A Bengali by religion, and popularly known as The Nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu (born as Sarojini Chattopadhyay) was an Indian independence activist and poet. She served as the first governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949. She was also the second woman to become the president of the Indian National Congress in 1925. After passing her matriculation examination from the University of Madras, Naidu took a four-year break from her studies. It was in 1895 that the Nizam Scholarship Trust founded by the 6th Nizam, Mir Mahbub Ali Khan, gave her a chance to study in England, first at King’s College London, followed by the GirtonCollege in Cambridge.
In 1925, Sarojini Naidu presided over the annual session of Indian National Congress at Cawnpore (now called Kanpur). Later, in 1929, she presided over East African Indian Congress in South Africa and was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal by the British government for her phenomenal work during the plague epidemic in India. Naidu died of a heart attack while working in her office in Lucknow on 2 March 1949.
