Subhadra Kumari Chauhan: India’s First Woman Satyagrahi Who Penned Jhansi Ki Rani
In 1923, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan scripted history by becoming India’s first woman Satyagrahi. The writer and freedom fighter was a member of the Indian collective of nonviolent anti-colonialists to be arrested in the struggle for national liberation. Her writings were marked by a revolutionary zeal culminating in a total of 88 poems and 46 short stories in the 1940s.
Chauhan’s work was acclaimed at a time, when the world of literature was largely male-dominated. Her poem Jhansi ki Rani narrates the life of one of India’s most powerful freedom fighters, Rani Lakshmi Bai. It is one of the most recited poems in Hindi literature.
Early life
Chauhan was born in Uttar Pradesh’s Nihalpur village to a Rajput family in 1904. She was always inclined towards academics, and completed her middle school from Crosthwaite Girls School in Prayagraj in 1919.
Right after she got married to Thakur Lakshman Singh Chauhan of Khandwa, Chauhan became an active participant of Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement. It was then that she became the first woman Satyagrahi of the country. In fact, she was imprisoned twice for protesting against British rule in 1923 and 1942.
Her interest in literature developed at an early age, and Chauhan’s first poem was published, when she was only nine years old. She would write in the Khariboli dialect of Hindi about the hardships and struggles encountered by Indian women during India’s freedom struggle. Chauhan also wrote some poems and short stories depicting varied nuances of middle-class life.
Chauhan breathed her last on February 15, 1948. Her exemplary achievements were recognized by the Indian Coast Guard, and a ship was named after her. The government of Madhya Pradesh also placed a statue of hers before the Municipal Corporation office of Jabalpur.
Also read: Forgotten Figures Of Independence: Five Women Freedom Fighters You Should Know About
(Edited by Sanhati Banerjee)
