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Poetess Naidu says of St. Gandhi: "He is the soul of India!" But she belongs to the class of Gandhite disciples who drink no goat's milk, keep their Rolls-Royces and live at luxurious hotels. The police, instinctively respecting Mrs. Naidu's wealth, have not beaten her though they have busily beaten other Indians in demonstrations led by the Poetess. Once she sat in the middle of the street all day in a rocking chair, defying the police, but they simply would not beat her (TIME, May 26, 1930).
In past years Mrs. Naidu has written many a graceful poem to such personal friends as His Exalted Highness, the Nizam of Hyderabad and other titled Indians, male and female. But she now writes such patriotic, feminist and Gandhite poems as:
Oh, young through all thy immemorial years, Rise, Mother, rise, regenerate from thy gloom, And, like a bride high-mated with the spheres Beget new glories from thy ageless womb.
Poetess Naidu always carefully points out that India is feminine. Asked about the U. S. when in Manhattan, she reflected for a moment, then exclaimed: "You have what I call—the perpendicular gesture of aspiration."
*Wrote Rudyard Kipling in 1897:
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!