The Nightingale’s Wanderings: Sarojini Naidu in North America

Abstract

This essay examines the letters that the prominent Indian poet and nationalist leader Sarojini Naidu wrote to Gandhi and her daughters during her 1928—1929 tour of North America. These letters record her impressions of the “New World”, of her reception and of the sentiments these perceptions and reception evoked in her. In her epistolary reflections and public lectures, Naidu presents herself as a self-confident cosmopolitan Indian woman, a poet and writer, and a female nationalist with her own mind. Naidu’s performance of modern Indian womanhood during her tour allowed her to craft a self to gain legitimacy within the assumptions and demands made of her both within America and by Indian (male) nationalists. Her travel letters — implicated in multiple conversations regarding nationalism, gender and inter-imperial connections — engage the intertwined histories of India, England and North America in the first half of the twentieth century.