once said, "I prize the gift of laughter as beyond price."
She had something of Puck in curious co-existence with Portia and Ariel. She took delight in being mischievous: as such, she spared nobody, least of herself. It was her pleasure to ridicule pretentiousness and insincerity. There was nothing too sacred for her to mock if she felt like mocking it; and the greater the aura of sanctity attached to a thing the more she felt like mocking that thing. "She was wittily addressed as the Naughty Gal of India by the Chairman at Colombo during her visit there and was characterized appropriately by George Slocombe as "the licensed jester of the Mahatama's little court."
Her amazing versatility:
"There is something of oriental magic about Sarojini Naidu", remarked Yusuf Meherally, when he tried to define her personality in his sketch of her. He further stated that "born at another period in Indian History, she would have been more concerned with her exquisite and delicately perfumed verse than with the rough and tumble of politics. In the India of to-day, so gifted and sensitive a personality, feeling acutely: her country's humiliation under foreign rule, not possibly take to the ivory tower." She is, in fact so many things and in so many ways. Unlike others, she is all things to all people. Her humanness towers over every- thing else. Her personality reflects the whole of her and impresses more than any one of her attributes. She wrote lovely lyrics, but more than this, she is richer and more many-sided than her poems. She was an orator who kept her audience spell-bound when she stood to speak, but her personality is more remarkable and compelling than her speech. She is an amazing versatile person. She was responsive to innumerable moods and things, wide apart and diverse in character. She consequently was tolerant and never a stickler for any one particular factor or thing. She could be at home almost anywhere, with anyone, in any surroundings, in any company. She was truly universal, cosmopolitan and so many different things to so many different people. She was totally free from self-consciousness or preoccupation with herself. She was one of those who were never defeated or frustrated in the most trying of circumstances and damping of atmospheres. She had at eternal spring of buoyancy, which seemed to flow on always. She drew upon herself where her surroundings failed her. She could indulge with equal ease in small talk as in highbrow conversation. The secret of her social popularity and success can be sought in her innate gift of hearing with equal relish a string of utterances spoken about the weather, the season's parties, the latest local bride's trousseau, the fortunes of a race-course as the latest book of poems or plays."
Her Interest in the affairs of others:
Sarojini Naidu was proudly and affectionately claimed by all as the elder sister, one to whom they could go with their family problems, for their jobs, for their communal tangles and the like. She was always there to attend to them with interest and enthusiasm and make their matter or matters her own. She had a knack not merely of being able to rouse, but to sustain that interest.
Her prodigious memory:
Her passionate interest in human beings and their affairs gave her another gift, which is rare, i.e., a prodigious (amazing) memory. Some remember faces, others names and the rest associations. It was not so with Sarojini Naidu. She remembered faces, names (not merely of an individual, but all the members of his family) and all the associations formed around her. Sarojini being very human herself was able to draw out the human in everyone she happened to come in contact with.
Her Having the Rare gift of Rising Above her Surroundings:
She was a big person: she was more than merely generous. Although she needed lot of physical comforts, because of her poor health, she was no slave to it. She loved the good things of life, but without making a fetish of them. She never demanded these comforts when she was suddenly deprived of them by being put in jail. She had the rare gift of rising above the physical aspects of her environment or surroundings and literally dominated them. She was never found in low spirits in prison and never once at a loss to understand as to how to kill time, never once sighing for what could be. Her uniform cheerfulness was really astounding. Yet she was extremely responsive to environment and the more human it is the quicker and livelier the response from her. The whole of her personality functioned when the human factors in her surroundings got stimulated.
Poetic Touch in her personality:
She was always a poetess; even when she stopped writing verses, she did not cease to be a poetess. This same spirit emerges in all her movements and forms of expression. Lord Selborne, Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee in 1918-19, stated after she had concluded her evidence before the members of the committee: "Madame, we are grateful for the poetic touch you have brought to our prosaic proceedings". The poetic element in her was neither deflected nor suppressed, but it was reflected in all her moods and passions, her faithful championing of the cause of freedom, and her ungrudging and voluntary sacrifices for that cause. Her scintillating vivacity, her proverbial sense of humour, her easy sportsmanship, are indeed eloquent tributes to the soul of the poet in her. When man transcends himself, those brief moments are his poetry, and they are moments of the soul, and Sarojini Naidu had an abundance of them. The woman, the housewife, the mother and the public worker in her were never able to suppress or overshadow the poetess.