My Friend Sarojini Kulkanri

Both of us started our careers as teachers in a high-school that was attached to an orphanage where I taught Sanskrit and Kannada languages, and Sarojini taught Hindi. Later, I accepted a job with the All India Radio, and Sarojini continued to teach in a rural area forty miles away from Dharwad, and we lost touch.

Sarojini was born to a great scholar and researcher Narayan S. Rajpurohit (1887-1953). Rajpurohit was a freedom fighter, and had named her after Sarojini Naidu, also a great freedom-fighter of India. Born and brought up in abject poverty, Sarojini did not have adequate schooling. Third among five children, Sarojini had to abandon school after the third grade because her father could not afford the meager fee of one Rupee per month. Later she studied in the Practicing school of Training College, which did not charge a fee. She stood first to the entire district of Dharwad in the public examiniation of VII standard, but again had to leave school for the same reasons. It would be another eight years before she would finish the tenth grade (a.k.a. SSC examination then).

But Sarojini lost her father and a younger brother, who had just started earning and had started supporting the family. So she had to do something to earn a livelihood, and she studied Hindi under one of the free new nation programs (India had just become free), passed several exams, including Hindi teaching diploma. That's how she became a Hindi teacher.

Sarojini did not want to marry, but her mother, dependent on her, started pressing for marriage, and went on Annasatyagraha (fast unto death) to press her demand. Finally Sarojini yielded and married a young widower, with a female child. She continued her studies after her marriage, managing job, household chores, and raising her step-daughter, in addition to her own three children. She graduated from university with  B.A, B.Ed. degrees.

Many Indian women of my generation have faced similar situations, and hardships. But Sarojini's lasting contribution to the society was yet to come.

She has proved a worthy daughter, after years in waiting. Her learned father had painstakingly collected and had researched Indian epigraphs, and manuscripts, but most of his works had not been published. She compiled his works between the years 1920 and 1953 and brought out a 525 paged volume last year (year 2002). Rajpurohit's philosophical interpretations of charity and contrasting it with Hindu view of charity prevalent today is the subject of yet another compilation. Sarojini is instrumental in bringing back  to life, he long forgotten father's contribution to Indian culture.

Sarojini is a frail woman with heart and digestive problems. Yet, she undertook long tours, met people and spared no pains to collect articles her dear father wrote, to now-defunct scholarly magazines. She also approached elderly people who knew her father, and recorded their reminiscences. Widowed some years ago, she provides free coaching to poor and needy, having settled down in the city of Bijapur, the city where Gol Gumbaz is located.

See Also:
• The Women of India
• Builders of Modern Karnataka