Sister Nivedita, originally Margaret Elizabeth Noble, was an Irish school teacher. She was born Margaret Noble to Irish parents in 1867. She came to the teaching profession in 1884 at Chester. Pestalozzi and Froebel’s method of ‘New Education’ influenced her. She met
Swami Vivekananda in 1895 for the first time and in response to his call, came to
Kolkata in 1898. Margaret Noble was initiated into the monastic order in the same year and given the name, Nivedita, the Dedicated or the Offered one. Swami Vivekananda was in the process of evolving a new monastic order which was to combine renunciation with service. She threw herself totally behind the Swami’s efforts in bringing about an Indian Renaissance.
In India, she was popularly known as ‘Nivedita of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda’. She joined plague relief works of the Ramakrishna Mission in March 1898 and formed ‘The Ramakrishna Guild of Help’ in America. There broke out an overwhelming plague at Kolkata in March 1899 and at that time she devoted herself to serve the diseased. When flood occurred in East Bengal resulting in famine, she organized relief funds for the affected village. In addition, Nivedita took the intiative to teach Hindu girls by opening a kindergarten school.
After the death of Swami Vivekananda in July 1902, she resigned from the mission and took part in the political struggle to free India. Nivedita wrote several articles, of which ‘Kali, the Mother’ was her first publication. She died in 1911. Throughout her life, she kept assisting the poor and the distressed. Thus she became a deathless symbol of relinquishment and service.
