The Transformation OF Margaret Into Nivedita - 4

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

Clash and Conflict - 2

Assaults like this on her deep-rooted preconceptions gave Nivedita intense pain and the inner strife grew high. It must be said to Nivedita's credit that, amidst all this clash and conflict, it never occurred to her to retract her own 'proffered service.'

Seeing that the pain inflicted might easily go too far, one of the older disciples interceded with the Swami. Agreeing with her, Swamiji gave up all rebuke and became quiet, never to repeat this treatment. He lifted his hands and blessed his most rebellious disciple, who by this time was kneeling before him. It was a moment of peaceful reconciliation. And the disciple realized the true significance of the blessing that evening; 'alone in meditation I found myself gazing deep into an infinite Good, to the recognition of which no egoistic reasoning had led me.' During his own discipleship as Narendra, Swamiji had been as difficult to convince as Nivedita now was.
To Nivedita herself the significance of the blessing lay in the fact that her Master once again proved the truth of Sri Ramakrishna's prophecy that Naren would manifest his own great gift of bestowing knowledge with a touch.

But in this apparently personal experience of the submission of a proud disciple to a taskmaster of a guru, the former an English lady and the latter a sannyasi from India, there seems to be an importance beyond their personalities and their individual circumstances. This genuine revolution in the mind of the Western disciple of the Swami, is an event of national significance for India-and perhaps also for Britain. For this daughter of England was destined to fulfil the singular role of explaining 'the Web of Indian Life' to the West.

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Sister Nivedita: The Dedicated - Who gave her all to India – 53

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

The offerings

Her deep love for India was expressed in all walks of life –politics, education, art, literature, sociology, spirituality etc. A spiritual person is all dimensional. That is how Sister Nivedita was. She was a revolutionary, she was a Yogini too. She was an educationist and she was an art critic too. She was a writer and she was involved in rendering service to the people also, be at flood time or plague time. She was at once a child at the feet of Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi and also a Lokmata to all as she was called by Ravindranath Tagore and above all she was Sister of all.

Sister Nivedita was the fruit of penance that Swami Vivekananda did in the west. When Swami Vivekananda went to the west, he was without friends, without money and without recognition. Only the knowledge and experience of Hindu Dharma was with him. After his exposition of Hindu Dharma in the Parliament of Religions, he was revered in the West for his knowledge and help came from all quarters, the disciples gathered from all directions. Thus when he returned to India, he was a world-famous Swami Vivekananda; the western disciples were with him. This had a great visual impact on people of India. They could feel the greatness and relevance of Hindu Dharma. Epitome of this efficacy and relevance of Hindu Dharma and of the work of Swami Vivekananda was Sister Nivedita.

The self-confidence of Indians was at the lowest ebb at the end of 19th century as the result of Macaulay Education. As told by Rabindranath Tagore, we needed a friend from outside who could tell us what was good in us. And Margaret Noble as Nivedita was called before was from the very race which had robbed India of her wealth as well as of her confidence. But Nivedita came to India to live like us, to serve us and also to practice all that was higher and noble in our spiritual tradition. She could see beauty and wisdom in all walks of Indian life.

Swami Vivekananda had said, "O you of great fortune! I too believe that India will awake again if anyone could love with all his heart the people of the country -- bereft of the grace of affluence, of blasted fortune, their discretion totally lost, downtrodden, ever - starved, quarrelsome, and envious." Sister Nivedita was a person of that great fortune! She loved India and Indians with all their faults. May her life make us love our motherland and our people. May her life give us an insight in our own country and inspiration to work for Mother India. 

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The Transformation OF Margaret Into Nivedita - 3

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

Clash and Conflict

But this was not all. While Swami Vivekananda was thus trying to bring about right understanding about India in Nivedita's mind, he realised that another kind of treatment was also needed.

When they reached the Himalayas, leaving behind the plains, Swamiji's talks shifted to topics like history, literature and sociology of India, England and other nations. But, while Swamiji talked, Nivedita was not a passive listener. As in London and elsewhere, Nivedita argued and fought for her own point of view; and her point of view; as regards England and British imperialism in India, was totally prejudiced. There was a strong bias in Nivedita's reading of India; she idealised the English race and all their deeds in history.
 
Like most professional humanists who are unable to make the connection between the prolonged and sordid cruelty of such practices as slavery, colonialist and racial oppression, and imperial subjection on the one hand, and the poetry, fiction, and philosophy of society that engages in these practices on the other, Margaret could not suspect, much less free herself from, the common consensus to imperialism in the contemporary British society in which she was born and brought up. Like all other decent men and women around her, she was simply unaware of the moral iniquity involved in imperialism. Margaret's fervent patriotism towards England-except in the question of Ireland-was such that she held that whatever English did was right and noble.
 
Swamiji saw that, though it would cause infinite pain, the blindness of such half views must be one away with and that the disciple's mind must be brought to change its centre of gravity, must he emancipated from partiality. This was at once her great weakness and her great strength-her total loyalty and dedication, wherever she was committed (and he had aptly named her 'Nivedita'-The dedicated'), always cast its own shadow of prejudice against the other side. This could make or break her life in India; it could, when she was left alone, leave her vulnerable and totally exposed. For her own sake he gave no quarter, and attacked her cherished prepossessions mercilessly. He had always encouraged the fighter in her, and she fought back.

Once during a conversation, exasperated by the impossibility of getting an unclouded judgement from her, Swamiji exclaimed, 'Really, patriotism like yours is sin! 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!'

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