Nightingale's Mail

Makarand Paranjape's introduction is thorough, rigorous, absorbing, full of insights that tell us much about Sarojini Naidu's background. Her Bengali parents made Hydera-bad their home. Her father, the much-accomplished Dr Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya, had a doctorate in science from Edinburgh. Her mother, Varada Sundari, was a Brahmo. Sarojini Chattopadhyaya was a precocious child, almost a prodigy. She wrote a 1,300-line poem when she was only 13 years old. She passed the Madras matriculation at the age of 12 and earned a scholarship to Cambridge in 1896. She fell in love with Dr Govindaraju Naidu and married him on her return to India. They had four children—Jaisoorya, Padmaja, Leilamani and Ranadheera.

It was inevitable for Sarojini Naidu to gravitate towards Gandhi and the freedom movement. Her letters to Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Gokhale and other leaders have been published before. In this volume, we have letters to husband Govindaraju Naidu, her children, her lesser-known friends; to her publishers; to Sayed Mahmud (they were exceptionally close to each other, probably in love, though not lovers); and to M.C. Chagla.

Our freedom movement lacked humour. Sarojini Naidu was irreverent, irrepressible and full of wit. She told Gandhiji he did not know how much it cost to keep him poor! She called him the little man, Mickey Mouse, My Mystic Spinner. She was a great traveller, carrying the Congress flag to Europe, America and Africa. On February 29, 1924, she wrote to the Mahatma from Johannesburg: "I cannot sleep in South Africa and it is all your fault." In the same letter she says: "May I confess very privately that at odd intervals I don't feel very Satyagrahic..."

To Tagore, she showed special respect. On August 20, 1917, she addressed Tagore thus: "Beloved World Poet...I hope to meet you this winter in Calcutta, meanwhile—to quote your own words, simple and immortal—'I touch by the edge of the far-spreading wing of my song thy feet, which I could never aspire to reach.'

" Her life was not a procession of tranquility or bliss. Her marriage broke down. Her daughters kept poor health. Leilamani, unmarried, died in 1959 at the age of 56. She was then a director in the Ministry of External Affairs and a holy terror. Padmaja lived to be 75 and was governor of West Bengal for 10 years. She was devoted to Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sarojini Naidu's love for Mohammad Ali Jinnah was openly proclaimed. She called him the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity in the 1910s and 1920s. On April 2, 1928, she wrote to M.C. Chagla, Jinnah's secretary at that time: "The Delhi Session was really Jinnah's session. His personality dominated both the issues in the Assembly and in the All Parties Conference. Never have I admired him more than now. What dignity and courage in the midst of suffering—what patience, persuasion, and real statesmanship he showed..."

Her letters from America to her family are full of praise for that country. "Through all the incredible tumult and turmoil of daily existence, I find the spirit of a vibrant and vital seeking, seeking, seeking for some truth, some realisation, finer and higher than the Old World has yet conceived or experienced..."

The editor deserves our gratitude for salvaging many of the letters published in this volume for the first time. However, some of the facts and dates in several footnotes are not correct, on page 147 for example. There was no General Michael O'Dwyer at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, 1919. The man who had 379 unarmed men shot in cold blood was Brigadier General Reginald Dyer. Michael O'Dwyer was the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab at that time. But these in no way detract from the value of this book, which brings out the essential qualities of Sarojini Naidu—the poet and the politician.