66 Facts About Sister Nivedita

Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda.

Sister Nivedita spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland.

Sister Nivedita was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.

Sister Nivedita met Swami Vivekananda in 1895 in London and travelled to Calcutta, India in 1898.

Sister Nivedita wanted to educate girls who were deprived of even basic education.

Sister Nivedita had close associations with the newly established Ramakrishna Mission.

Sister Nivedita was very close to Sarada Devi, the wife of Ramakrishna and one of the major influences behind Ramakrishna Mission, and with all brother disciples of Swami Vivekananda.

Sister Nivedita's epitaph reads, "Here lies Sister Nivedita who gave her all to India".

Sister Nivedita's father, who was a pastor, taught that service to mankind is the true service to God.

Sister Nivedita studied subjects, including physics, arts, music, and literature.

Sister Nivedita became acquainted with the ideas of the Swiss education reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and with the German Friedrich Frobel.

Sister Nivedita asked a lot of questions, and his answers dispelled her doubts and established her faith and reverence for the speaker.

Sister Nivedita wrote in 1904 to a friend about her decision to follow Swami Vivekananda as a result of her meeting him in England in November 1895:.

Sister Nivedita started taking interest in the teachings of Gautama Buddha, and her discussions with Swami Vivekananda were an alternate source of peace and benediction.

Sister Nivedita explained India's history, philosophy, literature, the life of the common mass, social traditions, and the lives of great personalities, both ancient and modern, to her.

On 25 March 1898, at Nilambar Mukherjee Garden, Swami Vivekananda formally initiated Margaret in the vow of Brahmacharya and gave her the name of "Sister Nivedita", the dedicated one.

Later, after the demise of Swami Vivekananda, on 28 July 1902, Sister Nivedita wrote to the Editor of the Statesman the following letter:.

Sister Nivedita wanted her to be a Hindu in thoughts and actions.

Sister Nivedita encouraged her to visit Hindu ladies to observe their way of life.

On 13 November 1898, the Holy Mother Sarada Devi came to open Sister Nivedita's newly founded school.

Sister Nivedita travelled to many places in India, including Kashmir, with Swami Vivekananda, Josephine MacLeod, and Sara Bull.

Sister Nivedita went to the United States to raise awareness and get help for her cause.

Sister Nivedita later recorded some of her tour and experiences with her master in the book The Master as I Saw Him and Notes on Some Wanderings with Swami Vivekananda.

Sister Nivedita often used to refer to Swami Vivekananda as "The King" and considered herself as his spiritual daughter.

Sister Nivedita saw Swami Vivekananda for the last time on 2 July 1902 at Belur Math.

Sister Nivedita recorded it in The Master As I Saw Him in the following words:.

On that night, Sister Nivedita dreamed Sri Ramakrishna was leaving his body a second time.

Sister Nivedita immediately rushed to the Math and reached the place around 7am and entered the room of Vivekananda.

Sister Nivedita sat near Vivekananda's head and fanned his body with a hand fan until his body was taken down at 2pm to the porch leading to the courtyard.

Sister Nivedita wished to take a small portion of that cloth so that she could send it as a memento to Josephine MacLeod.

But, Sister Nivedita was unsure whether the act would be proper or not and decided not to take it.

Sister Nivedita turned around and found a small piece of saffron cloth which had somehow come out of the pyre during cremation.

Sister Nivedita lifted and took the cloth, considering it as a message from the Swami.

Sister Nivedita was planning to open a school for girls who were deprived of even basic education.

Sister Nivedita toured England and America on a lecture tour designed to raise money to establish a girls' school.

Sister Nivedita organized a meeting at Balaram Bose's house on this issue.

Sister Nivedita taught sewing, elementary rules of hygiene, nursing, etc.

Sister Nivedita had to earn money from her writings and giving lectures, and later she spent all to meet the expenses of the school.

Sister Nivedita worked to improve the lives of Indian women of all castes.

Sister Nivedita inserted appeals for help in the English newspapers and requested for financial support for her plague relief activities.

Sister Nivedita organized the day-to-day activities, inspected the work and personally handed over the written instructions for the preventive measures by moving around.

Sister Nivedita was a friend to many intellectuals and artists in the Bengali community, including Rabindranath Tagore, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Abala Bose, and Abanindranath Tagore.

Sister Nivedita took an active interest in promoting Indian history, culture, and science.

Sister Nivedita actively encouraged Dr Jagadish Chandra Bose, the Indian scientist and philosopher, to pursue original scientific research and helped him financially as well in getting due recognition when he was faced with an indifferent attitude from the colonial government.

Sister Nivedita supported him by organizing the financial support and editing his manuscripts and made sure that Bose was able to continue with and share his work.

Sister Nivedita became a prolific writer and toured India extensively to deliver lectures, especially on Indian culture and religions.

Sister Nivedita appealed to the youth of India to work selflessly for the cause of their country along the ideals of Swami Vivekananda.

However, during the course of her time in India, Sister Nivedita grew disillusioned with colonial rule and grew to support the nascent independence movement, concluding that it was necessary for India to gain independence to prosper.

Sister Nivedita initially worked with Okakura of Japan and Sarala Ghoshal who was related to the Tagore family.

Sister Nivedita later started working on her own and maintained a direct relationship with many of the young revolutionaries of Bengal, including those of Anushilan Samity, a secret organization.

Sister Nivedita inspired many youths in taking up the cause of Indian independence through her lectures.

Sister Nivedita attacked Lord Curzon after his speech at the University of Calcutta in 1905 where he mentioned that truth was given a higher place in the moral codes of the West, than in the East.

Sister Nivedita undertook her own research and made it public that in the book Problems of The Far East by Curzon, he had proudly described how he had given false statements about his age and marriage to the President of the Korean Foreign Office to win his favour.

Sister Nivedita provided financial and logistical support and leveraged her contacts to get information from government agencies and forewarn independence activists.

Sister Nivedita met Indian artists like Abanindranath Tagore, Ananda Coomaraswamy and E B Havell and inspired them to develop a pure Indian school of art.

Sister Nivedita exerted great influence on the famous Tamil poet, Subramania Bharati, who met her only briefly in 1906.

Sister Nivedita influenced Bharati to work for the freedom of the women in the country, which he did all through his life.

Sister Nivedita had designed a national flag for India with the thunderbolt as the emblem against a red background.

Sister Nivedita tried her utmost to inculcate the nationalist spirit in the minds of her students through all their daily activities.

Sister Nivedita introduced singing of the song Vande Mataram in her school as a prayer.

Sister Nivedita provided guarded support to Annie Besant and was very close to Aurobindo Ghosh, one of the major contributors towards the early nationalist movement.

Sister Nivedita edited Karma Yogin, the nationalist newspaper of Aurobindo.

Sister Nivedita died on 13 October 1911, aged 43, at Roy Villa, Darjeeling.

Sister Nivedita remains one of the most influential female figures of India.

Letters of Sister Nivedita were first published in two volumes in 1960.

In 1975, Barbara Fox published in London a biography of Sister Nivedita titled Long Journey Home.