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CELEBRATION OF FOLK LIFE

SAROJINI NAIDU’S POETRY

Dr. Sukhjinder Singh Gill

Being a creative artist, Sarojini Naidu is endowed with


keen poetic sensibility and her involvement in life is greater
than ordinary individuals. “The greatness of a poet lies in his
powerful application of ideas to life, immutably fixed under the
laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Poetry is not an escape
from life but an escape into it and the greater a poet, the
greater is this involvement in life.”(1) Sarojini Naidu had gone
through gay and sad experiences of her life, hence she longed
to know the secrets of life. Diverse currents of tradition, many
roads of influence and numerous talents meet in her.
Therefore, she was possessed of a remarkable gift of warm and
deep humanity. Shrimati Lakshmi Menon writes about Sarogini
Naidu:

“By some strange intuition, it might be poetic, she could


notably judge – the limitations of others, but also understand
their needs. A woman in distress, whom she had perhaps
encountered causally somewhere, would receive all too
unexpectedly a letter of affectionate greeting, perhaps on
Divali Day, and the joy of such remembrance would light a
thousand lamps and bring joy into a gloomy home. Her
memory for faces was astonishing. Is it because she loved her
follow beings so truly and well that she could remember them
as her own?”(2)

Sarojini’s poetical output is contained in four volumes,

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comprising 184 poems which cover a wide range of themes, -
The Golden Threshold; The Bird of Time; The Broken Wing, The
Feather of the Dawn. This paper deals with her “the bird, like
quality of Song”,(3) which is conspicuous in the folk songs.

“The theme which Sarojini has made particularly her own,


in which she is least imitative, is the folk them”,(4) India has a
long tradition of folk poetry, however it predominates in
Sarojini’s poetry and acquires a new significance and
orientation. Indian folk poetry has largely been oral, and it has
dealt with the customs, beliefs, traditions, superstitions,
aspiration, simple joys and sorrows, occupations with almost
every aspect of life of the folk particularly in a rural setting.
The treatment has been characterized by directness and
simplicity, and it has aimed at presenting the collective
communityu life rather than at the rendering of individual life
and character. Its appeal has been to popular evidence rather
then to literary elite. Indian Folk-poetry was usually nurtured
by wandering minstrels, hence, it was recitative. Sarojini is
able to capture all these qualities of traditional folk Poetry.
Folk-lyrics do not make excessive demands upon the reader,
and their simplicity, then vocabulary and their imagery drawn
from the everyday scenes and sights, expresses her sense of
solidarity with folk-life as it is lived. It helps her achieve an
artistic identity with the life of the community, with folk culture
and wisdom.

The “Wandering Singers” is lyric set to the very tune of


the songs of the wandering singers in India. the wandering
singers speak not as one person to another person, stressing
that in folk-poetry it is the life and culture of a community that
matters and not individual life and character. ‘The Wandering

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Singers’ express the realities of birth, life and death, the basic
passion of love and sorrow, and the rituals of courtship and
worship. We get a sense of folk life and the reader’s emotional
involvement is ensured. They wonder along singing, “All men
are our Kindred, the world is our home.”(5) They sing of
“happy and simple and sorrowful things,”(6) and they go
wherever the voice of thewind calls them. The wandering
singers say: “The voice in praise of Surya, Yaruna, Prithvi and
Brahma in the Harvest Hymn.

“Some bangles are flushed like the buds that dream


on the tranquil brow of a woodland stream.”(7)

They sing of the present, but also of the past, of its


greatness and glory. They are truly of the folk, and it is their
life that they sing as it has been lived sine times immemorial.

Sarojini’s folk poems also deal with common Indian


festivals like Vasant panchmi; the Festival of Serpents
(Nagpanchmi); the Festival of Lights; the Festival of Sea;
Nariyal Purnima, Raksha Badhan. Indian folk – culture is
dominated by rituals and performance of collective rites, and
these poems stress this aspect of folk-life. “Moreover, Indian
festivals serve to link up to community life with the life of
nature, there is rejuvenation life, and this aspect is also
stressed. In the Festival of Serpents, Sarojini Naidu reveals a
profound understanding of meaning of Hindu festivals, which
provide not only a kind of social catharsis but also an elevation
of the individual consciousness. The principle of reality leads
the folk-personality to a sense of structure and continuity in
life.”(8)

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The festival of sea may rightly be called a litany of the
sea, and it expresses complete identification of the fishermen
with the sea which they undress as their “Bountiful Mother”
and invoke her blessings. P.V. Rajaylakshmi observes, “Despite
the political polarization and tension, between the Hindu and
Islamic sides of the Indian personality there has always existed
a synthesis and fusion of their religious and spiritual elements
in the folk culture. In rural India, the Hindu pay homages to
Muslim Saints, while The Muslims exchange gifts and
benedictions with the Hindus on festive occasions. Stepped in
the folk custom and rituals, Sarojini captures the true spirit of
Muslim Folk festivals. The night of Martyrdom is splendid
evocation of the spirit of sacrifice and brotherhood, through
suffering and purification which underlines the Mulslim festival
of Moharrum… The festival has, like the rHoli, Deepvali and
other Indian festivals, the intensities and freedoms of Folk-
dance. It aims at a reintegration of the individual into the total
culture, through a revival of the memories of sacred
history.”(9)

Sarojini Nadu also invokes the various gods and goddess


of common belief, highlighting not only t he religious beliefs of
his folk, but also their fears and terrors and urgently felt need
for protection and guardianship of some suprernal being.
Lakshi; the Lotus born; Kali the Mother, Hymn to India, express
these aspects of the folk-ethos. The Hymm addressed to Kali is
itself a chronic song of workshop. Maidens and brides, mothers
and widows, artisans and peasants, victors and vanquished,
and scholars, priests, poets and patriots all offer their devotion
and invoke her glory and grace. “Sarojini Nadu captures in this
poem the Hindu ideal of fusion, by observing a simple and

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direct relationship between the folk for the mother and the
sacramental ecstasy induced by group workship”10.

Sarojini’s love poetry is rooted in Indian folk, love myth


and legend. The way in which the lover offers adoration to the
belved is derived from immemorial forms of folk-worship. In
the festival rites of Holi, the Folk lovers tease and force each
other and thus seek to achieve a union through love play in the
folk traditions of Krishna and the Gopis. “Srojini’s lover-
beloved relationship is rooted in folk-lore that her lover needs
a master to achieve mastery over herself. This is indicated by
the pattern of symbolic action in the rituals observed by Indian
women. The songs of Padmini, Mayura and Sarasvati in the
“Spinning Song” illustrate the process. The village maidens are
unsophisticated, but they invite their dream beloveds to
master them and teach them in turn the art of mastery as well
as the grace of submission. Sarojini reveals an unconscious
creative identity and with her folk inheritance which lends
substance and meaning and credibility to her psychology of
love.”11

Sarojini’s poetry presents a veritable portrait gallery of


Indian folk characters, living their lives and carrying their
different vocations against a rural background, which is a
faithful representative of Indian rural landscape. There is
heightening of reality but not distortion of it. Her ‘Palanquin-
bearers’ were very much a reality when Sarojini wrote in the
opening decades of the century. Her Snake Charmers, and
“Pardahnashins” are not “Kipling’s India” but very much part of
the Indian scene. They are not merely picturesque characters,
they have been endowed with life and vitality. They are
suitable symbols of the Indian folk-culture and traditions. They

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are not out-moded but rather figures who have emerged from
the folk life to find a place in her creative undertakings.

‘Indian weavers, The corn-grinders, the Bangle-Sellers,


the Coromandel fishers, the Palanquin-Bearers, not only deal
with folk charcters and their richness of allegory and
symbolism. The Palanquin-Bearers with its supberb mastery of
the material form, has the quality of a Rajput miniaute painting
P.E. Dustoor observes, that it is, “a fair specimen of the true
folk song.12” Indian weavers is also similarly allegorical. We are
“made to realize that the web of our life is of a mingled yarn,
grave and gay together13”. In the “Bangle Sellers” the poetess
describes the folk customs of bangle wearing and makes it
symbolic of a girl’s growth to the status of wife and mother.
The “Coromandel fishers” not only expresses the fisherman’s
identity with the sea and with the community, but also in folk
sense of order and discipline. It evokes a folk vocation which is
yet untouched by modern technology and sophistication. “The
Snake-Charmer” is a loving portrait of a familiar folk
personality of the Indian scene. “The Charmer takes something
more than a professional pride in his dangerous cargo… His
attitude reflects the folk artisan’s reverential approach to his
took, and his sense of identity and partnership with his craft”14.
It is a folk vocation carried on in the age old ways.

The myths and legends are part of folk consciousness


and they rightly provide the background to a number of
Sarojini’s folk songs. Village Songs is a folk song sung “by the
Indian maidan who must go a long way to the outskirts of the
village, or the river bank, to fetch home her daily pitcher of
water15”. ‘Panghat’ is the familiar haunts of Indian gossip,
rumour, scandal and judgement are exchanged, and where

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liaisons, secret lryst with lovers and lost causes in romance are
nurtured. In the poem, the folk heroine is presented in search
of her lover, terrified by her own daring but goaded on by
indomitable instinct to defy all obstacles. She evokes the gods
of the wood and the river that fill the lonely spaces of the rural
wilderness ‘Vilale Portrayal of Indian folk songs. Sarojini Naidu
left no aspect of folk life untouched. It has been observed by
Srinivasa Iyenger:

No room for obscurity or profundity here;


simplicity and directness are sovereign, And
the appeal is the appeal of the old the
unfolding, the undying.16

Life is for Sarojining Naidu not an obsession, but a


possession not an experiment, but an adventure, a graceful
movement into things, by means of which we recognize the
wonder, magnificence and splendor of the world. Sarojini is a
ministrel of life, not its protect raising a finger of admonition at
right and wrong, but praising and thrilling to its beauty and
purpose. Life for her ever remains “a little lovely dream” which
make all men kindered, and all the world our home, as her
“Wandering Singers” sing:

Where the wind calls our wandering – footsteps we go.

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Works Cited

1. Mathew Arnold. Cultue and Anarchy. Cambridge:


Cambridge University Press, 1968. 24.
2. Quoted by Padmini Sen Gupta in Sarojini Naidu: A
Biography. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1966.27.
3. P.C.Kotky Indo-English Poetry. Gauhati Univ., Dept., of
English Publication, 1973, 144.
4. P.E. Dustoor (ed.) Stout Hearts and Open Hands.
Mysore: Rao and Raghavan, 1961.74.
5. Markarand Paranjape (ed.) Sarojini Naidu; Selected
Poetry and Prose. New Delhi :Harperocollins, 1993.8.
6. Ibid. 10
7. Ibid 12
8. P.V. Rajaylakshmi. The Lyric Song: The Poetric
Achievement of Sarojining Naidu New Delhi: OUP,
1973.84.
9. Ibid. 177
10. A.N. Dwivedi. Four Indo-Angliam Poets. Bareilly: PED,
1981. 128.
11. Paranjape, 123.
12. Dustoor, 42.
13. P.V. Rajaylakshmi, 28.
14. K.R. Srinivas Iyengar. Indo-Anglian Literature.
Bombay : Asia Pub. House 1973, 104.
15. Ibid. 112
16. Paranjape, 124.

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