The Dedicated

Miss Margaret Elizabeth Noble who later became Bhagini Nivedita was born on Oct 28, 1867.

Margaret was the eldest with a sister May and brother Richmond. Her father Samuel Noble used to take Margaret for service. He had set an example of perfect self-abnegation and he strictly lived his religion which gave moral value to everything he did. A missionary returned from India when came to visit Samuel saw Margaret and said : ‘India seeks diligently for her God! India will summon you, perhaps, as it has summoned me. Be ready always.’ At that time itself she had looked for India on the map. Just at the age of 34 years her father passed away whispering Margaret’s name to her mother, had said: ‘When God calls her, let her go. She will spread her wings…She will do great things.’

Margaret had her schooling at Halifax where she developed taste for literature due to inspiration from her Principal. She had many questions in mind. ‘Can death really destroy life? What happens to the life element during death if nothing is ever destroyed in the successive transformations?’ She used to ask her Principal :’I believe in God, but I want to understand. How did the first thing began?’ She opened the Bible and read passionately but she was not satisfied. She took book of science and with logic tried to understand it. But it was difficult at that time.

She was maturing quickly. Her expansiveness gave way to reflection. She had come to realize that religion was a vaster science even than chemistry and physics and that one had to find within oneself, by personal experience, the answer to all spiritual problems.

To help her mother, Margaret took up first job as a teacher at the age of 18 years. For her spiritual urge, she joined High Church in Keswick where she used to worship with all sincerity. With her worship of the altar cross, with the flowers, the incense, the candles, she associated the whole of Nature. In the rituals she chanted litanies, she beheld the saints and martyrs and with all that she used to find her soul filled with a deep religious longing. Margaret was learning that the more the soul develops and the more beauty it absorbs, the more insatiable it becomes for the infinite.

In 1887, she had been to an orphanage at Rugby to learn from the experiment that of poverty as to how strong were her powers of renunciation and self-sacrifice. And, after an year she felt it was a fulfilling experience which opened a wider field to her. In another experiment at Wrexham, a large mining center, where she was appointed as mistress in a secondary school, she got experience in ‘welfare work’ and found that a spacious field of action was awaiting her. To express her feelings, she started writing in newspapers. Later she helped to start a school at Wimbledon where she did her experiments on new education.
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The Dedicated

‘I believe that India is one, indissoluble, indivisible. National Unity is built on the common home, the common interest, and the common love.
I believe that the strength which spoke in Vedas and Upanishads, in the making of religions and empires, in the learning of scholars and the meditation of the saints, is born once more amongst us, and its name today is Nationality.
I believe that the present of India is deep-rooted in her past, and that before her shines a glorious future.
O Nationality, come thou to me as joy or sorrow, as honor or as shame! Make me thine own!’ – These are the powerful words that Sister Nivedita wrote in ‘Karmayogin’ dated 12 March 2010. How did she own up India so much?

Miss Margaret Elizabeth Noble was born at Dungannon in Ireland on Oct 28, 1867. Her father Samuel Richmond was a student of theology in the Wesleyan Church in North Ireland. He used to take Margaret whenever he conducted services or visited the poor. He died at the young age of 34 years but left a deep impression of his religious zeal on her mind. From such background, Margaret became Sister Nivedita, Nivedita of Ramakrishna – Vivekananda and dedicated her whole life for Bharat, Hindu Dharma. As a matter of fact, of her 44 years of life, she spent just 13 years in India. But her Guru, Swami Vivekananda had given her the key to the country and its people, and she had submitted herself to the austere and exacting discipline which enabled her to make use of this key. Her amazing vitality, both multiplied and channeled by that ascetism and that consecration, was such that even today there is scarcely any field – religion, pedagogy, science, art, politics, society – in which she did not leave her mark. And all the leaders of India who made the epoch from 1895 to 1914 famous, were her intimate friends. How could she do so much in just 13 years?

‘I love India as the birthplace of the highest and the best of all religions, as the country that has the grandest mountains, the Himalayas. The country where the homes are simple, where domestic happiness is most to be found, and where the women unselfishly, unobtrusively, ungrudgingly serve the dear ones from early morn to dewy eve.’ Having such vivid picturesque explanation of Bharatiya life by Sister Nivedita is all amazing. How could Nivedita became one with the soil of this nation?

She attained immortality on 13 Oct 1911. It is written on her Samadhi at Darjeeling – HERE REPOSES SISTER NIVEDITA WHO GAVE HER ALL TO INDIA. What made her to give her all to India?