Person · poet & Congress president · India
Sarojini Naidu
A poet published in London at twenty-six who became the Congress's first Indian woman president in 1925, led the raid on the Dharasana salt works after Gandhi's arrest in 1930 — where volunteers walked into police lathis in ranks and were beaten down without raising a hand — and was afterwards governor of the United Provinces.
- Date
- 1879–1949
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 17.385, 78.487
Worth knowing
Webb Miller's wire report of Dharasana was carried by over a thousand newspapers and did more damage to British standing abroad than any other single event of the salt campaign.
About the place
Placed at Hyderabad, where she was born and where the Nizam's scholarship sent her to England. She died in office as governor at Lucknow.
Connections (2)
- AnalogueLakshmi Sahgal
The two most prominent women of the independence period took opposite roads to the same end. Sarojini Naidu led the Dharasana salt raid into police lathis without raising a hand and became a Congress president and a governor; Lakshmi Sahgal raised and commanded an all-woman combat regiment in Burma and spent the rest of her life as a doctor in Kanpur and a Communist. One is in every textbook and the other in almost none.
- CampaignDandi
Sarojini Naidu led the Dharasana salt works raid in May 1930 after Gandhi's arrest, with Manilal Gandhi beside her, telling the volunteers they must not raise a hand even to ward off blows. Column after column walked into police lathis and was carried away with fractured skulls. Webb Miller's wire report ran in more than a thousand newspapers and did more damage abroad than the salt march itself.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sarojini Naidu”. Sarojini Naidu, Selected Letters (ed. Makarand Paranjape); Webb Miller’s United Press dispatch from Dharasana, May 1930.
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