A LIFE LIVED TO PERFECTION ... 1

Margaret Elizabeth Noble, a name that evokes intense emotional responses in old-timers who have seen the plight of dependent India, who have stayed up whole night and hugged each other on the streets of free India on the 15th of August, 1947, who have thereafter seen days of hope and nights of disillusionment and despair, in the hearts of these countless Indians this name throbs with pulsations of love even today. This Irishwoman of Scottish descent chose India as her homeland and gave her life to it. She identified more with her culture than any other foreigner before or after, perhaps. She adopted India as her motherland, embraced her religion, became one with her people and gave her all for their emancipation. The intensity of her love for India endeared her forever to her people as they struggled to overcome the inertia of ages and throw off the British yoke.

Miss Noble met Swami Vivekananda in London on a cold Sunday afternoon in November, 1895. While the personality of the Swami did attract her and even his radically different Hindu mode of thinking set her on to new lines of observation, she did not at once subscribe to his philosophy but suspended her judgement on it till she realised its validity through actual experience. And then she surrendered to her teacher for good. Swamiji became her living ideal and she dedicated her life towards the fulfilment of his mission on earth.

In 1898 she came to India and stayed on to adopt this holy land as her own. Never in history, before or after, has there been another instance perhaps of such total absorption of an alien culture by a foreigner to the utter oblivion of the culture of the land of the great one's birth. This is the unique feature of Sister Nivedita's life as she carried out her Master's commandment to fulfilment in forgetting the very memory of her life before India.

And there she was, Margaret Elizabeth Noble, in the land of her dreams, the birthplace of her Master, Swami Vivekananda, the land that was suffering under the yoke of British subjugation, an Irishwoman with the fire of freedom within and the zeal to serve her beloved Master's queen of heart, India.