Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 11

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

At last, at the end of June, it was Swamiji who interested Mrs Collis Potter Huntington, the wife of a multi millionaire railroad and mining tycoon, in Nivedita's work. He wrote to Nivedita, advising her to meet Mrs Huntington, 'one of the richest people in the U.S.', and not to mind about her reception in Chicago. Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on 26 June: 'Yesterday Mrs. C. P. Huntington gave me $500 [5000?]' (1.367). Mrs Leggett gave a thousand. Nivedita received a letter from Swami Saradananda dated 11 April 1900: 'We are so glad to hear of your successful work at Cambridge and elsewhere. I am sorry to hear you are rather overworked. Please take care of yourself a little. We want you here so much' (2.1284).

Nivedita wrote triumphantly to Miss MacLeod on 26 June 1900: 'Swami says that the interest on the present sum of $6500 will give me in Calcutta a monthly income of at least 50 Rs. and that that, with what I may gain in the next few months will be enough to begin upon. So he wants me to leave for Calcutta next January or Feb.!!! Isn't that joyful? ... "Live from Mother's hand" is all he will say. So I think an early date will see me back in the beloved land' (1.367–8).

At the start of Nivedita's lecture tour, Swamiji had asked Nivedita: 'Do you think, Margot, that you can collect the money you want in the West? ... There were two things I wanted to see before my death—One is done [the Belur Math], and this [the Women's Math] is the rest.'23 Nivedita's co-worker, Christina, wrote: 'If Swami Vivekananda's ideas regarding the education of women are carried out in the true spirit, a being will be evolved who will be unique in the history of the world. As the woman of ancient Greece was almost perfect physically, this one will be her complement intellectually and spiritually—a woman gracious, loving, tender, long-suffering, great in heart and intellect, but greatest of all in spirituality.'With this ideal and her faith in the blessings of her guru and Sri Sarada Devi, Nivedita's mission in the West was successful and she was able to reopen her school in India. Beyond that, Nivedita was able to interpret the highest ideals of Indian culture and society to the West in practical terms and to formulate her own prophesy of the influence of Indian ideals in the world for the future. Today, a hundred and fifty years later her prophesies are coming true. After leaving America, on her way back to India, she wrote in a letter to Josephine MacLeod on 7 March 1901: 'Blessed India! How infinitely much I owe her. Have I anything worth having that I do not directly or indirectly owe to Her?'

References :
    1.    Letters of Sister Nivedita, ed. Sankari Prasad Basu, 2 vols (Calcutta: Nababharat, 1982), 1.80.
    2.    The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1–8, 1989; 9, 1997), 5.233.
    3.    Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.80.
    4.     'A Run of the Hindoo Order', The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia), 30 June 1900, 11.
    5.     Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana, 'Sister Nivedita Tells Americans Their Obligations to India', Prabuddha Bharata, 104/5 (May 1999), 571–4, 578.
    6.     Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries, 6 vols (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1985), 2.279.
    7.    Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.188.
    8.    The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, 4.376–7.
    9.     Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana, Saint Sara (Cal-cutta: Sri Sarada Math, 2002), 352.
    10.     Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.230.
    11.     Saint Sara, 352.
    12.     Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.244.
    13.     See Saint Sara, 358.
    14.     Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana, Tantine: The Life of Josephine MacLeod (Dakshineswar: Sarada Math, 1990), 91.
    15.     Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.296.
    16.     Saint Sara, 361.
    17.     Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.351.
    18.     Saint Sara, 366.
    19.     Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.360–1.
    20.     Saint Sara, 369.
    21.     Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.412.
    22.     Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries, 6.271.
    23.     Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.189; Lizelle Reymond, The Dedicated (Madras: Samata, 1985), 204.
    24.     His Eastern and Western Admirers, Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1983), 210.
    25.     Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1.423.

- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

http://www.sisternivedita.org

Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 10

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

Mrs Ole Bull arranged for Nivedita to give a talk in Steinert Hall in Coply Square in the centre of town. Nivedita spoke of her educational work in India. She said in the course of her talk: "I think that we must gladly admit that the exchange of ideals between the nations of the eastern and western hemispheres cannot be wholly one-sided. While the western woman of today spiritually descended, as I believe, from the Roman-type of ideal womanhood, holds a near attainment to the ideal in energy, civic and political activity. The woman of the East is fully equal to her in other respects and is inevitably bound to teach her and lead her to a higher attainment of perfect womanhood. There is no ideal for the woman of the east outside of virtue, the spiritual ideal that we approach only by interior roads of thought and feeling. Hers are ideals of achievement in virtue and of service, of heroic deed and sacrifice, of passionate devotion to the ideal of purity which eastern society places before her."

In this Steinert Hall lecture, Nivedita spoke of the sacredness of marriage and motherhood in Indian society. In a newspaper report the next day, it was mentioned that her association with Hindu life had given her a unique insight into the Indian character and a good understanding of their myths and customs. Sri Sarada Devi had written to her in a letter dated 13 May 1900: 'You are indeed doing good work—but don't forget your Bengali! Or I shall not be able to understand you, when you come back. It gave me such delight to know that you are speaking of Dhruba, Savitri, Sita-Ram and so on there! The accounts of their holy lives are better than all the vain talk of the world, I am sure.

Nivedita in these last two lectures had given her most successful lectures. The training— Swamiji predicted—she would get in the West bore fruit at the end. However, the fund-raising for the school had not been successful; only a trickle of money came after so many struggles. A man from the 20th Century Club gave Nivedita twenty dollars and Mrs Cheney gave another twenty-five (1.359). Swamiji assured her through many letters, consoling her about not being able to raise money for her school. He at last wrote: 'If it does not come, who cares?' Nivedita returned to New York in early June 'after a long, gruelling, and largely fruitless work in the United States.'

- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

To be continued...........

http://www.sisternivedita.org

Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 9

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

The next day the fight was over different points of view of the caste system in front of Mrs Bull's other guests, which was an embarrassment to Mrs Bull. It seems she had invited about a hundred school teachers to tea. Nivedita reconsidered her tactics and wrote out a plan for her first talk in Boston on 1st June 1900. It was arranged by Mrs Cheney, Mrs Ole Bull, and Dr Lewis Janes, who were members of the board of directors of the Free Religious Association. Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod: 'The day after tomorrow—Free Relig. Ass. [Free Religious Association]—I have not yet defined my speech to myself. I half thought of talking it over with you.' Nivedita proceeded to write an outline of her talk and elaborate some of the points in her letter which she completed the next day, saying: 'Mr. Pal precedes me, on "India's Contribution to Free Religion." Oh Yum! My hand just trembles with nervousness!' (1.355).

Nivedita was apprehensive at the thought of facing her antagonist in front of an audience of intellectuals, all well-known speakers themselves. Nivedita had a more passionate love for India than many Indians. Pratap Chandra Majumdar was to speak about Ram Mohan Roy at the same meeting. Nivedita had one great advantage over the other speakers, as a person coming from another culture she had a viewpoint far more vast and universal and far deeper and more insightful. She also knew the Christian standpoint of her general audience. She was well aware that the audience believed the civilisation of the West superior to the East. She invited questions after her speech: 'I should be glad to accept any challenge on the subject that might be offered me by Western people.'18 Nivedita spoke of the detachment of civilisation from religion in the West as men and women live for something that is not included in Christianity. Nivedita pointed out the rift between science and religion and between truth and mythology that had occurred in Christianity in the West and declared that there was no such distinction in India. 'How different it is in India,' she said, 'where it is expected that every man on his own account practices within the silence of his own soul that religious idea which appeals to him most' (ibid.). She pointed out that if a religion were not universal and inclusive, it would be militant against those who do not find salvation by its path. In this lecture, Nivedita touched her favourite point, and a practical one for the failing economies of the West today, when she said: "We of the West are yet to be beholden to the people of the East for the most passionate impulse of simplicity and renunciation in common life that the world has ever seen. I think that the hope of this country and the hope of England and of all the luxurious and money loving West, lies not in driving poverty out, but in the love of poverty—in espousing it as the old saints and people espoused it, and this, if it is to come to us at all, will come through the genius of the people of the Orient (366–7)."

Nivedita prophesied that in one to three hundred years afterward people will realise the influence of Sanskrit (by which she meant Sanskrit culture or India) by the rest of the world. She also saw the day in the future when 'the Christian would be found in China or Japan, as here and the Hindu will be found here, as often as there; the Buddhist and the Moslem will be found the world over' (367). After this lecture, Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on 6 June 1900: 'My speech last Friday was more successful than it deserved to be ... R. W. Trine paid me a compliment. As soon as I began to speak ... he classed me [as one of] ... the "highest type of women."'

- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

To be continued...........

http://www.sisternivedita.org

Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 8

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

One lady tried to drag me into attacking missionaries. I peremptorily refused. Another 'sniffed' and said, I had said nothing that she had not heard the missionaries say before. ... Then the President broke through hospitality to cross question me about polygamy ...Then one woman insisted that I should remonstrate with husbands and wives in India for not eating together and put 'a higher way' before them. ... After a few more remarks of this sort, the customary question about giving babies to crocodiles sounded thoroughly good natured ... one insisted on caste being, sympathetically explained ...I never was in a gathering so like a lunatic asylum. Caste did not interest them at all ...'monogamy!' ... 'Child widows!' ... everywhere would spring up a violent affirmation about the inferiority of wives, the preference of sons, the contempt for Woman—Woman—Woman. Oh how I recognized the steps that Swami had trodden before me!....I could not have imagined feeling so thoroughly angry with an audience ...I am to speak at the 20th Cent. Club on Thurday and at a private home Friday; [and] Go to Chicago saturday.(I300-2)"

However there was a change in mood in Ni-vedita's next letter to MacLeod; still in Detroit, she wrote to Miss MacLeod on 18 January 1900 about what she had learned from all this lecturing so far. It was just as Miss MacLeod had predicted: 'two years training in America would not be too much. ... On this journey I have seemed to find my feet, and to be led every step by Mother Herself. ... Shall a child not rejoice in speaking its father's message?' (1.303). In Detroit Nivedita  got moral support if not funds, from Christina Greenstidel, Mary Funki, and Mrs Bagley, all devotees of Vivekananda. Th ey each gave ten dollars. Nivedita remarked: 'And very rich people have not cared to give more than $5!' (1.304). Then Nivedita went back to Chicago, but by no means was Nivedita's suff ering over. She later wrote: 'Have just come in from another useless effort.' (1.306). Three days later on 26 January 1900 she wrote to MacLeod: 'I lunched with the Hales yesterday, and found myself just as glad to see Mary as though there had been no blow. ... she had not yet collected one dollar of all that were promised months ago! ... Somehow, this journey seems to have given me so much experience! I understand better about collecting money, and founding groups (1.307).

Nivedita then travelled to Kansas City and spoke at Indianapolis on Religious Life and Social Institutions in India, arranged by Mrs Sewall [May Wright Sewall], where she earned fi ft y dollars. Th is was more than she had been able to scrape together so far. At Mrs Sewall's Nivedita met a public school Principal who encouraged her aft er hearing her stories of history and geography, told in a school. Nivedita stopped briefly in Cleveland. In the meantime, Mrs Ole Bull was encouraging her to go to Boston and New York. Nivedita stayed at fi rst with a friend of Mrs Bull's, Mrs Edna Cheney, who took her to a Women's Suff rage Convention. Nivedita wrote: 'Th ey quoted last night some great leaders' saying that a new truth before it is accepted must meet with (1) ridicule (2) argument and (3) opposition. When these 3 are present, know that you are about to win. Oh dear—come on all 3—as hard as you can—I don't mind how much, if only you are not everlasting' (1.350).

Apparently, on May 31st, Nivedita shifted from Mrs Cheney's to the home of Mrs Ole Bull where she had ample opportunity to experience the three. Bipin Chandra Pal had also arrived as a guest at Mrs Bull's that night and when he went down to dinner he met Nivedita for the first time. He wrote in his memoirs that 'At very first sight of each other we would start to fi ght.' During the National Movement, Nivedita had contributed a series of articles to Pal's New India magazine, which she later published as Th e Web of Indian Life, and though they were friends, they constantly picked arguments when they met. That night it was over Brahmo women and Christian missionaries.

- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

To be continued...........

http://www.sisternivedita.org

Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 7

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

The Hale family in particular had been the first family to take Swamiji into their home as one of their own family. Mrs Hale's daughter, Mary was the recipient of his many affectionate letters. It came as a shock to Nivedita that Mary was not in sympathy with her work. Nivedita felt discouraged. She had even written to Miss MacLeod, her moral supporter, that she had been willing to share her private diary with 'the Hale girls, but not another soul ever'. So Nivedita was surprised at the attitude of those whom she considered to be in the intimate circle of the Swami's friends. Miss MacLeod advised her to stand on her own feet. She wrote to Nivedita on 14 January 1900: "I have your long letter telling me that Mary Hale does not wish to act as your Secretary and of the general disapproval. If I had you here half an hour you would start again with greater courage and hope than you ever had before. I quite see the blow you have had. It was dreadful—but now that it is over it will influence your whole life and make you a success—independent of Swami. You will have Kali's blessings direct and Swami's perfect love and trust. ...You know and Swami knows that I have always felt you had a mission—your own message for this work—and you can do better work where he is not known. No one who has ever known and loved him can ever take anybody else's version of him—not even yours. As Saradananda used to say, they would not listen to Swami in the Ramakrishna days. So you must strike out alone with new people—make your own audiences—your own disciples in your own way, and two years of training in America is not too much. The women problem is left to you and Swami should be left out—obliterated in your outward work."

Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on 9th January 1900: "It is so like climbing in gravel! Most people make me sit down for hours and tell them all about everything, and then they say they are so much interested and I have given them great pleasure but they never offer to give me anything back, not even one dollar. ... I know I must go on patiently until I meet the right people, whom I shall find here and there. If there are none, my poor babies cannot be educated, that is all! Tomorrow I start off on a little lecture tour, and shall be kept going for the rest of the month. The first fortnight in February is unfilled, and I must see schools in that time."

The next day, in Jackson, Michigan, Nivedita met Mr O'Donnell who was the Superintendent of all the Michigan Sunday schools, and a friend of Mrs Adams. After giving a talk at his home, as members of her audience rushed up to her enthusiastically, Nivedita said: 'I give you great pleasure, did I? Well, but are you going to give us anything?' (1.297) Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod: 'It was horrid of me I suppose—and It has been more and more my temper lately' (ibid.). One lady asked 'What can we do to help you?' (ibid.). Nivedita asked for a mere dollar a year for ten years. One person said: 'Oh I'm so thankful, I never wanted to give anyone a dollar in my life so much as I do you, this afternoon.' 'Yes, said the first woman. I knew you must want something we could do, for I've never noticed that great things could be done without money' (ibid.). Nivedita never lost hope. She wrote: 'And so they say they will form a group for me, and if Mother is really in it, I suppose they will. ... Someone called me down to receive a visitor with 5 dollars. "That won't go very far towards 15 or 20 thou sand!"—she said' (1.297–8). Nivedita gathered pathetically little, a few dollars, bit by bit. She then went on to try her luck in Detroit. From there she wrote to MacLeod on 16 January 1900: "Life brings experience. ... I suddenly found myself yesterday afternoon in a nest of thorns, and learnt the psychological process that makes Swami fight and attack! I nearly let go and did it myself—yesterday. ... The Women's Club, Detroit, after 26 years of civil war ...woke up yesterday afternoon to find me addressing it on India. ...

- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

To be continued...........

http://www.sisternivedita.org

Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 6

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

On the following Sunday, Nivedita was to go to luncheon and discussion at the Every Day Club and speak at a Church in the evening. On 6th December she wrote to Mrs Bull: 'Kali has worked an unforeseen miracle—today. It was all through one of Miss Farmer's introductions ... If success comes I suppose you would like me to 'enter every open door' as dear Miss Farmer says' (1.258–9). Nivedita, throughout her struggles, depended upon the blessings of her guru and the Divine Mother. Sri Sarada Devi wrote to Nivedita on 13 May 1900: 'The Banyan of Dakshineswar sings of Kali to be sure, and blessed is he who has ears to hear it' (1.412). A few days later, on 10 December 1899, Nivedita wrote:

"Last night M. H. [Mary Hale] and I dined with Isabel McKindley, to meet Miss Josephine Locke. ... She was like 20 storms in one teacup. She talked vividly and exhaustively about Woman—Woman—Woman—the spiritual forces of the present day ... and a host of other things. She struck me as eccentric—fine—and absurd. ... Then she suddenly took paper and pencil, and drew up a list of people I must know, appointing ways for me to find them ...Then I went to her office at 10:30 today ... and have been dragged to two lectures—spoken at one—made 1/2 a dozen engagements, and been introduced to something like 50 people... Do you wonder that one wants rest and inspiration?

M. H. [Mary Hale] and I spent the night at Miss M's [McKindley's]. We slept in one room and I lay in her bed till nearly 3 arguing—and talking. She is dear, so loving—but her attitude to Swami, or rather her conception of him is still a mystery to me. ... She says my 'hero-worship' irritates her—I didn't mean to show it, Yum!—but somehow it comes out without my knowing ... (1.260)."

Nivedita wrote to Mary Hale at Christmas time: "If I am set on seeing Swami in ways that seem to you silly—let him tell me so—I can bear it that way. After all—it is between him & me. Now dear Aunt Mary—one other point—you amazed me beyond words by your 'I know Swami quite as well as you do.' Why I never dreamt of such a point—you know him far far far better. What is more—there is no comparison between your place in his heart & mine.... there is only one place that I can claim in Swami's eyes, & that is a working-place & in what pertains to my work he has trained me with infinite care ... For the rest—Swami is the whole personal interest in my life—in this relation of Father. ... you are his sisters—I am only a disciple. The whole relationship between you is of equality—mine is inferiority (1.278–9)."

Nivedita was in for another one of her 'dreary failures' when she had approached Mary Hale to be the Secretary of the Chicago Guild for Help—for her school, and Mary not only refused, but clearly did not want to identify herself with Nivedita's work. Nivedita confided in Miss MacLeod on 9 January 1900: "It seems to me that I have just received the last and worst blow of all. One of Swami's earliest friends has been in to say that she and her family would rather not be identified with my work. They wanted to help but find themselves out of sympathy. ... Do give me a little comfort, for I feel utterly discouraged. If this is the attitude of Swami's people, how can I ever expect to do anything anywhere? (1.296)."

- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

To be continued...........

http://www.sisternivedita.org

Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 5

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

From November 28, Nivedita stayed at Hull House, run by Jane Addams. Hull House was a settlement house for poor immigrant working women of various ethnic origins, designed to instil pride in their customs and culture, and yet assimilate them into American life. Upper-class women volunteered to teach classes in this extraordinary community and many of the students went on to study in colleges and universities.

Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on 4 December 1899: 'Hull house has been dear' (1.253). Nivedita felt at home in the austere, natural atmosphere of the place. It was more to her liking: less of comfort and no glare of electric lights. Nivedita called Jane Addams of Hull House a karma yogi. She was a clear-headed quiet and unassuming person. Miss Jane Addams—to be distinguished from Nivedita's hostess in Chicago, Mrs Milward Adams—had written a book Democracy and Social Ethics, explaining her ideas. Her project was to develop a new consciousness to overcome the effects of social Darwinism, the competitive theory of evolution which regarded all other races and classes than successful middle-class white people, that is, all aborigines, especially Native Americans, blacks, and Orientals as representing lower stages of evolutionary development.

Nivedita wrote that after her talk at 'Hull House Arts and Crafts Association, on the ancient arts of India, Kashmir shawl-making, Taj etc. etc.—was paid 15 dollars—and received orders for Hindu brass utensils and some embroideries!!!' (1.254). Nivedita spoke on Sunday morning at a church, and in the afternoon, at a private house. She spoke to a new group of people—Abhayananda's cast-off disciples and some Theosophists. Abhayananda, a sannyasini disciple of Swamiji who had defected, and her disciples, were fresh from her attacks on India and full of questions, but when they came to Kali-worship, Nivedita said she would give a whole evening to that subject. Again, she gave a talk one afternoon at Mrs Adams. She had planned for four more lectures the following week. Nivedita wrote to MacLeod:

 "A note from Mrs. Coonley Ward, [arrived] in reply to Miss Farmer's introduction, saying that she understood I wanted to meet club women, and I might come to lunch with her and [to] a meeting at the Women's Club ...I have had various chances of this sort which have been dreary failures more or less, before—and so expecting nothing, but seeing the clear prompting of duty, I cancelled my arrangements with M. H. [Mary Hale] at once, and proceeded to the Club. Mrs C. W. was distractingly busy—and I had a bewildering hour or two—till she handed me over to someone else, and left the club with an apology, while we waited to hear a paper on Colonisation. It was a clever paper—of which the final proposition was that it was the duty of America to assume the responsibility of spreading the Anglo-Saxon type of Civilisation over the world. It was supported by short disquisitions from a professor of philosophy and a woman politician on 'The Moral Responsibility Involved' and 'The Ethics of War'...Then the meeting was open to discussion ... and I was the only person who rose at once!!! ... I rose as an Englishwoman and poured out my burning heart over Humanity and Freedom and American ideals. Almost every second sentence was applauded. The Chairman rose in the middle to say the meeting dispensed with the time limit in my case—and when I at length went to my seat, I heard 'Fine! Fine!' as I passed along. ... I ran in to tell Mrs. Adams, and she was so pleased. She said I had struck the heart of Chicago in the Women's Club. It had been her ambition for me. And so you see I have had my assurance that the Cause is to triumph. ... The professor of philosophy is to delay his departure. From Chicago to come and talk it out tomorrow afternoon. Friday—I am to talk my work at Mrs. Adams! (1.256–7). "


- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

To be continued...........

http://www.sisternivedita.org

Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 4

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

That day Swamiji's 'sister' Mary Hale and her married sister were invited for lunch when Mary offered to take Nivedita to the Friday Club to join in a debate that was to follow a paper on Modern India but with the stipulation that Nivedita wear ordinary clothes since she considered it an affectation for her to wear modified nun's clothes, and she advised her not be identified with Swamiji, which suggestions, Nivedita declined. Mary could not understand Nivedita's Indian work. Mrs Bull wrote again to Mary, hoping to help Mary overlook her prejudices about Nivedita, saying: 'Margot is so loyal, untiring and true, she is worth perfecting and waiting for,and she has enough material to bear the friction and polish.'

Untiring, Nivedita must have been. The following week, her two companions continued to stay at the Auditorium Hotel and returned soon to Boston and New York, while Nivedita shifted for a few days to Hull House, where her heavy schedule of lectures began. There, she gave a lecture on 'Religious Life in India'. After that, she gave a talk at the Women's Mending Guild one day, and a lecture on geography the next day, to children in an elementary school. Nivedita wrote: 'On Thursday afternoon I spoke to the Elementary School children, who were just lovely. So well educated! Their teacher has some idea of forming a children's guild for me. Tomorrow I am to go to lunch at the Pullman Rooms and meet Miss Harrison, the head of the Kindergarten World here.'

Then, Mary Hale took Nivedita to join the discussion in the afternoon at the Friday Club and to give a talk to the Missionary Society the same evening. Nivedita wrote to Mrs Bull: 'Last Friday, talking to the Missionary Board, it seemed a terrible failure to me—like contriving to breathe under the weight of the Pyramids. But my chaperon—kind Mrs. Waterman—was entirely unconscious of this and happy in something that pleased her in my little speech—so it perhaps served some end' (1.243–4). Apparently, these were friends of Mrs Bull.

The next day, Nivedita wrote: 'I can't tell you where I am in the battle now. I am not out of heart, but the fight is slow—because the opportunities are so few. I go tomorrow—Thursday ... to spend a few days at Hull House. Then on Friday I hope to have a good practical talk at Miss Hale's' (1.247). On Saturday, Nivedita wrote: 'Yesterday afternoon, at the Hale's, there were about 25 people. Anywhere but in kind America my speech would have been spurned as too grossly uninteresting for words. But there, everyone without exception promised to help as much as they could, to form a Guild, or to try and get me to other towns, or by giving a dollar a year—which was the amount I asked. And Mrs. Adams has a little plan ... [Mrs Adams was going to recommend her to the lecture bureau and they planned to form a Vedanta group in sympathy with her work]' (1.249). Nivedita wrote: 'Tomorrow—Sunday—I go to a new home to talk. I meet some new people at the Studio. ... Kind Miss Farmer sent me yesterday about 10 introductions' (ibid.). 'I gave my second lecture there... and tried to put Real and Unreal and Renunciation in thinkable words' (1.253). She wrote to Mary Hale: 'I am down for another talk here on Friday night, which is to be paid for by a subscription to the work' (1.250)   



- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

To be continued...........

http://www.sisternivedita.org

Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 3

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

Nivedita had a few strong supporters among Swamiji's followers to start: Mrs Ole Bull of Boston, who was Swamiji's main supporter, Sarah Farmer who was Mrs Bull's co-worker and friend and the originator of the Greenacre, Maine retreat centre, 'Betty' (Besse) Leggett, whose guest Nivedita was in New York. Betty, the sister of Josephine MacLeod and wife of a millionaire, contributed a thousand dollars. When Sara Bull, with her American sense of organisation, formed 'The Ramakrishna Guild of Help' in America for the purpose of raising funds for Nivedita's proposed widows' and girls' home and school in Calcutta, Betty became its President and Mrs Bull, its national Secretary. There were Vice-Presidents and Secretaries representing different cities: Josephine MacLeod and Vivekananda's devotee, the famous opera-singer, Emma Thursby, were Secretaries in New York, Mr Mead and Edna Cheney in Boston, Thomas Higginson, Lewis Janes, and Marion Briggs in Cambridge, and Christina Greenstidel in Detroit. The Project of the Ramakrishna School for Girls was published as a booklet through Mr Leggett.

In it, the following plan was written: "We intend, if we succeed in acquiring means, to buy a house and piece of land on the banks of the Ganges, near Calcutta, and there take in some twenty widows and twenty orphan girls—the whole community to be under the guidance and authority of that Sarada Devi, whose name has been lately introduced to the world by Professor Max Muller in his 'Life and Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna'. ...We ask each child to choose for herself the life of marriage or of consecrated national service. For those who choose the first, we shall hope to provide ways and means that are entirely creditable. With any who may prefer to devote their lives to unremitting toil on behalf of their country and her womanhood, we shall expect, after an extended education, and using the older women as guard and protectors, to start new Ramakrishna schools in other centres."

From Betty's country home, Ridgely Manor in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, Nivedita decided to go first to Chicago to lecture, hoping to raise funds there. Betty Leggett's daughter, Alberta and Mr Ole Bull's daughter, Olea, graciously invited Nivedita to join them on the journey to Chicago, where Swamiji had many friends. Both Sara Bull and Josephine MacLeod had written to Mary, encouraging her to help Nivedita. Mrs Bull wrote to Mary about Nivedita: 'She has intuitions and courage worthy of Swami's daughter, and she will find a way. I am sure you will all love her as we do, and your personal sympathy and truth, and your sisters' will do so much for her.'9 Swami Vivekananda also helped Nivedita by sending a letter ahead, introducing her to Mrs Milward Adams, whom he knew from Greenacre.

Nivedita and her companions arrived in Chicago on Wednesday, November 1899 and Mr Adams met them at the station and took them to home and dinner with Mrs Adams. Things moved quickly. Mrs Adams arranged for Nivedita's speaking engagements. Nivedita wrote to Mrs Ole Bull: 'This morning my name will be brought before a board of missionaries—with the idea of my speaking there.' And in the same letter, she wrote: 'Two ladies of strong missionary and educational interests are coming on Sunday to interview us' (ibid.)


- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.

To be continued...........

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Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 2

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

Nivedita thinking, at first, that she would tackle Swamiji's opponents, took up from where he left off. Pandita Ramabai, an Indian woman who had converted to Christianity and after traveling widely in India, she had observed the condition of Indian women and began to lecture and write about them. She had publicised the idea that Hindu widows were treated by Indian society like the Negro slaves were, in America. Speaking of only the sordid conditions of Indian women, Ramabai had played upon the sympathy of Americans to collect funds so she could start a school for child widows in India. She married, had a daughter and soon became a widow, herself. Throughout the US she founded Ramabai Circles to raise money from influential people. This seems all well and good. However, Ramabai did more harm than good to India: in order to elicit the sympathy of Americans, especially women, Ramabai painted a highly exaggerated and most pathetic picture of the condition of women in India. Swami Vivekananda going to America after her, on the contrary, only preached the noble ideals of Indian women. He said in a lecture at the Brooklyn Ethical Association of Dr Lewis Janes that 'Hindu wives and widows were protected by law to a greater extent than were nineteenth century American women', and 'the "help" given by the Christian missionaries and ...that given by the Ramabai Circle. ... was worse than none, for it sapped the self-respect of the nation which received it and thus served to ruin rather than to restore'.

A whole generation of Americans had been influenced not only by Ramabai, but by Christian missionary propaganda, preaching that Western culture and society were superior to Indian culture, and depicted Indians as barbaric. This belief had given sanction to Western imperialism. Nivedita had written to her confidante, Josephine MacLeod from her ship, on 21 July on her way to America: "My notion is to take deliberately all those towns in America where Ramabai has attacked Swami—and to go there as nun completely and give say 3 days' lectures—'What I have seen in India' some such title and deliberately acknowledge perhaps that the reports of R's [Ramabai's] presence there had made me feel the bond of a common interest—and propose, flatly, that they should finance my work to the limit of their power. My message will not be political or socialapart from the fact that I love Hinduism with my whole heart and soul, and have not one flaw to find in it."

Nivedita asked Miss MacLeod to get a list of Ramabai's places and costs of travel and if necessary to make some definite engagements for her. She wrote: 'Swami has just come and I have told him of the Ramabai motif—would it do? "Possibly," he says "Do what you like." To start counter-circles first in her territory seems to me sound policy' (1.189). Nivedita wrote to Swami Akhandananda: 'You must ask Sri Ramakrishna to let me be of some real use to Him, as well as my girls. I am sure He will let me find the money I want for them.' (1.195). Again, she wrote to Miss MacLeod: 'Work like this requires persons like you and myself who have no other object or thought in life'.

- Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana : Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana is a senior Sanyasini of the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission.
To be continued...........

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Sister Nivedita’s Battle for Indian Ideals in America - 1

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

We got there at 8 [o'clock].' Nivedita wrote, 'Time and place were alike delightful. Overhead the stars, and around—the rolling Ganges; and on one side stood the dimly lighted building; with its background of palms and loft y shade-trees.'2 Nivedita, arriving by boat, waited at the landing. She wrote: 'Th e King [Swami Vivekananda] had been sitting beside the fi re under the tree ... and he came to me there, as I felt that it was a little late for a lady to visit monks.'3 Sister Nivedita had gone to the Belur Math to interview Swamiji for Prabuddha Bharata. During the interview, she brought up the subject of her girls' school: 'and it's really to be a monastic order and not a series of concessions to the feeble-hearted,' he said (ibid.). She had made a brief attempt to open her school in Calcutta but could not continue it for lack of funds. Now she was determined to make an attempt to earn money to reopen it by lecturing in the West.

Nivedita later explained to someone who interviewed her: 'My object is to educate the Hindu girl as the English and American girl is being educated, without any impertinent interference with her religious beliefs or social customs. We make a serious mistake in such interference. The Hindoos are far in advance of us in social problems. As a people they are on a much higher level intellectually and spiritually.'

Margaret Noble, to whom Swamiji fittingly gave the name Nivedita, the dedicated, in her efforts to raise funds for her educational project, was to fight a hard battle for the reputation of India in the West. Nivedita's heroic deeds in India are known: a project for the national education of the future of a whole race of women, instilling hands on help to Indian geniuses in every field, in politics, in science, literature, and in art. But what is equally amazing is the zeal with which she counterattacked the fallen image of India in the West made there by Christian Missionaries and Pandita Ramabai a generation earlier.

Nivedita lectured in America for eight months from November 1899 to June 1900. Soon Nivedita found she had a message for the West, just as Swamiji found when he arrived in the West, with a similar purpose of raising funds for his projects in India. But in trying to follow his footsteps, Nivedita found at first, that some people resented her. She found her own message only after a bitter struggle. In India her lectures had been successful. Indians were eager to hear from an eloquent English disciple of Swamiji, re-inforcing their appreciation of their own culture. In America, however, although she began to lecture where Swamiji did, and staying among his friends, thinking the audiences would have been prepared for her, she often found antagonism. It was one thing to hear defences 'of India from an Indian, but what authority did this foreign lady have?

To be continued...........

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The National Significance Of The, Swami Vivekananda's Life And Work - 5

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

Seated in his retreat at Belur, Vivekananda received visits and communications from all quarters. The vast surface might be silent, but deep in the heart of India, the Swami was never forgotten. None could afford, still fewer wished, to ignore him. No hope but was spoken into his ear,—no woe but he knew it, and strove to comfort or to rouse. Thus, as always in the case of a religious leader, the India that he saw presented a spectacle strangely unlike that visible to any other eye. For he held in his hands the thread of all that was fundamental, organic, vital ; he kne .v the secret springs of life ; he understood with what word to touch the heart of millions. And he had gathered from all this knowledge a clear and certain hope.
Let others blunder as they might. To him, the country was young, the Indian vernaculars still unformed, flexible, the national energy unexploited. The India of his dreams was in the future. The new phase of consciousness initiated today through pain and suffering was to be but first step in a long evolution. To him his country's hope was in herself. Never in the alien. True, his great heart embraced the alien's need, sounding a universal promise to the world. But he never sought for help, or begged for assistance. He never leaned on any. What might be done, it was the doer's privilege to do, not the recipient's to accept. He had neither fears nor hopes from without. To reassert that which was India's essential self, and leave the great stream of the national life, strong in a fresh self-confidence and vigour, to find its own way to the ocean, this was the meaning of his Sannyasa. For his was pre-eminently the Sannyasa of the greater service. To him, India was Hinduistic, Aryan, Asiatic. Her youth might make their own experiments in modern luxury. Had they not 'the right? Would they not return? But thegreat deeps of her being were moral, austere, and spiritual. A people who could embrace death by the Ganges-side were not long to be distraced by the glamour of mere mechanical power.

Buddha had preached renunciation, and in two centuries India had become an Empire. Let her but once more feel the great pulse through all her veins, and no power on earth would stand before her newly awakened energy. Only, it would be in her own life that she would find life, not in imitation ; from her own proper past and environment that she would draw inspiration, not from the foreigner. For he who thinks himself weak is weak: he who believes that he is strong is already invincible. And so for his nation, as for every individual, Vivekananda had but one word, one constantly reiterated message:

"Awake ! Arise ! Struggle on,
And stop not till the
Goal is reached!"

To be continued...........

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The National Significance Of The, Swami Vivekananda's Life And Work - 4

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

Such points, however, are only interesting as personal characteristics. Of a deeper importance is the question as to the conviction that spoke through them. What was this? Whither did it tend? His whole life was a search for the common basis of Hinduism. To his sound judgment the idea that two pice postage, cheap travel, and a common language of affairs could create a national unity, was obviously childish and superficial. These things could only be made to serve old India's turn if she already possessed a deep organic unity of which they might conveniently become an expression. Was such a unity existent or not? For something like eight years he wandered about the land changing his name at every village, learning of every one he met, gaining a vision as accurate and minute as it was profound and general. It was this great quest that overshadowed him with its certainty when, at the Parliament of Religions, he stood before the West and proved that Hinduism converged upon a single imperative of perfect freedom so completely as to be fully capable of intellectual aggression as any other faith. It never occurred to him that his own people were in any respect less than the equals of any other nation whatsoever. Being well aware that religion was their national expression, he was also aware that the strength which they might display in that sphere, would be followed before long, by every other conceivable form of strength.

As a profound student of caste,—his conversation teemed with its unexpected particulars and paradoxes!—he found the key to Indian unity in its exclusiveness. Mohammedans were but a single caste of the nation. Christians another, Parsis another, and so on ! It was true that of all these (with the partial exception of the last), non-belief in caste was a caste distinction. But then, the same was true of the Brahmo Samaj, and other modern sects of Hinduism. Behind all alike stood the great common facts of one soil ; one beautiful old routine of ancestral civilisation ; and the overwhelming necessities that must inevitably lead at last to common loves and common hates.

But he had learnt, not only the hopes and ideals of every sect and group of the Indian people, but their memories also. A child of the Hindu quarter of Calcutta returned to live by the Ganges-side, one would have supposed from his enthusiasm that he had been born, now in the Punjab, again in the Himalayas, at a third moment in Rajputana, or elsewhere. The songs of Guru Nanak alternated with those of Mira Bai and Tanasena on his lips. Stories of Prithvi Raj and Delhi jostled against those of Chitore and Pratap Singh, Shiva and Uma, Radha and Krishna, Sita-Ram and Buddha. Each mighty drama lived in a marvellous actuality, when he was the player. His whole heart and soul was a burning epic of the country, touched to an overflow of mystic passion by her very name.

To be continued...........

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The National Significance Of The, Swami Vivekananda's Life And Work - 3

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

To him, nothing Indian required apology. Did anything seem, to the pseudo-refinement of the alien, barbarous or crude? Without denying, without minimising anything his colossal energy was immediately concentrated on the vindication of .that particular point, and the unfortunate critic was tossed backwards and forwards on the horns of his own argument. One such instance occurred when an Englishman on boardship asked him some sneering question about the Puranas, and never can any who were present forget how he was pulverised, by a reply that made the Hindu Puranas, compare favourably with the Christian Gospels, but planted the Vedas and Upanishads high up beyond the reach of any rival. There was no friend that he would not sacrifice without mercy at such a moment in the name of national defence. Such an attitude was not, perhaps, always reasonable. It was often indeed frankly unpleasant. But it was superb in the manliness that even enemies must admire. To Vivekananda, again, everything Indian was absolutely and equally sacred, -"This land to which must come all souls wending their way Godward!" his religious consciousness tenderly phrased it. At Chicago, any Indian man attending the Great World Bazaar, rich or poor, high or low, Hindu, Mohammedan, Parsi, what not, might at any moment be brought by him to his hosts for hospitality and entertainment, and they well knew that any failure of kindness on their part to the least of these would immediately have
cost them his presence.

He was himself the exponent of Hinduism, but finding another Indian religionist struggling with the difficulty of presenting his case, he sat down and wrote his speech for him, making a better story for his friend's faith than its own adherent could have done! He took infinite pains to teach European disciples to eat with their fingers, and perform the ordinary simple acts of Hindu life. "Remember, if you love India at all, you must love her as she is, not as you might wish her to become" he used to say. And it was this great firmness of his, standing like a rock for what actually was, that did more than any other single fact, perhaps, to open the eyes of those aliens who loved him to the beauty and strength of that ancient poem—the common life of the common Indian people. For his own part, he was too free from the desire for approbation to make a single concession to newfangled ways. The best of every land had been offered him, but it left him still the simple Hindu of the old style, too proud of his simplicity to find any need of change. "After Ramakrishna, I follow Vidyasagar!" he exclaimed, only two days before his death, and out came the oftrepeated story of the wooden sandals coming pitter patter with the Chudder and Dhoti, into the Viceregal Council Chamber, and the surprised "But if you didn't want me, why did you ask me to come?" of the old Pundit, when they remonstrated.

To be continued...........

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