In her Bharati saw the Modern Woman of India
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Her encounter with Swami Vivekananda changed the course of life for Margaret Elizabeth Noble who took up women's education as a mission. PREMA NANDAKUMAR traces the saga of Sister Nivedita whose death anniversary falls tomorrow.
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Swami Vivekananda with his followers in Kashmir. (From Left) Josephine MacLeod (Jaya), Ole Bull (Dhiramata) and Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita).
TWENTIETH CENTURY saw several friends of India from abroad come to this land and settle down here and take part in the nation's regeneration. Sister Nivedita leads them in every way. If today Indian women have gained the illumining and profitable worlds of knowledge, it is because Sister Nivedita came to India and did pioneering work for the cause of women's education.
Also, she taught us to respect our own tradition and draw sustenance from it instead of going the sapless way of material glitter in the West. And her brief but significant work for the cause of Indian independence just when the nation's great leaders had been silenced in the first decade of the last century, calls out for our eternal gratitude.
She was born Margaret Elizabeth Noble on October 28, 1867 in a family that was religious but not fanatical. The Irish family was also intensely patriotic. She received a good education, but quite early in life had to take up a job, as her father died when she was ten years old. She chose the profession of a schoolteacher, and was happy to be one. Even as she taught, she kept improving herself by continuing to study, and became a good orator and writer. She joined the "Free Ireland" group and began organising centres of resistance in the South of England.
At the same time, she was also very much in demand as a journalist writing for Wimbledon News, Daily News and Review of Reviews.
Never one to be satisfied with the humdrum life of a middle-class young woman, Margaret took religion seriously and began wondering whether there was not some other power that was guiding the destiny of mankind. If so, what kind of power could it be? Twice she had to face disappointment in love. Life seemed pointless without an aim, without an ideal. It was at this juncture in her life in 1895 that Lady Isabel Margesson invited her to hear a Hindu Swami speak at her home.
When Margaret entered Lady Isabel's drawing room, she found a tall and well-built young man in ochre robes sitting self-lost in a chair. As the audience remained completely silent, full of expectancy, a prayer rose from Swami Vivekananda: "Shiva, Shiva, namah Shivaaya!" His listeners remained spell-bound, while the Swami spoke in well-modulated tones using well-chosen and most appropriate words from the English language, but simple, direct and ah! so close to their heart. Margaret was all attention.
Only two years earlier, Swami Vivekananda had captured global attention by his famous address at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He had travelled all over the United States carrying his message on the contemporaneous validity of Sanatana Dharma.
The Swami wanted to eradicate India's poverty and illiteracy and bring back its ancient glory. Religion, according to him, would be meaningful to the masses only if they could be assured of food and clothing. Again, his religion would not be a sectarian, compartmentalised dead-end. He was bringing Sri Ramakrishna's universal outlook, which had the sanction of even the ancient Vedas. For turning his tremendous dreams into reality he needed money and manpower. True, he had a band of devoted fellow-disciples back home, but the hurdles were too many. However, with the help of the West which was rich in material things, Indian spirituality will rise again and would help the West as well.
Margaret attended more lectures by Swami Vivekananda and took part in group discussions. She realised that the Divine had taken her future in hand. She was a strong personality and the Swami was not in a hurry to recruit her though he realised that this intense lady would be the woman he needed to take up an important aspect of his work, which was to educate the children of India's marginalised, poverty-stricken masses.
As he told her: "Their lot is so lamentable that they imagine they are born to be oppressed by all those who have money. They have completely lost their individuality." And Indian women, rich, middle-class or poor, all of them needed to be educated too. The Swami could not yet get over the sad life of his favourite sister and felt education was a panacea that could draw the Indian woman from the clutches of unworthy men. So he told Margaret: "I have been making plans for educating the women of my country. I think you could be of great help to me."
After Swami Vivekananda returned to India, the two continued to correspond. When Margaret decided to come to India, he wrote to her the famous letter in which he said: "The tusks of the elephant come out but never go back; so are the words of a man never retracted. I promise you I will stand by you unto death."
Margaret's life and ministry in India is the saga of a heroic age. She came in 1898 and was initiated by Swami Vivekananda on March 25 at Belur and became a probationer of the Order of Sri Ramakrishna, and was given the name, Nivedita. After a session of meditation and music in which the monks participated, the Swami pointed to the opposite bank of the Ganges and said: `Nivedita, that is where I would like to have a convent for women. Like a bird that needs two wings to fly, India must have both educated men and educated women."
Sister Nivedita plunged into work immediately. Calcutta was racked by plague, and she performed miracles of endurance bringing succour to the people. With little means at her disposal, she opened the first school for girls in November of the same year. Among the problems she had to encounter was the intransigence of Indian families, which frowned upon educating a female child. Sister Nivedita had to go abroad for collecting funds. She had to study a lot of Indian philosophical and religious literature to be worthy of becoming a nun of the Order. There were long trips she had to undertake within India.
But the idealism burnt steadily, in spite of innumerable hurdles and disappointments. The school prospered somehow after a couple of stoppages and soon became an icon for women's emancipation.
Sister Nivedita's success lay in the method she adopted to bring education to Indian masses. She used the time-tested habit of storytelling, which was a great force in educating Indians. She would also relate the subject to historical details about India. In this manner she instilled in her students a reverence and pride for their own traditions. Her studies for this approach resulted in a couple of classics from her pen: `Footfalls of Indian History' and `Cradle Tales of Hinduism'.
Sister Nivedita realised that India's unrivalled, integrating culture that had spread from the Himalayas in the North to Kanyakumari in the South was due to this closeness with the ancient epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, a closeness that had been attacked and almost severed by Colonial style of education: "These two great works form together the outstanding educational agencies of Indian life. All over the country, in every province, especially during the winter session, audiences of Hindus and Mohammedans gather round the Brahmin storyteller at nightfall, and listen to his rendering of the ancient tales. The Mohammedans of Bengal have their own version of the Mahabharata."
This is why she would never call Indian women as ever having been illiterate. They had imbibed the best in the Indian tradition and strove to bring up their children as a Rama or Krishna, Arjuna or Karna, Sita or Savitri.
The passing away of Swami Vivekananda in 1902 was to be a great test of faith for Sister Nivedita.
With her characteristic resilience she triumphed over her doubts and depression and continued with her work. Now it was expanded into actually working for the nationalist cause.
On the one hand she was helping the great scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, rendering editorial assistance for preparing his research papers and getting sponsorships for him.
On the other, she was in close touch with the leading lights of the National Movement like Sri Aurobindo, Bhupendranath Dutt and Barindra Kumar Ghose. When Sri Aurobindo went into self-exile, she edited his Karmayogin with mastery. At one time, she had even to move incognito which she did with becoming verve as a very fashionable lady in whom neither her friends nor the British police recognised Sister Nivedita who used to be clad in an ochre robe, having no ornaments except a necklace of rudraksha beads!
Her special contribution to Tamil Nadu was the manner in which she inspired Subramania Bharati become a champion of women's emancipation and for his work against casteism.
Bharati had gone to Calcutta in 1905 and sought to pay his respects to Sister Nivedita. The moment he saw her, he knew he was in the presence of a tremendous power, a Shakti.
When she learnt that he did not bring his wife with him ``as she would not understand about great Movements like the Congress," she flared up: "How can one half of a society win freedom when it enslaves the other half? Let the past be forgotten. Henceforth, do not think of her as something different. Hold her as your left hand and praise her in your heart as an angel."
She also asked him to eschew all ideas of caste, class and birth and enthrone only love in his heart. Her flaming example led Subramania Bharati to become an intense nationalist for she opened the upper part of her gown in a frenzy and thundered: "Your people must become brave. You must have daring to stab us here!"
Henceforth Bharati considered her to be his guru, dedicated his first two books of poems to her and preserved the leaf of a Himalayan tree she gave him and revered it till the end of his life. One can gauge her inspiration in his poems on Shakti.
Though she passed away on October 11, 1911, Bharati's gem-like poem is a living memorial to Sister Nivedita, the flaming pioneer of the Omnipotent Shakti who had come to befriend and guide the modern Indian woman:
"Nivedita, Mother,
Temple consecrated to love,
Sun dispelling my soul's darkness,
Rain to the parched land of our lives,
Helper of the helpless, Offering of Grace,
Destructive fire to the evil in men,
My salutation to you, Mother."
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