When Swami Vivekananda first stood before the aggregate intellectuality of the enlightened West at the Chicago religious parliament, things began to show how lofty ideas and ideals travel to distant lands regardless of geographic, racial, societal, and religious disparities. And a little over two years later, when Margaret Elizabeth Noble first sat before him in a London drawing room, it revealed how a brilliant and receptive mind slowly began to grasp the sublime message of a far-off land. Four years following this meeting, Margaret Noble, then known as Sister Nivedita, laments in a lecture: ‘I regret so deeply that I was born in another country.’[1] But no matter where she was born, Nivedita gave her best to India. On a day in the early twentieth century in Madras, she was asked: ‘What will be your future work in India?’ In a flash came her reply: ‘My life is given to India. In it I shall live and die’ (ibid. 5.246).
Nivedita did two things during the thirteen years she was on earth after coming to India. First, she tried heart and soul to know India and absorb what was best in the vast country. And secondly, utilizing her intellect and growing wisdom, she put into words her wealth of insights to make the Indians aware of their ancient noble legacy. Today, when we look at her writings, the depth and timelessness instantly captivate our minds. They inspire us to relook at many things we normally overlook or take for granted. But behind her said ability, Swami Vivekananda had played a noble role.
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Vivekananda moved across the world with unstinted eyes—his experience and insight gave him an unrestrained broadness. Those who read his Travel Memoir[2] will never escape this fact. The influence of British education had its traces in him, for it was inescapable during his time—but that never kept him confined to it. His relentless quest inspired him to look for newer aspects in everything he encountered. His spiritual genius empowered him to judge the world from a realistic standpoint—none was alien to him in this world. He tried to instil this empiric outlook in Nivedita, his daughter-disciple. We may instance an occasion to understand this.
When a little before the middle of May in 1898, a few Western admirers and Nivedita accompanied the Swami on a Northern India tour, her personality had three inseparable qualities—an almost inflexible mind, an unlimited intellect, and a dazzling brilliance. Her judgments and perspectives were more or less akin to her fellow Englishmen. Vivekananda was aware of this and knew that without a change of such trait, Nivedita would fail to accomplish the mission which brought her to India. Before then, Swamiji had initiated her in Belur on 25 March 1898 with no prior idea of how staunch a bias she had been nurturing as regards the idealism of race, deeds, and history of her own country. But a little after the initiation, he knew that the English Flag still had an overpowering impact on her, almost matching a worshipping mindset. Nivedita later disclosed that even when he had learned this, Swamiji betrayed no more than a startled expression—no matter what went inside him.[3]
Swamiji knew that in her adopted task, Nivedita needed total renunciation, which alone could ensure equal love and feeling towards all despite countless social disparities. Her obsessive infatuation with her country would, therefore, act as a hindrance to her work. But as long as he remained in the plains, Swamiji showed no change in his behavior towards Nivedita. At Almora, he took up the task to coach his disciple. Nivedita tagged this phase as though ‘a going-to-school’ had begun and added that ‘just as schooling is often disagreeable to the taught, so here, though it cost infinite pain, the blindness of a half-view must be done away. A mind must be brought to change its centre of gravity’ (ibid).
Nivedita later wrote about her experience at Almora:
… ‘Really, patriotism like yours is sin!’ he (Swamiji) exclaimed once, many weeks later, when the process of obtaining an uncoloured judgment on some incident had been more than commonly exasperating. ‘All that I want you to see is that most people’s actions are the expression of self-interest, and you constantly oppose to this the idea that a certain race are all angels. Ignorance so determined is wickedness’ (ibid. 287-88).
In those days, Nivedita believed in the Western estimation of women. How she afterwards judged these things in retrospect is here in her later-day estimation about herself:
…These limitations of her sympathy look petty and vulgar enough to her now, as compared with the open and disinterested attitude of the mind that welcomes truth’ (ibid. 288).
But the transformation was not easy—to explain the magnitude of her inner battle, Nivedita equated the obstacle with a ‘veritable lion in the path’. But her devotion to her Guru led to winning over everything, and, eventually, she ‘grasped the folly of allowing anything whatever to obscure to her the personality that was here revealing itself’ (ibid.). She even acknowledged later that, ‘These morning talks at Almora then, took the form of assaults upon deep-rooted preconceptions, social, literary, and artistic, or of long comparison of Indian and European history and sentiments, often containing extended observations of very great value’ (ibid. 288).
And when her limiting ideas and beliefs gradually faded away, Nivedita found a new dimension in Swamiji’s discourses:
One characteristic of the Swami was the habit of attacking the abuses of a country or society openly and vigorously when he was in its midst, whereas after he had left it, would often seem as if nothing but its virtues were remembered by him’ (ibid.). Nivedita could well guess why the Swami had been doing so: ‘… The manner of these particular discourses was probably adopted in order to put to the proof the courage and sincerity of one who was both woman and European (ibid.).
Even at Almora, Swamiji could make his disciple look at everything from a newer standpoint—though a far more meaningful tutelage waited until she accompanied him on a 42-day sea voyage to London in the middle of 1899. After this final mentoring of enormous depth and scope, she became the chalice of the life and message of Swami Vivekananda. Following this voyage, Nivedita remained in the West for about three years before returning to India in early 1902. During the next nine years she lived, all her efforts had only two purposes—to bring sustained benefits to India and her people and, second, to make the Indians aware of their wealth of timeless inheritance. There’s no denying that her life is her greatest gift to India; even so, it has always been her writings wherein she left her best for us. It is long overdue that we should now find time and inclination to delve a little into the invaluable tomes she bequeathed to us selflessly.
[1]The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, 5 vols., 1 to 4, 1967; 5, 1975 (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1982), 1.382.
[2]Memoirs of European Travel, see Complete Works, 7.297-404.
[3]Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, 1.287 (see ‘Notes of Some Wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda’)
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