Sister Nivedita, Master As I Saw Him

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Sister Nivedita , born Margaret Elizabeth Noble; 28 October 1867 – 13 October 1911) was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda.[3][4] She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. From her father, a college professor, she learned the ideal of service to mankind as the true service to God.

She worked as a school teacher and later also opened a school. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement. Sister Nivedita met Swami Vivekananda in 1895 in London and travelled to Calcutta (present-day Kolkata), India in 1898. Swami Vivekananda gave her the name Nivedita (meaning "Dedicated to God") when he initiated her into the vow of Brahmacharya on 25 March 1898. In November 1898, she opened a girls' school in the Bagbazar area of Calcutta. She wanted to educate girls who were deprived of even basic education.

During the plague epidemic in Calcutta in 1899, Nivedita nursed and took care of the poor patients. Nivedita had close associations with the newly established Ramakrishna Mission. Because of her active contribution in the field of Indian Nationalism, she had to publicly dissociate herself from the activities of the Ramakrishna Mission under the then president Swami Brahmananda. She was very close to Sarada Devi, the spiritual consort of Ramakrishna and one of the major influences behind Ramakrishna Mission, and also with all brother disciples of Swami Vivekananda. She died on 13 October 1911 in Darjeeling. Her epitaph reads, "Here lies Sister Nivedita who gave her all to India".

"The whole history of the world shows that the Indian intellect is second to none. This must be proved by the performance of a task beyond the power of others, the seizing of the first place in the intellectual advance of the world. Is there any inherent weakness that would make it impossible for us to do this? Are the countrymen of Bhaskaracharya and Shankaracharya inferior to the countrymen of Newton and Darwin? We trust not. It is for us, by the power of our thought, to break down the iron walls of opposition that confront us, and to seize and enjoy the intellectual sovereignty of the world. "


“Most of us will find that we were born for service. We must leave the results to God. If failure comes, there need be no sorrow. The work was done only for God. - Swami Vivekananda”
― Sister Nivedita, Master As I Saw Him


“If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realization. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid.”
― Sister Nivedita


“a single generation enamoured of foreign ways is almost enough in history to risk the whole continuity of civilization and learning.”
― Sister Nivedita