The history of India’s struggle for freedom is filled with sagas of the sacrifice, selflessness, courage and sagacity of great men and women. This struggle, which gained momentum under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in the early 20th century, produced stalwarts like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Subhas Chandra Bose, Maulana Azad, Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari and earlier Dadabhai Naoroji, Lokmanya Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai and many more.But the freedom struggle was not a men’s movement. Many women played a proactive and prominent leadership role, which was most visible when Annie Besant became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress in 1916.However, it was the emergence of Mahatma Gandhi on the national scene and his unique method of Satyagraha and mass mobilisation – the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920), Salt Satyagraha (1930) and the Quit India Movement (1942) – that helped women become partners in the revolutionary upsurge. In this context, we remember the historic role of Sarojini Naidu, who was the Congress president exactly a century ago, having been elected to preside over the party’s annual session at Kanpur in 1925.Naidu was born in Hyderabad on February 13, 1879. Her father, Dr Aghorenath Chatterjee, originally from East Bengal, was a brilliant scientist as well as a poet in Urdu and Bengali. Her mother, Varda Sundari, was a renowned singer and wrote her own lyrics in Bengali. Naidu passed the matriculation examination when she was only 12, standing first in the Madras Presidency. However, her love for poetry came in the way of achieving any degree, even though she was sent to London and Cambridge for higher studies. She wrote afterwards how she inherited the poet instinct from her parents:One day when I was eleven, I was sighing over a sum in Algebra; it would not come right; but instead a whole poem came to me suddenly. I wrote it down. From that day my poetic career began. At thirteen, I wrote a long poem, Lady of the Lake – 1,300 lines in six days.Sarojini Chattopadhyaya, her name at birth, married Dr Govindarajula Naidu in 1898 after her return from England and moved to Hyderabad. The marriage became a landmark in social reform, as inter-caste marriages were then almost unknown. Naidu was deeply influenced by the Hindu-Islamic culture of her town and gave expression to it in her poems. Some of her collections, which took the English world by storm, were The Golden Threshold (1905), The Feather of the Dawn (1912), Bird of Time (1917) and The Broken Wing (posthumously published in 1961). A few of her poems were also translated into French.Naidu’s longing for the rapture of song could not prevent her from being drawn into the social and political life of the country. It was Gopal Krishna Gokhale who persuaded her to step out of her ivory tower. She met Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru at the Lucknow session of the Congress party in 1916 and developed friendships with Rabindranath Tagore and the missionary-reformer C.F. Andrews. Earlier, at the Congress session in Bombay, now Mumbai, Naidu recited the following poem composed by her:Awaken, O Mother! Thy children implore thee,who kneel in thy presence to serve and adore thee!The night is a flush with a dream of the morrow,why still dost thou sleep in thy bondage of sorrow?Awaken and serve the woes that enthrall us,and hallow our hands for the triumphs that call us.Naidu was deeply troubled by the growing rift between Hindu and Muslim communities. As much as she admired Hindu culture, she also appreciated Islamic culture and the Muslim way of life. At the party’s Lucknow session in 1916, she played a notable role in bringing about cooperation between Congress and the Muslim League under the guidance of Lokmanya Tilak.Her association with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Ali brothers – Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali – helped Tilak’s effort to negotiate this cooperation, ultimately formalised in the Lucknow Pact. Thereafter, Hindu-Muslim unity became a lifelong mission for Naidu. Addressing the seventh All India Women’s Conference, she declared:No Indian could be loyal to the country and yet be narrow and sectarian in spirit… No matter whether it was temple or mosque, church or fire shrine, let us transcend the barriers that divide man from man.In July 1919, Naidu went to England as a member of the deputation of the All India Home Rule League, where she pleaded for the rights of women and supported the franchise for women. In 1924, she visited Kenya, South Africa and East Africa as a delegate of the Congress party and inspired Indian settlers in these colonies to fight for their rights nonviolently.In 1925, she was elected president of the Congress, which became an inspiration for women to join public life. In her presidential address, she declared:No sacrifice is too heavy, no struggle too great, no martyrdom too terrible, that enables us to redeem our Mother from the unspeakable dishonour of her bondage… In the battle for liberty, fear is the one unforgivable treachery and despair the one unforgivable sin.Naidu took a leading part in the Salt Satyagraha of 1930 and was sent to jail. In 1931, she accompanied Mahatma Gandhi to London for the Second Round Table Conference. She was imprisoned for the third time during the Quit India Movement and was held at the Aga Khan Palace along with Gandhiji. After India became independent, she became the first woman to be appointed as a governor.Naidu also had a good sense of humour. Speaking to an audience of young scientists, she praised Homi Bhabha, later the Father of India’s nuclear programme, who was present:You are a true artist. Less than a month ago, he produced a picture of me. Though I do not praise myself, I do praise his talent. He made me look as ugly as I am.She also had a message for the youth:You are young, and youth is the greatest of all gifts. I look upon you as one of those who have far to go, to raise the country and to let the country realise that knowledge is power, and to use knowledge in the service of humanity is the beginning of wisdom.On March 2, 1949, she breathed her last at the Lucknow Raj Bhawan. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in his homage, stated, “Here was a person of great brilliance – vital and vivid. Here was a person with so many gifts, but above all some gifts which made her unique. She infused artistry and poetry into our national struggle… she represented in herself a rich culture into which flowed various currents which have made Indian culture as great as it is.”Praveen Davar is a columnist and author of Freedom Struggle and Beyond.