Sister Nivedita - Swami Tathagatananda

Facts are really stranger than fiction. It was some time in March, 1910, when Sister Nivedita, Sister Christine and Lady Minto (wife of the then Viceroy, Lord Minto) were on the Ganga in a country-boat on their way back from a visit to the temple at Dakshineswar. In the boat itself, tea was served to Lady Minto in perfectly Swadeshi style. Everything was Swadeshi, biscuits, tea, sugar, cups and saucers. A more perilous service could not be thought of in those days. To Nivedita the vow of Swadeshi was a Tapasya and a Dharma. And she was truly Swadeshi in principle and practice. The promotion of the cause of Indian nationality was to Nivedita a mission and a passion. Lady Minto once came incognito to see the Sister in Bosepara Lane in a corner of the city. She also went to visit Belur Math in the same manner.

During the plague of Calcutta in the year 1899 an uncommon spectacle was witnessed. Dr. RG Kar has recorded: ‘During this calamity the compassionate figure of Sister Nivedita was seen in every slum of the Baghbazar locality. She helped others with money without giving a thought to her own condition. At one time when her diet consisted only of milk and fruits, she gave up milk, to meet the medical expenses of a patient… Having discussed with her the possibilities of hygienic nursing in the slums of the poor people I asked her to take precautions. When I went to visit the patient again in the afternoon I saw Sister Nivedita sitting with the child in her lap in the damp and weather-beaten hut in that unhealthy locality. Day in and day out, night after night, she remained engaged in nursing the child in that hut, having abandoned her own house. When the hut was to be disinfected she took a small ladder and began white-washing the walls herself. Her nursing never slackened even when death was a certainty. After two days, the child lay in Eternal Sleep in the affectionate lap of that merciful lady.’

We shall do well to remember that only a year before, had she come to India—a world of blasted hopes, of despair, of dejection and of disillusionment. The locality with its uneducated masses with their hideous slums and hereditary poverty was a forbidden path to the educated gentry, and what to speak of rendering social service in that area! By that time Nivedita had undergone a complete metamorphosis and had identified herself with the welfare of the people in a way unthinkable even today. While nursing the sick child not a shade of bitterness marked the corner of her face, not a murmur of self-pity crept into the words she used. She was the picture of an edifying spectacle stamped with the zeal of an archangel, a veritable princess of social service.

The people of Calcutta saw Nivedita busy in fighting the plague. She was made the Secretary of the Plague Committee by Swami Vivekananda. One day, due to shortage of volunteers, she herself started the cleaning in the affected area. Her steady flame of devotion had no room in it for the slightest fluctuation of distaste. Her dedicated service, soaked in the spirit of the message of Swamiji, was a sage of fortitude and rock-like faith in her Master. Her noble example was a light of hope in the grey cold morning of our country’s awakening.

People conversant with the spirit of Swami Vivekananda were aware of his programs of national reconstruction. He wanted to uplift the masses. and spread education among women also. He passionately appealed to the men and the women of the country to help the most sacred cause of the country’s betterment with all sincerity. Unfortunately he received no encouraging response from the people of our land. He wanted to rouse and awaken our people and this task required the whole-hearted service of dynamic workers with a deep devotion to the great heritage of our culture. It should be remembered that he never wanted mere social workers so-called to flock to his banner. So while inviting the Sister to come over to India he had written to her: ‘What was wanted was not a man but a woman; a real lioness, to work for the Indians, women specially. India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Your education, sincerity, purity, immense love, determination and above all the Celtic blood make you just the woman wanted.’ Speaking very clearly to her about the uncongenial atmosphere prevailing in India, the Swami had said: ‘You must think well before you plunge in, and after work if you fail in this or get disgusted, on my part I promise you I will stand by you unto death whether you work for India or not, whether you give up Vedanta or remain in it.’

With the passage of time, she fully realized the magnanimity of the Swami as a master in granting her a blank cheque. He always believed in freedom for the individual.

But it should not be thought that the life of the Sister was all smooth sailing. To become a mantle-bearer of the Swami required a special mettle. After her initiation into Brahmacharya the Swami held up as a model before his disciple ‘an orthodox Hindu Brahmin Brahmacharini.’ He gave the model in these words: ‘You have to set yourself to Hinduise your thoughts, your needs, your conceptions, and your habits; your life, internal and external, has to become all that an orthodox Hindu Brahmin Brahmacharini’s ought to be. The method will come to you, if only you desire it sufficiently. But you have to forget your own past, and to cause it to be forgotten. You have to lose even its memory.’ She had a great task to fulfil and as such the Swami gave her his best attention in order to mould her into the desired pattern. She was subjected to a constant and unrelaxing discipline, more than Spartan in severity. Because it was wholly mental and the time was very short, she had to pass through the treadmill of discipline with high courage and tireless energy. Her patience never flagged, her enthusiasm never waned. The Sister had a keen intellect. She carefully and critically read the book of life of the Swami. Its pages were stained with the life-blood of the martyr, wet with the tears of the saint. Soul-stirring romance of spiritual chivalry—the most moving tragedies of human life and action along with spiritual ecstasies of the highest order were scattered in the pages of that great book. In that book she found her eternal fountain of inspiration in life, her strength in peril and her support in death. She successfully passed through the ordeal and became a fit instrument for the task entrusted to her.

Religion identified with ideas of social welfare was a new thing to Indians at that time. A wakening of manhood, Vivekananda felt, would clear the cobwebs of an inferiority complex from the brain of the people and drive away fear and weakness. A proper understanding of the absolute nature of the soul, he believed would by itself be a great education. The Swami wanted Indians to worship the God in man. He urged them to keep the world in touch with God and bring it back to Him. Only in a reorientation of our outlook, he felt, in a deifying of the world’s concerns was there some hope for the nation. The Sister’s school at Bosepara Lane was a monument to her nobility of head and heart and her resolve to implement Swamiji’s ideals. She gave her pupils excellent teaching of a humane and expanding character. A more solemn dedication of a woman of foreign origin to the cause of Indian education cannot be imagined. Everything about the school became to her sacred. The gospel of divinity of the individual soul, the reverence for life and the sense of sacredness of life were behind her dedication to the cause of the school.

The Swami always spoke highly of Indian women—Sita, Savitri, Damayanti, Maitreyi, Khana, Lilavati, Ubhayabharati. He also eulogized the chivalry of Rajput and other women of recent history—Padmini, Chand Sultana, Laxmibai, Durgabai, Ahalyabai, Rani Bhavani and others.

The Swami knew that education was the real key to the revolutionizing of the attitudes of Indian women. Through education, rightly imparted, the nation would be revitalized. Ideals of self-respect, self-restraint, self-sacrifice had to be made a living part of life if the highest manhood or womanhood was to be attained. National education and national endeavor should be so moulded as to bring about the glorious consummation of a thorough national regeneration. Transforming knowledge into character was the supreme task before India. This glorious picture of a great race, Nivedita always kept before her eyes. By opening a school for girls in the heart of an orthodox area she inevitably invited a massive cross-fire of uncharitable criticism. She had no funds. Sometimes she had to go door to door for requesting the guardians to allow their students to join the school. The guardians met all the warmth of her feeling with the frost of their stubborn indifference, nay, even hostility. It was not an age of a spacious intellectual horizon, a noble endeavor and a bright aspiration. Hence was there the indispensable need of supreme sacrifice from ‘the earth’s bravest and best for the good of the many.’ The selfless devotion of the Sister and her genuine love for the school made all obstacles soon give way. Matter can be, the Swami says, changed into spirit by the force of love. This is the gist of Vedanta. Surely Nivedita by her zeal made the dream of the Swami get fulfilled. She was dedicated to the superhuman task of salvaging a ship-wrecked people condemned to intellectual morbidity of the soul. She did splendid spade-work to clear the debris, as if she had been called forth by the peculiar exigencies of the times to work for India’s salvation. She embodied in her own being the life-saving ideas of God and Love. Indeed she was a brilliant star that illumined the educational sky of the period in Bengal, if not in India.

The great Swadeshi Movement which came in the wake of the Partition of Bengal in 1905 roused the nation. Bengal at that period was like a sea broken by waves of revolutionary passion. The first mutterings of the storm began to make themselves heard with the launching of a vigorous boycott movement. The Sister played a very great role in this movement. Not many others had the efficiency and the vision of the Sister. She should never be equated with mere political leaders. Her education, experience, efficiency and above all her training under the Swami gave her a unique position. She was a great intellectual and moral force behind the movement. She was an ardent patriot, a dynamic philosopher and a Karma-yogi of the Vivekananda brand—all in one. Masculine-minded and masculine-willed was she at all times. While paying a glowing tribute after her death, Rash Behari Ghosh said that if the dry bones were stirred in India it was because Sister Nivedita breathed life into them. She was indeed a nationalist of nationalists.

Here is a beautiful pen-picture of her character by Nevinson. He says: ‘It is an vain to try to describe Sister Nivedita as to reduce fire to a formula and call it knowledge. There was, indeed, something flame-like about her, and not only her language but her whole vital personality often reminded me of fire. Like fire, and like Shiva, Kali and other Indian powers of the spirit, she was at once destructive and creative, terrible and beneficent. No one ever called her gentle. But of all nobly sympathetic natures, she was amongst the finest.’

She had a very sweet relationship with the Holy Mother. She was, in all her movements and behavior, just a little child to the Holy Mother. Even on the blessed day in 1899 when Nivedita first saw the Holy Mother, her heart was drawn to her. It was, really speaking, the Holy Mother’s blessing and kindness that gave Nivedita a chance to live the orthodox Hindu life. The Holy Mother showered every mark of tenderest affection on Khooki as Nivedita used to be called by the Mother. This sweet relationship was maintained throughout Nivedita’s life. To Nivedita, the Holy Mother was the very embodiment of ideal Indian womanhood.

Nivedita had also a profound respect for Gopaler-Ma—the old devotee of Sri Ramakrishna at Kamarhati Nivedita along with Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Bull went to see the old lady in 1898. Gopaler-Ma accepted them, to their surprise, as her own people. She spent her last days in Bosepara Lane with Nivedita. In the midst of her busy life, Nivedita used to spend some time, in rendering some service to the saintly woman. After her passing away, Nivedita treasured the rosary of beads on which Gopaler-Ma had become a saint, and took it to London and gave it to her mother.

Nivedita thoroughly soaked herself in Vivekananda and thereby in India. Her breadth of outlook, curiosity, courage, self-discipline and enthusiasm were without a parallel. Her travels gave her breadth of vision and depth of love and lifted her above any insularity. Her training under Swami Vivekananda gave her a new vision of life as well as a new lease of life. Her stay in India enabled her to steep her soul in the outer and inner glories of India. Her nature was gentle and loving and her books on Indian culture contain numerous personal touches bearing ample testimony to the sweetness of her soul, the strength of her nature, and the courage of her convictions. The book ‘The Master as I saw him’—her Magnum opus—is sure to go down in history as a rare type of biography. It was her insight into the true glory of Indian culture and her sense of the immemorial greatness, serenity and refinement of the Indian race that gave her the impetus to dedicate her life to India. Her books reflect the very soul of India.

She completely identified herself with the people and served the nation in various ways, in teaching, social reform, nationalism, relief work, journalism, art and architecture. She was looked upon as a luminous elder, leader and pioneer. The idea of becoming a powerful instrument by suffering and resignation, and of triumphing over hostile forces through sanctity, purity and holiness made her a true heroine. She dominated the times as much by her character as by her genius. Tagore called her a ‘Mother of the people’. He added, ‘He who has seen her has seen the essential form of man, the form of the spirit. It is a piece of great good fortune to be able to see how the inner being of man reveals itself with unobstructed and undiminished energy and effulgence, nullifying the obstruction of all outer material coatings or impediments. We have been witnessed that unconquered nobility of man in Sister Nivedita. The respect with which she would greet some ordinary Mussalman woman dwelling in a hut in a village is not possible for an ordinary individual; for the vision that enables one to see the greatness of humanity in a humble individual is a very uncommon gift. It was because this vision was so natural to her that she did not lose her respect for India, in spite of the nearness of her life to the life of the people of India for so long a time. She is to be respected not because she was a Hindu but because she was great. She is to be honored not because she was like us, but because she was greater than we.’

© `Glimpses of Great Lives’ by Swami Tathagatananda published by The Vedanta Society of New York, 34 West 71st Street, New York NY 10023, USA. Reprinted with permission.

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