Subhadra Kumari Chauhan

Subhadra Kumari Chauhan (1904- February 15, 1948) was an Indian poetess famous for her emotionally charged Hindi songs. She was born in Nihalpur village in Allahabad District of present-day Uttar Pradesh. Subhadra Kumari initially studied in the Crosthwaite Girls’ School in Allahabad and passed the middle-school examination in 1919. After her marriage to Thakur Lakshman Singh Chauhan of Khandwa in the same year, she moved to Jabalpur. She joined the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921 and was the first woman Satyagrahi to court arrest in Nagpur. She was jailed twice for her involvement in protests against the British rule in 1923 and 1942. She has authored a number of popular works in Hindi poetry. Her most famous composition is "Jhansi Ki Rani", an emotionally charged poem describing the life of Rani Lakshmi Bai. The poem is one of the most recited and sung poems in Hindi literature. This and her other poems, "Veeron Ka Kaisa Ho Basant", "Rakhi Ki Chunauti" and "Vida", openly talk about the freedom movement. They are said to have inspired great numbers of Indian youth to participate in the Indian Freedom Movement. Here is the opening stanza of "Jhansi ki Rani":

Subhadra Kumari Chauhan wrote in the Khariboli dialect of Hindi, in a simple, clear style. Apart from heroic poems, she also wrote poems for children. She wrote some short stories based on the life of the middle class too. She died in 1948 in a car accident. An Indian Coast Guard ship has been named after her. [http://mod.nic.in/samachar/june1-06/h11.htm]

Awards and honours

She was the first recipient of the "Sekseriya puraskar" from the "Hindi Sahitya Sammelan" in 1931 for her anthology, "Mukul" (The Bud).

Works

Collections of poems

* "Tridhara"
* "Mukul" (1930)
* "Yeh Kadamb Ka Ped"These anthologies consist some of the well-known poems like "Jhansi ki Raani", "Veeron Ka Kaisa Ho Basant" and "Yeh Kadamb Ka Ped".

Collections of short stories

* "Bhikhre Moti" (1932)
* "Unmadini" (1934)
* "Seedhe-Saade Chitra" (1946)

External links

* [http://hi.literature.wikia.com/wiki/%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AF%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%82%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80 Subhadra Kumari Chauhan at Kavita Kosh]
* [http://wikisource.org/wiki/सुभद्रा_कुमारी_चौहान Subhadra Kumari Chauhan on Wikisource]
* [http://www.geocities.com/dakshina_kan_pa/art31/women6.htm Another brief biography]
* [http://www.historytalking.com/hindi.htm Short note and recitation of the poem Jhansi Ki Rani]
* cite book
title=Handbook of Twentieth-century Literatures of India
author=Nalini Natarajan, Emmanuel Sampath Nelson
year=1996
publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group
isbn=0313287783
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=vfSPI2irzUgC&pg=PA146&lpg=PA146&dq=subhadra+kumari+chauhan&source=web&ots=gIEswPt640&sig=qA4sdurkWJYNDj48iRirZaQbiVg by Natarajan, N.