Subhadra Kumari Chauhan
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
A brief biography
August 16, 2021: The Times of India
Subhadra Kumari Chauhan was India's first woman satyagrahi and a writer and freedom fighter.
In 1923, Chauhan’s unyielding activism led her to become the first woman satyagrahi, a member of the Indian collective of nonviolent anti-colonialists to be arrested in the struggle for national liberation. She continued to make revolutionary statements in the fight for freedom both on and off the page into the 1940s, publishing a total of 88 poems and 46 short stories.
Chauhan's poem 'Jhansi ki Rani', which describes the life of Rani Lakhmi Bai, is one of the most recited and sung poems in Hindi literature.
She was born in a Rajput family in Uttar Pradesh's Nihalpur village in 1904. She passed the middle-school examination from Crosthwaite Girls' School in Prayagraj in 1919.
After her marriage with Thakur Lakshman Singh Chauhan of Khandwa, she joined Mahatma Gandhi's Non-Cooperation Movement against the British and became the first woman satyagrahi of the country. She was jailed twice for her involvement in protests against British rule in 1923 and 1942.
She has started writing from an early age. Her first poem was published when she was just nine-year-old.
As a participant of the Indian National Movement, she used her influential writing and poems as the weapon to motivate others. Her pieces depicted the hardships and challenges faced by Indian women during the freedom movement of India.
Chauhan wrote in the Khariboli dialect of Hindi. She has also written poems for children and some short stories based on the life of the middle-class of the society.
Chauhan passed away on February 15 in 1948. In honour of her exemplary work, an Indian Coast Guard ship was named after her. The government of Madhya Pradesh placed a statue of hers before the Municipal Corporation office of Jabalpur.
