Sarojini Naidu’s peerless wit

Manisha Pandey Tiwari

WITH the election campaign in Karnataka entering the final phase, political leaders have stepped up name-calling, thus creating an atmosphere of negativity. This is in stark contrast to the times when humour was well utilised to defuse political tensions during the freedom struggle. Many of our renowned leaders evoked hilarity, including Sarojini Naidu, who was good at making witty remarks about her peers without giving offence.

Sarojini was closely associated with Gandhi and even followed him to jail on several occasions. Gandhi was impressed by her; he wrote in Young India: ‘She has wonderful charm of manner and is tireless in her duties… I have compared her to Mirabai…’

Sarojini’s relationship with Gandhi was special. It was she who called him ‘our adorable Mickey Mouse’. ‘He enjoyed this name as much as anyone and asked all sorts of questions about Mickey Mouse, whom he never had seen on the screen,’ wrote Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit in her autobiography.

Sarojini regarded laughter as the most precious of her God-given gifts. This gift was put to ample use when she time and again found her colleagues stressed and restless. She would lighten the mood and brighten the faces of everyone around. Her jokes were well-intended and were always taken in the right spirit. Sardar Patel had once observed, ‘Whenever she entered any room or a congregation, it appeared as if a thousand lights were at once lit.’

Among the anecdotes relating to Nehru — whom she often called ‘Prince Charming’ — here is a hilarious one: at a high-profile tea party where Nehru received all the feminine attention, Sarojini playfully called out, ‘Jawahar, take your cap off and disillusion the girls.’ She had endearments even for Sardar Patel, whom she called ‘Bardoli Bull’, and Acharya Kriplani, whom she dubbed ‘Scarecrow’, probably due to the former’s big frame and latter’s lean one. In the same vein, she made fun of herself also; once after a public meeting, when photographers were struggling to get a perfect angle for her photograph, she exclaimed, ‘Come on boys, hurry up. I am the same on all sides — fat and round.’

Politics nowadays has become such a nasty business that humour does not find any place in it; politicians are degrading their rivals by making derogatory remarks. Let’s hope that the present generation of politicians will draw inspiration from the light-hearted ways of our leaders of yore, especially Sarojini Naidu.

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