Upon return to Calcutta from the four month travel in North India, Nivedita stayed for a while in the quarters of Holy Mother at 10/2 Bosepara Lane in Bagh Bazar area of North Calcutta. There the Mother lived with several of her women companions like Golap Ma, Yogin-Ma and Gopaler Ma. It was a great education for Nivedita in orthodox Indian customs and spiritual life practised by women in traditional Indian manner. Holy Mother took her meals with her and thus all orthodoxy was broken. This was later described by Nivedita in great detail in her later works ‘The Web of Indian Life’ and ‘Studies from an Eastern Home.’
Sometime later, Nivedita rented a separate house very near to the Mother’s house in the same lane, where she began to live. She continued to visit the Mother regularly and did personal services like dusting, sweeping and such work.
Nivedita later recorded that “those months between November 1898 and June 1899, were full of happy glimpses.” She marvelled at the personality of the Holy Mother and with her characteristic insight reflected, “To me it has always appeared that she is Sri Ramakrishna’s final word as to the ideal of Indian womanhood. But is she the last of an old order, or the beginning of a new? In her, one sees realised that wisdom and sweetness to which the simplest of women may attain. And yet, to myself the stateliness of her courtesy and her great open mind are almost as wonderful as her sainthood. I have never known her hesitate, in giving utterance to large and generous judgement, however new or complex might be the question put before her.”
Nivedita attributed this to the great unerring intuition with which the Mother went “straight to the heart of the matter, and sets the questioner in the true attitude to the difficulty.”
At her own quarters she started her school with a handful of girls. The school was inaugurated on the 13th November, the auspicious day of Kali Puja (also Deepawali) by Holy Mother in presence of Swamiji as well as some of his other brother-disciples.
It was difficult to get girls from orthodox Hindu society to allow their girls to attend the school. When Nivedita visited homes to get girls for her school, she often faced humiliation. Very often she was not asked inside their homes; in cases she was, Gangajal was sprinkled later for purification. With great forbearance, she took everything in her stride and implored the parents with folded hands to send their girls to the school. Eventually she got a few girls, whose mothers, were not educated.
It is not that girls’ education was already not prevalent in Calcutta then. Indeed, the first female grafuate in enture beit8sh empire (that is even before a British woman) was Kadambini Bose, a Calcutta girl. There were pioneers like Ishwarchanda Vidyasagar, Drinkwater Bethune and Ann Ackroyd who had started institutions where girls from elite families attended. Besides, there was the Victoria Institution, started by Keshabchandra Sen that was run along lines of the Brahmo thought. But they followed a western mode of education while Nivedita was experimenting with educational methods anchored in the country’s traditional culture. Also Nivedita’s pupils were from families where the mothers were not educated, unlike the Brahmo families which largely belonged to the city’s elite.
There was one Mahakali Pathshala run on tradutional Hindu lines by a Maharashtrian Mataji which Nivedita had visited with Swamiji and was impressed by it.
While Vivekananda, when not travelling, lived at the newly started monastery at Belur situated on the other side of the Ganges, on his visits to Calcutta, he almost invariably sent for Nivedita to join him, either at noon or evening meal. Nivedita also noted with gratitude that her Master would always make a special effort to offer hospitality at Belur to those who had been kind and helpful to her.
In the following March the Swami gave Nivedita vows of Naishthik Brahmacharya (lifelong celibacy) and also instructed that she would have to remould her thoughts, needs, conceptions, and habits in line with the people she was now living with. Impressing upon her to redefine her whole personality totally he said, “Your life, internal and external, has to become all that an orthodox Brahmin brahmacharini’s ought to be. You will have to forget your own past, and cause it to be forgotten. You have to lose even its memory.” It is a wonder how Nivedita could quickly grasp the pulse of an alien culture so quickly as reflected in her later work and writings.
During this period Vivekananda, himself a highly accomplished singer and musician, taught Nivedita to sing Indian melodies. She later recalled how important even this part of her training was in understanding the ideals of the country she had come to make her own, “ ..in feeble and faltering fashion, it is true, but yet in some sort of unison with its great choir, inasmuch as, with them, I learn to listen through the music, even while following, for the revelation it could bring of a nation’s ideals and a nation’s heart.”
Calcutta Plague of 1899 : Her first great humanitarian work
In the summer of 1899 a deadly plague broke out in the Baghbazar locality in Calcutta. Even a year back a plague had struck but that had come under control. Everyday a hundred persons were reported to be dying. The northern part of the city, particularly the Bagh Bazaar area was very seriously hit. Swamiji instructed young monks and brahmacharis to go all out in serving others even at the cost of their lives. He gave the charge of this initiative to Nivedita who had previous experience of civic volunteering and nursing, that she had acquired during her days in the mining town of Wrexham.
Nivedita exemplified such sterling spirit of a selfless humanitarian that local people were stunned. She led from the front by cleaning the streets of Bagh Bazaar, motivating others to come forward for the same. People got a practical lesson in civic duty. She conducted surveys, ran a makeshift dispensary, organised volunteers and planned the delegation of work. She kept awake night after night nursing and serving the ill even when there was no hope for their survival.
The renowned doctor of those times, Radha Gobinda Kar, in whose name a major Government Hospital in north Kolkata is located, had witnessed Nivedita’s sterling service at close quarters and later recorded :
“During this calamity, the compassionate figure of Sister Nivedita was seen in every slum of the Baghbazar. She helped others with money without giving a thought to her own condition. At one time when her own diet consisted only of milk and fruits, she gave up milk to meet the medical expenses of a patient.” He also narrated how Nivedita sat for hours together in most damp and weather-beaten huts with dying children in her lap, comforting them even in his last moments.”
Many years later Nivedita spoke on how important it was to integrate your life with the ones one wishes to serve in a lecture in Britain:
“I would say that there is no possibility of true work, no shadow of a possibility of a great life, where there is not this sense of union with the place and the people amongst whom we find ourselves. What a little thing it would be to any of us to die for one whom we really loved!…It is such love as this that makes it possible to live and do great service.”
Introduction to the Calcutta intelligentsia
During this time she also delivered an important lecture on Kali on 13th February at the Albert Hall presided by the redoubtable physician and founder of ‘Indian Institute for Cultivation of Science’ Dr Mahendralal Sarkar. An even grander success followed on a lecture on the same theme at the precincts of the Kalighat Temple on 29th May. It was highly appreciated and the copies of the same were circulated widely. A foreign born lady delivering a lecture on Kali at the age-old revered place of Kali worship to an audience mostly compromising Indians was something that could not have been imagined then – indeed it is difficult to picture it in the mind even now.
In these lectures Nivedita also talked about how cultural ideas from the Orient made way to the western world, and her ideas were marked by her deep study and knowledge of world history as indicated by the following excerpts from those lectures :
“In the old days, long before the birth of Buddhism, she (India) was the land of treasures to which men must go for precious stones, and sandalwood and ivory. Then came the time when she meant much to the Western day that was dawning in Greece. The days of Buddhism, when her Gymnosophists taught the Greek philosopher her ancient wisdom, even then, perhaps, ancient. Again came our Middle Ages, when the countries round the Mediterranean had somewhat recovered breath, and the Crusades began. The Crusades – which were the Meeting ground between the East and the West – the Eastern tendencies and interests all streaming towards Baghdad, and thence being thrown on the Syrian deserts by the Saracen.
“Here ln the Crusades, and afterwards in the Moorish occupation of Spain, and always in the streets and by-ways of those fascinating old ports of Venice and Genoa, must have been born of the true mystery of the name of India.”
In these lectures Nivedita also contrasted the ideal for women in India which had selflessness and service as its pivot as opposed to the ‘Lady Ideal’ of the West that had external refinedness and sophistication at its centre.
“The idea of Lady is foreign to India, and those who love the country cannot be too thankful that it is so. Not that Indian woman should be deprived of anything that would make life noble than any exotic notion. It must be through the intensifying of the Indian ideal of selflessness and wisdom and social power that emancipation shall come.
“And this absence of luxury and self-indulgence from the ideal conception of Indian womanhood is fitly imaged in this symbol that you make to yourself of God, the most precious religious symbol in the world, perhaps God the Mother, – and the Queen, – the Mother.
“And of this symbol you have made three forms – Durga, Jagaddhatri, and Kali.”
Thus through her platform work as also interactions with eminent citizens of Calcutta, Nivedita, through sociological insight, intellectual brilliance and an eye for going into the very depth of things which was largely bestowed on her by her Master, she announced her arrival on the Indian scene with great conviction that Indian culture and traditions had no apology to make.
The English society of Calcutta, the more liberal sections of the Bengali elite, as well as the orthodox sections of the society now began to take notice of this strange personality, very different from any of the westerners they had come across before.
Contact with the Brahmo Movement
It was also during this period of her stay in Calcutta that she developed ties with many leading families of Calcutta, who were largely swayed by the Brahmo ideas first expounded by Raja Rammohan Roy and in subsequent generations very adroitly carried on by Keshabchandra Sen, Shivnath Shastri, and Debendranath Tagore. The last mentioned belonged to the famed Jorasanko Thakurbari and had several illustrious children like Satyendranath Tagore (the first Indian ICS recruit), Jyotirindranath Tagore, Swarnakumari Debi, and the most (almost miraculously) gifted of all – his youngest son – Rabindranath.
The Brahmo movement was a reformist movement that did not subscribe to idol worship while taking its inspiration primarily from the Vedantic ideas of the Upanishadic texts. Naturally, they were at some discomfiture with the ideas of Kali worship and did not quite understood the significance of the Ramakrishna phenomenon, who they perhaps thought no more than a traditional saintly figure, one who officiated as a priest in a Kali temple, despite the closeness and mutual adoration Ramakrishna had with the stalwart Brahmo leader Keshabchandra Sen who had passed away in 1883.
The Brahmo society, mostly comprising Calcutta elite, might have felt a little perplexed at the great and wide attraction a large number of persons from the country and even abroad were increasingly having towards what they thought as the cult of Sri Ramakrishna – chiefly due to the influence of his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda about whose brilliance they hardly harboured any doubts. What they found difficult to comprehend was how Vivekananda – who in the West was propounding the Vedanta philosophy in its purest form, upon returning to India began to include several features of Orthodox Hinduism like ritualistic worship, observance of traditional festivals and most of all the worship of his Guru in the routines of the Ramakrishna Order he was formalising. It might be fair to say that they could not resolve within their minds the apparent ambivalence in Vivekananda, though fully realising that he was no ordinary a man.
Nivedita tried to act as interlocutor of the fledgling Ramakrishna Movement with the Brahmo society, particularly the highly influential Tagore family of Jorasanko. Initially, she had been invited to deliver a series of lectures on Education every Thursday at the Brahmo Samaj where she made acquaintance of Suniti Devi and Sucharu Devi the two daughter of Keshab Chandra Sen. But more significantly, she frequently met Saraladebi, daughter of Swarnakumari (Rabindranath’s sister) who edited the journal ‘Bharati’ started by her mother, and was enthused with ideas of national advancement, education, and improvement in the lot of women and general masses. Nivedita was also in touch with Satyendranath’s son Surendranath who had a pronounced zeal for revolutionary ideas for the country’s freedom. And most importantly she was in touch with the greatest of the Tagores- Rabindranath himself
When Nivedita first met him, the poet requested her to take responsibility of tutoring his children in a western way, a practice commonly prevalent in the Bengali aristocracy of the day. Nivedita not just declined the offer but also censured the very idea of teaching children in a language other than their mother-tongue and in ways not aligned with their culture and surroundings.
Sometime soon, she had set up a tea party at her Bosepara house where she had invited some prominent Calcuttans she had made acquaintance of, including Rabindranath and Vivekananda. Thus the two titans of Modern India met at Nivedita’s house in Bagh Bazaar.
The meeting went well though Nivedita had sensed some tension in the ambience. Tagore regaled his companions by singing a few of his compositions. It is to be noted that Vivekananda, a year and half younger than the poet, was even from his pre-monastic days, familiar with the latter’s early spiritual and prayer songs, some of which he sung even in presence of Sri Ramakrishna. He had even included twelve of them a compilation called Sangeet Kalpataru – a compendium of songs he had published even before he took to monastic life. He was however, not much fond of some of Rabindranath’s love songs and poetry, and some other literary works of the Tagore family which he found were too sensuous, and at times positively amorous, for his taste. Thus in general he had a mixed opinion about the literary contributions of the several creative members of the House of Tagores.
On 19th of February Nivedita accompanied Vivekananda to the Joradanko House to visit the Maharshi Debendranath Thakur who received them very cordially. After this meeting they came to another hall where some other members of the family conversed with them. Rabindranath was at that time in the East Bengal family estate of Selaidaha.
Vivekananda was not very pleased with the visit and dinners that Nivedita went to on invitations from the Calcutta elite. He would have rather wanted her to live a more conventional life of a Hindu Brahmacharini and not dissipate her energies in fruitless socialisation, but Nivedita thought it was important for her to know and familiarise herself with miscellaneous strands of the Indian society. The Swami, while making his observations, left her free to make her own decisions, as had been his wont with all his disciples.