'Your service is unique and inimitable and India
in her day of peace will remember and cherish it'

Hyderabad, Deccan
12 August 1940

Greetings to you, Poet in whose verses flow rivers of ancient wisdom and perennial youth, latest among those whom the old mother of learning far way has chosen to honour with the highest tribute in her gift... We have been reading with infinite delight, your beautiful reply and acknowledgement. It is poetry and prophecy in one.

I do not know how many more years of physical life may be added to your fourscore so richly attained, so superbly sustained, but when your now fragile and delicate body become a handful of scented ashes retrieved from the sandalwood pyre - unlike us - you'll still be triumphantly alive and immortal, your words will be the ever-loving symbol and indeed - reality of you, your very self...

May I thank you or is it the gods that I should thank for the loveliness and enchantment of your genius - Poet whose words have given so exquisite a treasure to the world and in your own words brought honour to India - an exalted service that none but two or three have been able to perform in like measure though in other ways... But your service is unique and inimitable and India in her day of peace will remember and cherish it.

Your loving,

Sarojini Naidu

PS. Padmaja and Leilamani are somewhat unreasonable. They think Oxford should have created an entirely new and superb honour to bestow on you!!

This letter was written to Rabindranath Tagore after the Nobel laureate as conferred an honorary D Litt degree in 1940. Oxford University first made the offer in 1938 but Tagore said he would be unable to attend the ceremony; the offer was renewed in 1940 when the university agreed to send a delegation to India to confer the degree on Tagore.

Excerpted from Sarojini Naidu: Selected Letters 1890s to 1940s, selected and edited by Makrand Paranjape, Kali for Women, 1996, Rs 400, with the publisher's permission. Readers interested in buying a copy of the book may write to Kali for Women, B 1/8 Hauz Khas, New Delhi - 110 016.