Meet Sister Nivedita, The Britisher Who Fought For India's Independence And Became A Hindu

Celina Jaitly is set to return to the big screen in a full-fledged role after 15 years. She will feature in the upcoming biopic on Sister Nivedita. Celina will portray the revered spiritual disciple of Swami Vivekananda, a role the actress described as one of the most meaningful experiences of her career. The upcoming movie is titled Sister Nibedita.

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How Margaret Elizabeth became Sister Nivedita

Sister Nivedita was born Margaret Noble in Northern Ireland in 1867. In her early 20s, Margaret took up a teaching job at 17 in Wimbledon, England. She was an exceptionally gifted teacher and within a few years, started a school of her own. Her progressive views on education made her popular, and she also made acquaintance with leading scholars Thomas Huxley, the poet WB Yeats and playwright George Bernard Shaw.

In 1895, Margaret met Swami Vivekananda during his lecture in London. His aim was to introduce Hindu philosophies to the West. He had a deep impact on her. Their correspondence continued and three years later, in 1898, she travelled to Calcutta on a ship. The same year, she was initiated by Vivekananda into Brahmachary and named Sister Nivedita or 'The Dedicated'. Ramayana, and Mahabharata. She is widely recognised as one of the first foreign women to convert to Hinduism. She continued to learn and participate in philanthropic activities with Vivekananda and his disciples while travelling India and the Himalayas.

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In 1899, a plague broke out in Calcutta. Nivedita threw herself into relief work. Preventive sanitation measures were carried out by Ramakrishna Mission under her supervision. It is believed that Vivekananda bestowed "spiritual powers" on Nivedita. Soon after her association with Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna mission, Nivedita established the Ramakrishna Guild of Help in America. The initial plan was to take in and train twenty widows and twenty orphan girls. This period also marked Nivedita's efforts to promote the Hindu philosophical movement around the world.

After Vivekananda’s death in 1902 Nivedita severed her connection with the Ramakrishna movement, which banned involvement in political activity. She turned her efforts to promoting the cause of Indian independence. She was also one of the first to propose a design for a national flag, which was presented at the Indian National Congress meeting in 1906. Weakened by previous attacks of malaria and meningitis, which she contracted while working in the famine- and flood-stricken parts of East Bengal in 1906, Nivedita died of dysentery in Darjeeling on 13 October 1911. Her efforts to spread education, her philanthropic endeavours and her espousal of tenets of Hinduism made her one of the most influential women in modern history.