The Gift of India: Context and Summary

The Gift of India: Context and Summary

Context: 

The Gift of India is a poem written in 1915 by the Indian poet, freedom fighter and politician Sarojini Naidu. The poem

is a tribute to the contribution of Indian soldiers in World War I. Over one million Indian troops from Britain’s colonial empire served in the British army in World War I. Nearly 75, 000 died on foreign fields, never returning home, and over 70,000 were wounded. Serving in the Ypres Sector and other sites on the Western Front, as well as in Mesopotamia and Gallipoli, Indian troops were of vital significance in many battles of the First World War.   

However, the contribution of the Indian soldiers is overlooked in the vast

expanse of the War’s history. These selfless sacrifices of the Indian soldiers for the western agitation are captured in

Naidu’s poem ‘The Gift of India’.

The poem not only concentrates on the theme of soldiers making their ultimate sacrifice for someone else’s war, but

also talks about the numerous benefits the foreign countries reaped from India. The poet regards these benefits as gifts

given by India to the colonisers.

The poem can be regarded as a kind of reminder or appeal to the allied forces to remember the Indian contribution to their

victory.

Summary: 

Pressed down and overflowing, the gifts of India are abundantly extravagant. Nothing has been withheld, not the richest of garments, grain, or gold. More precious still, the sons of India have been entrusted to the British war cause, torn from their mothers’ breasts and yielded to “the drum beats of duty, the sabers of doom.”

How has the gift been received? Broken and far from home, the dear bodies of the sons of India lie in “the blood-brown meadows of France and Flanders,” thousands of miles from their country, an insurmountable distance from their families who ache with loss. The bright and shining gifts of India’s manhood are pearls buried in a foreign field, as numerous and scattered as shells on the sand. 

How does one measure the grief of Indian mothers whose sons have died too young? To cope with such unimaginable loss, the sacrifice is set against the pride, hope, and glory of Allied victory. The poem imagines what Indian deaths have purchased: a world in which terror and hate will have ended, “refashioned on anvils of peace.” Love and memory will be the building bricks of this new world, laid on the foundation of the gift of India – the lifeblood of her beloved sons.

"Strewn like blossoms mown down by chance," the gift of India has been commemorated on the Western Front battlefield of Neuve Chapelle, where Indian troops first fought as a unit. There, a memorial honors Indian soldiers and laborers who were killed on the Western Front and who have no known graves – over 4,700. At the Neuve Chapelle Memorial, one may “honour the deeds of the dauntless ones” and “Remember the blood of my [India’s] martyred sons!”