Sarojini Naidu: Romanticism and Resistance

Born in Hyderabad, India in 1879 Sarojini Naidu received a British education. Her poems pick up the diction of the English decadents, transposing the images into India. The pained passive women in her poetry stand however in radical contrast to Naidu's own life: she was a close friend of Gandhi's and active in the National movement, suffering imprisonment numerous times. In 1925 she was elected the first Indian women president of the National Congress. How can the cleft between her poetry and her politics be explained? What does it reveal about the complex procedures of Naidu's own evolving feminism as it struggled with colonialism?