Sister Nivedita

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Sister Nivedita (born October 28, 1867 in Dungannon as Margaret Elizabeth Noble , † October 13, 1911 in Darjeeling ) was a student of Swami Vivekananda in India as a social reformer in charity and educational work and as an author.

biography

Sister Nivedita

Margaret Elizabeth Noble was born on October 28, 1867 in Dungannon, Northern Ireland , to Pastors Samuel Richmond Noble and Mary Esabel Noble. After her father's death when she was ten years old, she was raised by her maternal grandfather, Hamilton, one of the leading men in the freedom movement in Ireland. She initially received her school education at a strict and disciplined church boarding school in London. Then she and her sister attended Halifax College, founded by the congregational church, whose director at the time, a member of the Free Church Brethren movement (Plymouth Brethen), attached great importance to conveying the relevance of the students' personal beliefs. Margaret received lessons in physics, art, music and literature and showed her interest in religious and socio-political issues.

At the age of seventeen she completed her training as a teacher and since then has been involved in promoting education, primarily for children.

In 1884 she opened the Rushkin School at Wimbledon for the education of children and adults and was a co-founder of the Congress of Modern Pedagogy, which placed the concept of child experience at the center of its pedagogy . Referring to the pedagogy of Froebel and Pestalozzi , she was involved in educational work. She wrote newspaper articles and published magazines to spread her views.

In November 1895 she took part in a reading by Swami Vivekananda on Vedantic philosophy in the drawing room of an English aristocratic family. Then she devoted herself to the study of his writings and became increasingly enthusiastic about the teachings of the sannyàsin, so that she soon raised him to her spiritual role model ( guru ). Vivekananda accepted the sincerity and determination she showed.

After teaching her about the recent circumstances of colonial India and the "eternal [...] spiritual history" of the country behind it, which is marked by poverty and propagated in the colonial discourse as "uneducated and uncivilized", she traveled to India in January 1898 to participate in Vivekananda's efforts to establish an Indian nation. Margaret was delegated by him the task of women's education, since this, according to Vivekananda's conviction, can only be taken over by foreign women, such as Magaret, who are characterized by sincerity, purity and love, ambition:

'Let me tell you frankly that I am now convinced that you have a great future in the work for India. What was wanted was not a man, but a woman — a real lioness — to work for Indians, women especially. India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Your education, sincerity, purity, immense love, determination and above all, the Celtic blood make you just the woman wanted. '

Your contact person and spiritual leader in India was Sri Sri Ma Sarada Devi (1853–1920), Ramakrishna's widow , who was considered the “Holy Mother” of her order. For Magaret, she embodied an incomparable personality, characterized by love, purity, simplicity and care. Vivekananda took her vow as Brahmacharya from her and gave her the name "Nivedita". Until 1902 she was a member of the Ramakrishna Mission (founded by Vivekananda in 1897). Nivedita died in Darjeeling on October 13, 1911.

Educational work

In 1898, Nivedita opened a girls 'school, the Ramkrishna Sarada Mission Sister Nivedita Girls' School for Indian girls, in a room in a poor district in Calcutta , which still exists today. She was involved in youth work and had a great influence on the younger generation. Soon she understood her teaching as a charity work not only for the Indian population, but as part of the Vivekanandas global project to show all humanity the way through Indian spirituality . According to Vivekananda, she should take an example from the Buddha's selflessness . In order to advance the construction of further educational institutions and to promote the education of the Indian population, she made trips to England and the USA (1899-1902) to seek financial support there. During 1902–1904 she gave speeches in Patna, Lucknow, Varanasi, Bombay, Nagpur and Madras, in which she appealed to the national self-confidence of the Indians and encouraged them to stand up for the independence of their country. She also invested the proceeds from all her publications in building schools and promoting education.

Medical aid

After the flood disaster in East Bengal and the subsequent famine, Nivedita provided active assistance and recruited the youth to help with the reconstruction. In newspaper articles she informed about the inaction of the British rulers in the crisis situation in Bengal . She worked as a nurse during the plague epidemic in India.

National political commitment

Nivedita appealed to the youth to develop national pride and self-esteem and to work towards the liberation of British supremacy. She wanted to achieve this through a national education program and national political reforms. In doing so, she postulated the potential of Indian spirituality to override the predominance of the materialistically oriented West, but at the same time affirmed Western ideals as a necessary moment in India's development:

"Our art, our science [...] for the last sixty years, are filled with the voices of despair [...] the culture of the West can but stay and cry," to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath shall be taken away even that which he hath "[...] Is this also the verdict of Eastern wisdom? If so, what hope is there for humanity? I find in my Master's life (ie Vivekananda) an answer to this question. I see in him the heir to the spiritual discoveries and religious sstruggles of innumerable teachers and saints in the past of India and the world, and at the same time the pioneer and prophet of a new and future order of development. " (from Nivedita's essay "The Modern Despair")

According to Nivedita, the universal truth about religion, human character and their relationship to one another was based in the doctrines of Vivekananda, to which she professed in an orthodox manner and which she wanted to be understood as the core of Hinduism :

"[Hinduism is] almost alone amongst formulated faiths, has a section devoted to absolute and universal truths ..."

"The object of all religious systems is the formation of character."

Nivedita was in contact with leading personalities, including a. Sri Aurobindo, the first independence movement ( Swadeshi movement ) of India, which was initiated by the Bengal Partition Act of Curzon in 1905 , and enabled the transfer of information between the politics of Great Britain (in Europe and India) and that of India. She also had a formative influence on Rabindranatha Tagore and well-known politicians such as Surendranath Bannerjea, Gopalakrishna Gokhale, Ramesh Chandra Dutta, Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh.

Opinions about Nivedita

Rabindranath Tagore: "I had felt her great power, but with all that I understood that her path was not for me. She was a versatile genius, and there was another thing in her nature; that was her militancy. She had power and she exerted that power with full force on the lives of others. When it was not possible to agree with her, it was impossible to work with her. "

Mr. AJF Blair: "A tall, robust woman in the very prime of life. Her face in repose was almost plain. The cheekbones were high and the jaws were supreme. The face at the first glance expressed energy and determination, but you would hardly have looked at it again but for the forehead and the eyes. The eyes were a calm, deep blue, and literally lit up the whole countenance. "

Mr. Nevinson: "It is as vain to describe Sister Nivedita in two pages as to reduce fire to a formula and call it knowledge. There was, indeed, something flame-like about her, and not only her language but her whole vital personality often reminded me of fire. Like fire, and like Shiva, Kali, and other Indian powers of the spirit, she was once destructive and creative, terrible and beneficent. "

Nivedita's role in the colonial discourse

As a middle person of European descent between the British colonial power, the Indian educated elite (including Swami Vivekanadas) and the Indian population, Nivedita's positioning in the colonial discourse had a formative effect on the formation of the Indian population's identity.

Through her socio-political commitment, in her publications and speeches, she affirmed the dichotomous discourse structure of the colonial era, in which the “materialistic West” and the “spiritual East” were antagonistic. In contrast to the “materialistic West”, which saw itself in superposition to the “spiritual East”, Nivedita propagated the “spiritual superiority” of India based on Vivekananda's new interpretation of Advaita Vedanta (ie Neo-Induism ). In the period after Nivedita, too, “Indian spirituality” functioned in the narrative of Indian nationalist reform movements as the decisive factor in the new Indian self-image and self-confidence that it was able to break free from the domination of the West as an autonomous society.

Works

  • Kali the Mother (1900)
  • The Web of Indian Life (1904)
  • Studies from an Eastern Home (1913)

Web links

Commons : Sister Nivedita  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Nivedita of India. Kolkata: Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. 2002. ISBN 81-87332-20-4 .
  2. ↑ a b c Constance Jones; James D. Ryan (2007). Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Infobase Publishing. pp. 316-317. ISBN 978-0-8160-7564-5 . and Google Books
  3. ^ Foxrock Local History Club Ulster History Society. MARGARET NOBLE (SISTER NIVEDITA) (1867-1911). available at. http://www.hidden-gems.eu/new.html , as of June 17, 2015
  4. ^ Nivedita of India. Kolkata: Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. 2002. ISBN 81-87332-20-4 .
  5. ^ Nivedita of India. Kolkata: Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. 2002. ISBN 81-87332-20-4 , p. 3.
  6. ↑ a b Biography of Sister Nivedita on rkmdarjeeling.org . Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  7. ^ Website of the Ramkrishna Sarada Mission Sister Nivedita Girls' School
  8. ↑ a b c d e f Ursula King : Indian Spirituality, Western Materialsim: An Image and ist Function in the Reinterpretation of Modern Hinduism. In: Social Action. New Delhi. 1978. 28. pp. 62-86. Here: p. 72ff.
  9. ↑ a b c Sister Nivedita (Miss Margaret E. Noble) [1868-1911] on srisaradamath.org . Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  10. ↑ a b Ursula King: Indian Spirituality, Western Materialsim: An Image and ist Function in the Reinterpretation of Modern Hinduism, in: Social Action. New Delhi. 1978. 28. pp. 62-86.
  11. ^ Nivedita of India. Kolkata: Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. 2002. ISBN 81-87332-20-4 , p. 7.
  12. ^ The Writings of Sister Nivedita (Margaret E. Noble). Internet Sacred Texts Archive . Retrieved June 18, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Nivedita, sister
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Noble, Margaret Elizabeth (real name); Nibeditā, sister
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish social reformer and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Dungannon
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1911
Place of death Darjeeling