Nivedita

Nivedita (born October 28, 1867, Dungannon, Ireland [now in Northern Ireland]—died October 13, 1911, Darjeeling [Darjiling], India) was an Irish-born schoolteacher who was a follower of the Indian spiritual leader Vivekananda (Narendranath Datta) and became an influential spokesperson promoting Indian national consciousness, unity, and freedom.

The eldest child of Mary and Samuel Richmond Noble, Margaret became a teacher at the age of 17 and taught in different schools around Ireland and England before establishing her own school at Wimbledon in 1892. A good writer and speaker, she joined the Sesame Club in London, where she met fellow writers George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Huxley.

Noble met Vivekananda when he visited England in 1895, and she was attracted to the universal principles of Vedanta and to Vivekananda’s humanistic teachings. Accepting him as her guru (spiritual teacher) before he left England in 1896, she worked for the Vedanta movement in England until she went to India in 1898. Her great level of devotion compelled Vivekananda to give her the name Nivedita (“Dedicated One”). She went to India primarily to help Vivekananda realize his plans to educate women, and she opened a small school at Calcutta (now Kolkata) in Bengal, where she tried to blend Indian traditions with Western ideas. She closed the school in 1899 to raise funds abroad before returning in 1902 and reopening it. The following year she added courses to train young women in arts and crafts in addition to basic academic subjects.

Nivedita also made notable efforts to serve the poor of Calcutta and Bengal during times of plague, famine, and floods there. Following Vivekananda’s death in 1902, Nivedita turned her attention more toward India’s political emancipation. She objected strongly to the partition of Bengal in 1905 and, as part of her deep involvement in the revival of Indian art, supported the swadeshi (“our own country”) movement that called for the boycott of imported British goods in favour of domestically produced handmade goods. She continued to give lectures in India and overseas, promoting Indian arts and the education of Indian women.

Nivedita’s tireless activity, austere lifestyle, and disregard for her own welfare eventually caused her health to fail, and she died at the age of 44. During her close contact with the Indian people, they came to love their “sister” with devoted admiration bordering on veneration. The poet Rabindranath Tagore, one of her close friends, summed up that sentiment when, after her death, he referred to her as the “mother of the people.” Her school continued in operation in the early 21st century in present-day Kolkata under the management of the Ramakrishna Sarada Mission (a sister organization to the Ramakrishna Mission founded by Vivekananda in 1897).