If Netaji is the forgotten hero of India, then Sister Nivedita is her forgotten heroine. This Irish lady was one of the outstanding geniuses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We owe our little understanding of Swami Vivekananda's complex personality largely to her. 'The Master as I saw him' written by her is a classic study of the Swami.
The support she gave to Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose in preparing his manuscripts on Plant Responses to Stimuli needs public recognition. Rabindranath Tagore was so impressed by her that he called her Lokmata and compared her to Sati. Aurobindo Ghosh and other revolutionaries found in her an anchor during their troubled days of political activity. She inspired the freedom fighters through her fiery speeches which she delivered throughout the length and breadth of the country.
Yet, through all this, she never forgot for a moment the commandment of her great Guru Swami Vivekananda who charged her with the task of educating the women of India. Her tireless services to this cause gained fruition in the form of the 'Nivedita School' in Bagbazar where from humble beginnings she built up the nucleus of the future educated womanhood of India, a task which consumed her life and eventually claimed it prematurely. But the lamp she had lit continued to burn and eventually found fulfilment in the founding of the Sri Sarada Math and the Ramakrishna Sarada Mission whose humble beginnings may be traced to the 'Nivedita School'.
Yet, Sister Nivedita remains a largely forgotten character for an inordinately long time now owing to the ingratitude ingrained in us on account of the massive mediocrity that masquerades as protagonists of the Indian culture. Time it is to wake up to these messiahs amongst men, Netaji, Nivedita and the like but for whom we would not have been the free birds that we are, however decadent be the gains of such a partitioned freedom ever engaged in fratricidal warfare or in factious political engagements. Jai Hind!
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