Poem- The gift of India

Questions/ Answers

1. What gifts did mother India give to the world as told in the
poem “the Gift of India” by the Sarojini Naidu?

ANSWER: as mentioned in Naidu’s poems, the rich gifts that

mother India gave the world are the raiment, grain and gold. This
refers to all the resources from agricultural productions to
priceless metals which the foreign colonisers took to their country
while they were ruling India. She also mentions her soldier sons
whom she had sent to foreign lands to fight for others in the
world wars.

2. “The gift of India” is a patriotic poem. It describes the sacrifice

of India for British cause. Explain.

Answer: sarojini Naidu’s always tried to arouse a sense of pride

and patriotism in the hearts of her countrymen through her
poems. In the present poem “the gifts of India”, the poetess
reminds the world of India’s gifts to the colonial forces that ruled
it. In the poem, mother India herself proclaims proundly her gifts
to the west. The first stanza introduces the various gifts India has
bestowed upon the colonisers, which include both its riches and
people. The second stanza focuses more on the wistful state of
martyred Indian soldiers. The third stanza talks of the grief those
deaths have brought to mother India. And finally, the fourth
stanza is a sort of appeal to honour the sacrifices of the Indian
soldiers for the cause of the war, rather for the British cause. So
the thematically, the poem is highly patriotic.