Nivedita was a close friend of famous campaigning journalist Nevinson who had been the war correspondent and reported from the ground during several war situations like the Greco-Turkish war 1897, the Spanish-American war of 1898, the second Boer War and the 1905 revolution in Russia. Nevinson had also first brought to the notice of the larger western public the extremely inhuman slavery by European Colonizers in West Africa.
Nevinson was in close touch with Nivedita over matters pertaining to India and later recalled ‘There was, indeed, something flame-like about her, and not only her language but her whole vital personality often reminded me of fire’. Nevinson had also called Nivedita as ‘india-intoxicated’ and acknowledged the extraordinary powers she exercised over the thoughtful and active of the Indian patriots around her which he believed arose from her firsthand knowledge of ‘the insolence, degradation and maiming restrictions to which every subject traces necessarily exposed .’
Indeed, Nivedita was known to chant on the beads of her Japa-Mala not any sacred Sanskrit Mantra but one word that meant most to her – Bharatvarsha. India had become her Ishta, the chosen deity, 7 it were and all her work centred around this and this was reflected in her writings in the last decade of her life were marked by not just deep love and empathy, but, indeed great reverence for India.
At one place she writes, “This desire to serve, the longing to better conditions, to advance our fellows, to lift the whole, is the real religion of the present day. Everything else is doctrine, opinion, theory. Here is the fire of faith and action. Each day should begin with some conscious act of reference to it. A moment of silence, a hymn, a prayer, a salutation.” She hoped minds and hearts will be trained to the service of the jana-desha-dharma, and that will act as the motive-spring of all the struggles. Nivedita thought of ‘organised unselfishness’ as the foundation of National feeling.
And thus she urged and inspired the countrymen to immerse this little ‘self’ into the Virat of Bharatvarsha.
“The great teacher of Dakshineswar used to hold gold in one hand and earth in the other, and change them backwards and forwards, from hand to hand, muttering ‘Earth is Gold’! Gold is earth!’ till, having lost all sense of relative values, he could throw them both into the river. Similarly let us say, “India is all, I am nothing! India is all” till one idea alone remains with us, of throwing away self and life and ease, as so much dross, in the great stream of effort that is making for the national righteousness.”
It is clear that the keynote of Sister Nivedita’s work and mission in India was to create a strong national consciousness in Indian people. Each Indian should live for the country’s sake and hold oneself as an offering to Mother India was her constant thrust.
Steeped in the idea of reaching Advaita through rejecting dualities, she urged everyone to imagine India is one – as imagining so she would actually become one. To her India, in the ideal, was one and this unity was what all Indian people had to strive for arrive at.
In today’s times when people question whether India is or can ever be called a ‘nation’ and point out what they think is her ‘fragmentary nature’, Nivedita’s exhortation to her Indian brethren has an abiding value.
“Let love for the country and countrymen, for the People and Soil, be the mould into which our lives flow hot. If we reach this, every thought we think, every word of knowledge gained, will aid in making clearer and clearer the picture. With faith in the Mother, and Bhakti for India, the true interpretation of facts will come to us unsought. We shall see the country as united, where we were told that she was fragmentary. Thinking her united she will actually be so. The universe is the creation of the mind, not matter. And can any force in the world resist a single thought, held with intensity by three hundred millions of people?”
She hoped minds and hearts will be trained to the service of the jana-desha-dharma, and that will act as the motive-spring of all the struggles. She thought of ‘organised unselfishness’ as the foundation of national feeling.
On the foundation of ‘family ideal’, moving towards the larger ideal of ‘nationality’ is a constant refrain in Nivedita’s writings and wished the countrymen, particularly the youth have a deep cultivation of this ideal. “The centre of gravity must be for them, outside the family. We must demand from them sacrifices for India, Bhakti for India, learning for India.”
“The centre of gravity must be for them, outside the family. We must demand from them sacrifices for India, Bhakti for India, learning for India.”
“We are a nation, where every man is an organ of the whole, when every part of the whole is precious to us, when the family weighs nothing in comparison with the People.”
She was at her inspired best giving a call, just like her Master, to her countrymen for pledging their lives for sacrifice for the sake of the nation.
“Why should we limit the social motive to a man’s own family, or to his community? Why not alter the focus, till we all stand, aiming each at the good of all-others, and willing, if need be, to sacrifice himself, his family, and even his particular social group, for the good of the whole? The will of the hero is ever an impulse to self-sacrifice…. Shall I leave my family to struggle with poverty, unprovided? Away with the little vision! Shall we not eagerly die, both I and they, to show to the world what the Indian idea of duty may be? May not a single household be glad to starve, in order that a nation’s face may shine? The hero’s choice is made in a flash. To him, the larger vision is closer than the near.”
“If the whole of India could agree to give, say, ten minutes every evening, at the oncoming of darkness to thinking a single thought, ‘We are one. Nothing can prevail against us to make us think we are divided. For we are one. We are one and all antagonisms amongst us are illusions’ – the power that would be generated can hardly be measured.”
The selfless work during East Bengal Floods and Famine (1906)
If Nivedita spent time working out and forcefully propagating ideas for India’s rejuvenation she was always ready to immerse herself in hands-on humanitarian work caring a trifle for her own safety. Much like her work during the plague outbreak at the turn of the century she did exemplary service during the floods in East Bengal in 1906 when the region was in grip of a severe famine with hundreds of thousands dying. Nivedita, despite being unwell, left everything to live among the poor, starving villagers and strove to bring succour to them. She moved from village to village, studied their conditions, and upon return fell seriously ill with malarial fever.
Based on her first-hand observations she wrote her deeply evocative study, ‘Glimpses of Famine and Flood in East Bengal in 1906’, which is insightful about the dynamics of the village economy of the region and revealing on how the colonial policies had systematically pushed East Bengal from being the granary of Bengal to a land of famines. Her reportage from the field helped generate awareness of the abysmal conditions in the region and exposed the Governments’ lies that things were under control. She greatly praised the efforts of the Barisal-based nationalist Ashwinikumar Dutta who served as a Headmaster in a local school in galvanising a very large number of volunteers who worked for the people in the countrywide.
In the West again (1907-09)
From August 1907 to July 1909 when the Nationalist movement was ebbing and many prominent revolutionaries were being imprisoned, Nivedita along with the Bose couple, went westward. She met her family after a long time and had taken simple Indian gifts for them like reed pens, palm-leaf books, small baskets, Tulsi-and Rudraksha Malas, incense, amulets, spice-boxes etc. Her mothee at that time lived in Clapham. She continued with her journalistic activity, both in Indian as well as British press, and helped create a favourable opinion on Indian questions among sympathetic Englishmen. She delivered quite a few lectures on diverse themes in England. On the side she continued to work on writings on her Master, what she considered as the most important work of her life, which finally came out as ‘The Master as I saw Him’ in 1910. This shall be discussed in greater detail in a separate section.
During this visit she again met Josephine Macleod – their first meeting after the passing away of Swamiji – the polestar of lives of both these ladies. She also spent a few days with the Bose couple in Germany.
She stayed in Ireland for a period where she fondly remembered her childhood days. Then she visited America and lectured at several places. Along with Mrs Bull and Jagadish Bose, she also planned the course of education of Bhupendranath Datta, who, as mentioned before, had been recently sent by her to America for higher education.
She met personalities in America who were sympathetic to the Indian cause like Reverend Jabez Sunderland whose major work on the colonial exploitation of India titled ‘India in Bondage, Her Right to Freedom and a Place among Nations’ had significant impact on Indian patriots of the day. Bhupendranath too was in touch with him and was deeply influenced by his ideas.
She met for a brief time Frank J. Alexander, a journalist, who later became a major collaborator in the grand project of writing the biography of Swami Vivekananda titled ‘The Life of Swami Vivekananda: By his Eastern and Western Disciples’. Nivedita too had contributed substantially to this work. The two met at the New York Grand Central Station for about 45.minutes. Alexander later recalled this recalled this meeting as follows :
During my journalistic experience of five or six years, during which time I have interviewed all types of people from United States senators to interesting hodcarriers and from famous artists to turbulent leaders of labour, I have never met a personality which impressed me in less than am hour’s time with being possessed of such a synthetic mind and cyclonic personal energy.”
Later Alexander arrived in India in 1911 and spent two years at Advaita Ashram in Mayawati in the Kumaon hills. Two years later he moved to Almora with the aim of doing intense Tapasya. His failing health forced him to return to America in 1915 where he passed away two years later. He was a major contributor to Ramakrishna Order’s journal Prabuddha Bharata and authored a book titled ‘Thoughts on Meditation’.
While she was in America Nivedita came to know of her mother’s failing health. As result she rushed back and served her mother during her last days. Her mother passed away in January 1909. Her mother was given a cremation, not a burial, and her ashes were later buried beside the burial site of her father at the cemetery of Great Torrington in Devonshire.