Sister Nivedita

01From Dungannon to Bagbazar

Margaret Elizabeth Noble was born at Dungannon in Ireland and ran a school of her own in Wimbledon. In November 1895 she went to hear a Hindu monk speak in a London drawing room, and kept going. Swamiji told her India needed women who would work for its women. She landed in Calcutta on 28 January 1898 and on 25 March he gave her brahmacharya and the name Nivedita. Sri Sarada Devi received her as a daughter. In November 1898 she opened a school for girls in a small house at 16 Bosepara Lane, Bagbazar, going from door to door to persuade families to send their daughters.

02Plague, books and Swadeshi

When plague struck Calcutta in 1899 she cleaned the lanes of north Calcutta with her own hands and nursed the dying. She wrote The Web of Indian Life, Kali the Mother and a book of Hindu and Buddhist kathas with Ananda Coomaraswamy, and she championed Jagadish Chandra Bose’s research and the painters of the Bengal school. After Swamiji’s death she gave herself openly to the national cause, worked with Sri Aurobindo, and drew a design for a national flag with the vajra at its centre. She died at Darjeeling on 13 October 1911. Her memorial there reads: Here reposes Sister Nivedita who gave her all to India.

Place · Villages of Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata on the Hooghly; Company settlement from 1690Kolkata (Calcutta)The city that grew from three Hooghly villages around a Company factory, capital of British India until 1911, and the birthplace of the Bengal renaissance and of the Swadeshi movement. Kalighat gave it its name.Read →