Select Essays Of Sister Nivendita

SISTER M1VEDITA

CONTENTS

PAGE

FOREWORD v

India the Mother . 1

'The Present Position of Woman . . 7

Lambs among Wolves . .... 39

The Swadeshi Movement , 74

The Last of Pous : An Indian Study 88

The Hindu Sacred Year 92

^he Relation between Famine and Population . 99
The National Significance of the Swarni

Vivekananda's Life and Work .... 128

The First Citizen of Bengal ... . 141

Revival or Reform ? . ... 146
Note on Indian Historic Pageants . .158
Aggressive Hinduism

L The Basis . ... 164

II The Task Before Us .... 171

III The Ideal ... . 184

The Task of the National Movement in India . . 190

"What Books to Read .... . 197

The National Idea . .... 205

The Underlying Unity' of Indian Life . 209

The Future Education of the Indian Woman . . 222

APPENDIX

Appreciations of Sister Nivedita

By I -Mrs, J. C Bose 234

IL-J.F. Alexander , . 243

III. A J. F. Blair ....'.. S53

IV.-Novalis 60

V.S. K. Rttcliffe . . . , 868

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. India the Mother.

2 Sister Nivedita

3, Swami Vivekananda

4. Bamakrishna Paramahamsa.

All Rights Rewrned.] [Pnce -Ee.1- 8.

SISTER NIVEDITA

SELECT ESSAYS
OF

SISTER NIVEDITA

Author of Web of Ind^an Life^ Cradle-
Tales of Hinduism, Kali The Mother,
The Master as I saw Him, Indian
Study of Love and Death , etc. ::

with

Foreword by Mr. A. J. F. Blair
Editor, "Ihnpire"

THIRD EDITION

GANESH & CO., PUBLISHER^

FOREWORD

MARGARET NOBLE " The white flower of nobility "
Nivedita V dedicated ". Whether we think of h^c
by her English or her Indian name, was ever human
being more appropriately called? High-souled purity
and infinite devotion are the thoughts that ever
spring to mind at the very mention of her name.
To those who knew her she was an embodied con-
science. As her clear eyes searched one through and
through, so did the white flame of her moral fervour
burn out and wither up all the baser elements
in one's nature. No man or woman ever faced
that scrutiny without emerging from it purified and
strengthened.

She was a Vriter of extraordinary range, eloquence
and power. The collection of essays in the present
volume, comprehensive as it is, exhibits her tireless
literary productivity in a mere fragmentary form.
The crown and summit of her work is undoubtedly
the "Web of Indian Life,*' to read which is not
merely to enter into the Indian holy of holies, but to
drink deep of the meaning and inspiratipn of the
author's own life,.

VI

Like all great souls, however, she towered above,
and dominated, all her works. She was far greater
than they. The influence of her life and personality
was a ad is a perpetual inspiration, which lives as
long as those on whom it once rested, to be thence
transmitted (let us hope) to those who follow.

Unselfish, brave, white-souled, dowered so nobly
with mental, spiritual and physical graces, who can
express in words what she was to those who loved
her, or gather up the measure of their loss?

CALCUTTA
10th November 1911 A. J. F. B.

INDIA THE MOTHER

INDIA THE MOTHER
(BY ABANINDBA NATH TAGORE)

IT is not always those events which are most loudly
talked of that are really most important, and I for
one have no hesitation in ranking far above most
things that have happened during the past month, tho
appearance of Mr. Abanindra Nath Tagore's picture of
' The Spirit of the Motherland,' published recently
in the Bengalee periodical, Bhandar. We see in
Mr* Tagore's drawing, which is reproduced here, some-
thing for which Indian art has long been waiting, the
birth of the idea of those new combinations which
are to mark the modern age in India. For if nation-
ality, and the civic ideal, and every form of free and
vigorous co-operation for mutijal service and mutual
aid, are indeed to be the distinguishing marks of ttie
new era, then it is clear that we must have definite
symbols under which to think of them, and with the
ereation and establishment of, such symbols Indianf
art .will be occupied, for these many decaclas, or evert
it maty be, fot centuries to come.

f hare long thought that if I wwe an
Prince I would, save my surplus

2 SISTER NIVEDITA

foremost for the promotion of civic and historic paint-
ing. To this end I would open competitions and
announce prizes, and establish picture-printing presses
for cheap reproduction of coloured pictures. Here,
in our dusty lanes, - 1 would like to build open
verandahs, running round three sides of a square, and
bearing on their inner surfaces great mural pictures
some in pigments, some in mosaics, and some after
the fashion of old Indian art, carved in stone in low
relief of the mighty scenes of the civic and national
past. We have suc^i things already in Indian temples.
I have seen at Conjee veram a long frieze of Ramayana
subjects, and elsewhere glimpses from the Maha-
bharata and Puranas. But the buildings of which I
speak should be civic temples, or temples may be of
the national spirit. There, no mythic scenes sho.uld
be allowed. Instead Asoka sending forth his
'missionaries ; Kanishka seated in council ; Vikra-
maditya offering the Asvamedh ; the twelve crowned
victims of Oheetore the Coronation of Akbar ; the
building of the Taj ; the funeral of Aurangzebe ; the
sati of the Queen Janhobi of hill Tipperah these, and
such as these, should be the subject here displayed,
and every woman on her way to the river-ghat,
and every labourer going to ancU from his work,
should be made familiar with the idea of India,
and the evolution of India throughout four thousand
years.

INDIA THE MOTHEE 3

In visiting the English House of Parliament, as all
the world is free to do, in London on Saturday morn-
ings, nothing is so startmgly impressive and memor-
able as the array of mural pictures in the two lobbies,
and the selection of subjects, sounding the different
notes of aristocratic and democratic pride in the
history of England, according as we find ourselves
on the threshold of the Lords or the Commons.
Similarly, in the Manchester Town Hall, the walls
are covered with the painted story of early Manches-
ter and mediaeval Manchester, and the spectator is
likely to feel that there is little fair in human life or
human hope that is not indicated there. But the
difficulty in both these cases is the same. These
frescoes are inside buildings, and their enjoyment
is necessarily confined, therefore, to those who are
more or less wealthy and already educated. In the
b'eautiful Indian climate, however, there is no
necessity for such shutting up of the means of educa-
tion! Wide overhanging eaves to protect pictures and
visitors from rain and direct sun-light, and no iftore
is necessary. The lane itself is become a University,
and the picture is more than a thakoor, it is a school,
a library, an, epic poem. Necessarily the man who
would initiate such a fashion must be born a prince.
But' in modern times cheap colour-printing offers an
easily Available, substitute for mural painting. It*
remote farm-houses and' in bazar verandahs alike*

4 SISTER NIVEDITA

one comes upon such pictures of the gods and god-
desses, made for the most part in Germany and sadly
inaccurate. It is here, in the preparation of Swadeshi
substitutes for these posters, as we might perhaps
call them, that the present generation of art-students
might do admirable work. And certainly first and
foremost of the series I would place this wonderful
Bharat-Mata of Mr. Tagore. In this picture which
would need to be enlarged and printed, for the pur-
pose of which I speak, in two or three bright but
delicate colours we have a combination of perfect
refinement with great creative imagination. Bharat-
Mata stands on the green earth. Behind her is the
blue sky. Beneath the exquisite little feet is
curved line of four misty white lotuses. She has the
four arms that always, to Indian thinking, indicate
the divine power. Her sari is severe, even to puri-
tanisin, in its enfolding lines. And behind the noble
sincerity of eyes and brow we are awed by the
presence of the broad white halo. , Shiksha-dik&ha-
anna-bastra the four gifts of the Motherland to her
children, she offers in her four hands.

From beginning to end the picture is an appeal, in
the Indian language, to the Indian heart. It is the
first great masterpiece in a new style, I would re-
print it, if I could, by tens of thousands, and scatter
tft broadcast over the land, till there was not a pea-
sant's cottage, or a craftinan's hut, between 3eder

ItfDIA THE MOTHER 5

Nath and Cape Comorin, that had not this present-
ment of Bharat-Mata somewhere on its walls. Over
and over again, as one looks into its qualities, one is
struck by the purity and delicacy of the personality
portrayed. And it is a wonderful thing surely, that
this should be the quality that speaks loudest in the
first picture of India the Mother that an Indian man
makes for his people.

This is not the first fine thing that its creator has
done. But for my own part every former achievement
of his appears to rank beside this as the construction
of written characters ranks beside the first poem in-
scribed in them. Up to this time, Mr. Tagore has
been creating his language, creating his style. Now
he has begun to write poems. May he never cease 1
and may there follow thousands after him to write
more, in the language that he by his unaided efforts
has created for them, and will teach to them Indian
world.

THE PRESENT POSITION Cff WOMAS
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

IT would be useless to attempt any
study of human institutions, apart from the ideals
of which they are the expression. In every social
evolution, whether of the modern American, the
Hottentot, the Semitic or the Mongolian, the dynamic
element lies in the ideal behind it. For the student
of sociology, the inability to discover this formative
factor in any given result constitutes a supreme
defect. To assume, as is so often done, that one
people has moulded itself on a moral purpose, clearly
perceived, while in the minds of others the place for
such purpose is blank, and they are as they have
happened to occur, is purely anarchic and pre*
scientific. Yet some such conception is only tod
common amongst those writers to whom we are
compelled to go, for the data of racial sociology. This
is an unfortunate consequence of the fact that, for
the most part, we are only impelled to the interna-
tional service of .humanity, by a strong acc^siou of
sectarian ardour,

8 SISTER NIVEDITA

Another error, to be avoided in comparative
statement, is that of endowing the more or less
antithetic ideals and tendencies which we do dis-
entangle, with a false rigidity and distinctiveness. It
is easy to argue backwards, from institutions to ideals,
in such a way as to tabulate whole realms of poetry
and aspiration inexorably closed to certain peoples.
But ideals are the opportunity of all, the property
of none ; and sanity of view seems to demand that
we should never lose sight of the underlying unity
and humanness of humanity. Thus, nothing would
appear at first sight more fixed, or more limiting, than
the poiyandiy of Thibet. We might well assume, a
priori that to look for ceiiain standards and percep-
tions amongst a populace so characterised were vain.
That such a view would be untrue, however, is shown
at once by Sven Hedin, in his Decent work, Trans-
Himalaya, where he tells of a Thibetan gentleman
imploring him never to shoot the wild geese, for these
-birds are known to bave human hearts. Like men, they
mate but once ; hence, in killing one, we may inflict on
another a long life of perpetual sorrow. This one inci-
dent is sufficient to remind us of the high potentialities
of the human spirit everywhere, however unpromising
may be the results of a superficial glance. Again, we
$,11 know something of the marvels of constructive and
Belf^or^anising power shown by modern Europe.
When we look behind the symptom for the cause, we

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 9

may feel impelled to the opinion that the master-fact
in this regard is the influence of the genius of ancient
Rome, acting first in the Empire, then in the Churcll,
and lastly seen in the reaction of nationalities to-day*
But of that fundamental Roman genius itself, it is
increasingly difficult to make any statement that
does not almost immediately commend itself to us,
as equally applicable to China as the great leader of
the Yellow Races. The actual differ enqe between
Europe and Asia, in spite of the analogy between
Rome and the people of Han, may perhaps be found
explicable on the basis of the differing place and
materials on which these two instincts had to work.
Perhaps the very foundation-stone of sociological
truth lies in that unity of humanity, which such
considerations illustrate.

And lastly, we have to remember the widely dif-
fering values of different classes of evidence* It is
important always, if possible, to make a people ^speak
for themselves. Identical material may be opposite-
ly handled, as all will admit, by different persons,
but we cannot go far wrong, in demanding that in
all ca^es original evidence shall have a wide prefer-
ence, over the report of his personal observations and
opinions, made by a foreigner. It would also be well
to stipulate for the same rights of scrutiny, over even
original evidence* as would be exercised by compe-
tent persons in weighing testimony, with regard, say*

10 SISTER NIVEDITA

to' physical experiments or a case in a court of law.
Statements made, even by, the natives of a given
country, with the direct intention of witnessing or
ministering to some partisan position, will not, on
the face of it, have the same value as if it can be
shown that they were made with 110 idea of a parti-
cular question having arisen. For instance, we may
refer to the matter of the position of the Chinese
woman in marriage. We are assured by most
modern writers of authority that this is most depress-
ing. In theory, the wife is completely subordinated*
while in fact, the man always exploits to the full the
opportunity thus given him. That marriage can be
brutalised is doubtless as true in the case of China as
in that of England. All that we have a right to ask
is, whether it has also the opposite possibility, and in
what degree and frequency. I assume that we are
all familiar with the relation between the general
development of a society, and its impulse 'to recog-
nise an individual poet, and accord him fame. Bear-
ing this relation in mind, we shall be able to measure
the significance of a couple of little poeins translated
by Kt&rtin, in -his tiny posthumous work La Femme
on Chtne. " Of these, one may be given here. It is
by the poet Lin-Tchi to his wife.

We are living under the same roof, dear comrade of my life,

We shall be buried m a single tomb

And our commingled ashes will eternalise our union.

With*vtfhat good will hast thou shared my poverty,

And strfven to aid me by thy toil 1

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN f $ 11

What ought I not to do to make our names illustrious *% my
wisdom * '*' ?.

Thus rendering glorious thy noble example and thy good
deeds

But my tenderness and my respect have told thee this every
day." 1

It is not true that one geniune utterance from tlie
heart of a people, is testimony that outweighs a
whole volume of opinions, however honest, about
them? The historical process, as manifested in
different countries, may have let to the selection of
various ideals as motives of organisation, but ah
open examination of data will make us very doubtful
of statements that would deny to any nationality a
given height of spirituality or refinement.

CLASSIFICATION

The first point to be determined in dealing vitb
the -proper subject of this paper, the present positicJh
of the civilised women, is the principle of classi-
fication to be followed. We might divide womea
mto Asiatic and European ; but if so, the American
woman must be taken as European par excellence*
And where must we place the woman of Japan ?
The terms Eastern and Western are too vague, and
Modern and Mediaeval too inexact. Nor .can, we
afford to discard half of each of these generalisa-
tions, and classify woman as, on the one hajad,

1 Pans. Sandoz and Prisohbacher, 1876.

12 SISTER NIVEDITA

Western whether Norse, Teuton, Slav, or Latin
and on the other Mongolian, Hindu, or Mussalman.
Such a system of reference would be too cumbersome.
Perhaps the only true classification is based on ideals,
and if so, we might divide human society, in so far
as \voman is concerned, into communities dominated
by the civic, and communities dominated by the
family, ideal.

THE Civic IDEAL

tender the civic ideal imperfectly as a particular
women may feel that this has yet been realised both
men and women tend to be recognised as individuals
holding definite relations to each other in the public
economy, and by their own free will co-operating to
build up the family. The civitas tends to ignore the
family, save as a result, like any other form of produc-
tive co-operation, and in its fullest development rfiay
perhaps come to ignore sex. In America, for instance,
both men and women are known as ' citizens '. No
one asks. * Are you a nat^ve or a subject, of America ? '
but always, "Are you an American citizen?" The
contemporary struggle of the English woman, for
the rudiments of political equality with men, is but
a single step in the long process of woman's civic
evolution. It is significant of her conscious accept-
ance of the civic ideal as her goal. The arrival 01
this moment is undoubtedly hastened by the very

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 13

marked tendency of modern nations towards the
economic independence of woman ; and this process*
again, though born of the industrial transformation
from Manual to Mechanical, or Mediseval to Modern,
is indirectly accelerated, amongst imperial and
colonising peoples, by the gravitation of the men of
the ruling classes towards the geographical confines
of their racial or political area. One factor, amongst
the many thus brought into play, is the impractica-
bility of the family as their main career for some of
the most vigorous and intelligent of women. These
are thrown back upon the dwtas for the theatre of
their activities, and the material of their mental and
emotional development. Such conditions are much
m evidence in the England o to-day, and must have
been hardly less so in Imperial Rome. Nero's assas-
sination of his mother might conceivably be treated as
the 'Roman form of denial of the suffrage to woman.
Regarding the civic evolution of woman as a pro-
cess, it is easy to see that it will always take place
most rapidly in those communities and at those epochs
when political or industrial transformation, or both,
ate most energetic and individuating. The guiding
and restraining influences which give final sMfepe to
the results achieved are always derived from tfee
historical fund of ideals and institutions, social, aesthe-
tic and spiritual. It is here that we shall derive
most advantage from remembering the very

14 SISTER NIVEDITA

and approximate character of the differentiation of
ideals. The more extended our sympathies, the more
enlarged becomes the area of precedent. If the
Anglo-Saxon woman rebelling in England, or organ-
ising herself into great municipal leagues in America,
appears at the moment to lead the world in the
struggle for the concession of full civic responsibility,
we must not forget the brilliance of the part played
by women in the national history of France, Nor must
we forget the Mediaeval Church, that extraordinary
creation of the Latin peoples, which as a sort of civitas
of the soul, offered an organised super-domestic career
to women, throughout the Middle Ages, and will pro-
bably still continue, as a fund of inspiration and
experience, to play an immense part, even in her
future. Nor must we forget that Finland has out-
stripped even the English-speaking nations. Nor can
we, in this connection, permit ourselves to overlook
the womanhood of the East The importance of wo-
man in the dynastic history of China for example,
during the last four thousand years, would of itself
remind us, that though the family may dominate the
life of the Chinese woman, yet she is not absolutely
excluded from the -civic career. Again, the noble
protest of his inferior wife, Tchong-tse, to the Emperor
in 556 B.C. against the nomination of her own son
as heir to the throne, shows that moral development
has been known in that country to go hand in, hand

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 15

with opportunity. " Such a step," she says, " would
indeed gratify my affection, but it would be contrary
to the laws. Think and act as a prince, and not as
a father ! " This is an utterance which, all will agree,
for its civic virtue and sound political sense, to have
been worthy of any matron of Imperial Rome.

But it is not China alone in the East, that can fur-
nish evidence to the point. In India, also, women
have held power, from time to time, as rulers and
administrators, often with memorable success. And
it is difficult to believe that a similar statement might
not be made of Muhammadanism. There is at least
one Indo-Mussalman throne, that of Bhopal, which
is generally held by a woman. Perhaps enough has
been said to emphasise the point that while the
evolution of her civic personality is at present the
characteristic fact in the position of the Western
woman, the East also has power, in virtue of her
history and experience, to contribute to the working
out of this ideal. To deny this would be as ignor-
antly unjust as to pretend that Western women had
never achieved greatness by their fidelity, tender-
ness, and other virtues of the family. The antithesis
merely implies that in each case the mass of social
institutions is more .or less attuned to the dominant
conception of the goal, while its fellow is present,
T)ut in a phase relatively subordinate, or perhaps
even incipient*

16 SISTER NIVEDITA

The civic life, then, is that which pertains to the
community as a whole, that community whether
of nation, province, or township whose unity tran-
scends and ignores that of the family, reckoning its
own active elements, men or women as the case may
he, as individuals only. Of this type of social
organisation, public spirit is the distinctive virtue ;
determined invasion oi the freedom of welfare of the
whole, in the interest of special classes or individuals,
the distinctive sin. The civic spirit embodies the
personal and categorical form of such ideals as those
of national unity, or corporate independence. Its
creative bond is that of place, the common home
as distinguished from blood, the common kin that
common home, whose children are knit together to
make the civitas, the civic family, rising in its largest
complexity to be the national family.

The characteristic test of moral dignity -and
maturity which our age offers to the individual is
this of his or her participation in civic wisdom and
responsibility . Our patriotism may vary from jingoism
to the narrowest parochialism but the demand for
patriotism in some form or other, we all acknowledge
to be just. Different countries have their various
difficulties in civic evolution, and these are apt to
bear harder on that of the woman than of the man.
The study of woman in America where society ha$
T^een *budded, so to speak, from ' older growths and

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 17

started anew, with the modern phase, in a virgin
soil, is full of illustrations. It would be a mistake to
attribute the regrettable tendency towards disintegra-
tion of the family, which we are undeniably wit-
nessing in that country to-day, to any ardour in the
pursuit of civic ideals. High moral aims are almost
always mutually coherent. Weakening of family-
ties will not go hand in hand, in a modern communi-
ty, with growth of civic integrity. Both the pro-
gressive idea of the civitas, and the conservative idea
of the family, are apt to suffer at once from that
assumption of the right to enjoyment which is so
characteristic of the new land, with its vast natural
resources, still imperfectly exploited. Various
American states exhibit a wide range of institutions ;
domestic and political. Some have long conceded
the right of female suffrage, while in others th$ dis-
solution of marriage is notoriously frivolous. But-
we may take it as an axiom that the ethics of civitas
and of family, so far as woman is concerned are
never really defiant of each other ; that neither
battens on the ' decay of its fellow ; but thstt both
alike suffer from the invasions of selfishness, luxury
and extravagance ; while both are equally energis-
ed, by all that tends to the growth of womanly
honour and responsibility in either field. Even that
movement, of largely American and feminist origin,
which we may well refer to as the New Mon^sticisiu
2

18 SISTER NIVEDITA

the movement of social observation and social
service, finding its blossom in university settlements
and Hull Houses is permeated through and through
with the modern, and above all, with the American,
unsuspiciousness of pleasure. It is essentially an
Epicurean, movement always remembering, as did
Epicurus, that the higher pleasures of humanity
include pain not only ,in the effort it makes to
brighten and enliven poverty and toil, but also in the
delicate and determined gaiety of spirit of those
engaged in it, who have never been heard to admit
that the hairshirt of social service, with all its anxie-
ty and labour, affords them anything but the keenest
of delight to don.

THE FAMILY IDEAL

The society of the East, and therefore necessarily
&s womenhood, has moulded itself from time im-
memorial on the central ideal of the family. In no
Eastern country it may be broadly said the positive
apirit of China, and the inter- tribal unity of Islam to
ibe contrary notwithstanding has the civic concept
ev&r risen into that clearness and authority which it
holds in the modern West. As a slight illustration
of this, we have the interesting question of the
sources amongst different peoples of their titles of
honour. In China, we are told, all terms of courtesy
are derived from family relationships. The same

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 19

statement is true of India, but perhaps to a
less extent; for there a certain number of titles
are taken from the life of courts, and also from
ecclesiastical and monastic organisations. The
greatest number and variety of titles of honour,
however, is undoubtedly to be found amongst
Mussalman nations, who have been familiar from
the beginning with the idea of the alien, but
friendly tribe. In all countries, as well! in Asia as
in mediaeval Europe, individual women, owing to
the accidents of rank or character, have occasionally
distinguished themselves in civil and even in militai*y
administration. If France has had her saintly
queen, Blanche of Castile, China has had a sovereign
of talents and piety no less touching and memorable
in Tchang-sun-chi, who came to the throne in AJX
626 as wife of Tai-tsoung : and military greatness
and heroism have more than once been seen in
Indian women. In spite of these facts, the civitas,
as the main concern of women, forms an idea which
cannot be said ever to have occurred to any Eastern
people, in the sense in which it has certainly
emerged during the last hundred years amongst
those nations which inherit from Imperial Rome.

In the West to-day there are large classes of
unmarried women, both professional and leisured,
amongst whom the interests of the civic life has
definitely replaced that of the domestic life. The

20 SISTER NIVEDITA

East, meanwhile, continues to regard the Family
as woman's proper and characteristic sphere. The
family as the social unit determines its conception
of the whole of society. Community of blood and
origin, knitting the kinship into one, becomes all-
important to it, as the bond of unity. The whole
tends to be conceived of in Eastern countries, as
the social area within which marriages can take
place. That combination of conceptions of race and
class which thus comes into prominence, constitutes
caste, rising in its multiplicity into the ecclesia or
Samaj. Throughout the art of Eastern peoples we
can see how important and easily discriminated by
them, is the difference between mean and noble
race. The same fact comes out, even in their
scientific interests, where questions of ethnology
have always tended to supplant history proper. And
in geography their attention naturally gravitates
towards the human rather than the economic aspects
of its problems. As a compensating factor to the
notion of birth, the East has also the more truly
civic idea of the village community, a natural norm
for the" thought of nationality. But left to them-
selves, undisturbed by the Apolitical necessities en-
gendered by foreign contacts^ Oriental communities
would probably have continued, in the future, as in
the past, to develop the idea of a larger unity, along
the lines of family, caste, samaj, and race, the

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 21

culmination being the great nexus of classes, sects,
and kinships bound together by associations of
faith and custom for the maintenance of universal
purity of pedigree. The West, on the other hand,
though not incapable of evolving the worship of
blood and class, tends naturally to the exaltation of
place and country as the motive of cohesion, and
thus gives birth to the conception of nationality, as
opposed to that of race.

Racial unity tends to modification, in the special
case of the Mussalman peoples, by their dependence
on a simple religious idea, acting on an original
tribal nucleus, as their sole and sufficient bond of
commonality. Islam encourages the intermarriage
of all Mussalmans, whatever their racial origin. But
it would be easy to show that this fact is not really
the exception it might at first appear. The race has
here, in an absolute s'ense, become the church, and
that church is apostolic and proselytising. Thus the
unit is constantly growing by accretion. It remains
fundamentally a racial unit, nevertheless, though
nearer than others to the national type. In the case
of Chinese civilisation, again, the race-idea would
seem to be modifiable by Confucian ethics, with their
marvellous common-sense and regard for the public
good, creating as these do, a natural tendency
towards patriotism and national cohesion- Yet it is
seen in the importance of ancestor- worship a the

22 SISTER NIVEDITA

family-bond. The sacrament of marriage consists m
the beautiful ceremony of bringing the bride to join
her husband, in the offering of divine honours to his
forefathers.

Amongst Hindus the same motive is evidenced in
the notion that it is the duty of all to raise up at
least one son to offer ceremonies of commemoration
to the ancestors. The forefathers of an extinct
family go sorrowful and may be famine-stricken in
the other world. In my own opinion, this is only an
ancient way of impressing on the community the need
for maintaining its numbers. This must have been
an important consideration to thoughtful minds
amongst early civilised peoples, faced as they were by
the greater numbers oi those whose customs were
more primitive- Only when a man's place in his
community was taken by a son, could he be free to
follow the whims of an individual career.

THE FAMILY IN ISLAM

The family is,, in all countries and all ages, the
natural sphere for the working-out of the ethical
struggle, with its results in personal development.
The happiness of families everywhere depends, not on
the subordination of this member or that, but on the
mutual self -adjustment of all. In the large house-
holds*and undivided families of Eastern countries this

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 23

necessity is self-evident. The very possibility of such
organisation depended in the first place on the due
regimentation of rank and duties. Here we come
upon that phenomenon of the subordination of woman,
whose expression is apt to cause so much irritation to
the ardent feminists of the present da>. Yet for a
permanent union of two elements, like husband and
wife, it is surely essential that one or other should be
granted the lead. For many reasons, this part falls to
the man. It is only when the civic organisation has
emerged, as the ideal of unity, that husband and wife,
without hurt to their own union, can resolve them-
selves into great equal and rival powers, holding a
common relation to it as separate individuals. The
premier consideration of family decorum involves the
theoretical acceptance, by man or woman, of first
and second places respectively. In the patriarchal
family and the matriarchate is now exceptional
and belated the, second place is always taken by
woman ; but the emphasis of this announcement is in
proportion to the resistance offered to its first
promulgation. That is to say, the law was formulat-
ed at the very birth of -patriarchal institutions*
when it sounded as if it were nothing more than a
paradox.' It is this fact, and not any desire to insult
or humiliate women as such, that accounts for the
strength of Eastern doctrines as to the pre-eqplnen-ea
of man. Semitic institutions, and especially the

24 SISTER NIVEDITA

characteristic polygamy of Mussalman peoples, are a
testimony to this enthusiasm for fatherhood at the
moment of the rise of the patriarchate. To a fully
individualised and civilised womanhood, the position
of wife in a polygamous family, might well seem
intolerable. Such an anomaly is only really com-
patible with the passionate pursuit of renunciation as
the rule of life, and with the thought of the son,
rather than the husband, as the emotional refuge and^
support of woman. Polygamy, though held permis-
sible in India and China, for the maintenance of the
family, does not receive in either country that degree
of sanction which appears to be accorded to it
in Islam. It is at once the strength and the weak-
ness of Islamic civilisation that it seems to realise
itself almost entirely as a crystallisation of the
patriarchal ideal, perhaps in contrast to the matri-
archal races by whom early Semitic tribes were
surrounded. In the spontaneous Islamic movement
for progressive self-modification, which our time is
witnessing under the name of Babism, or Behawsm
great stress is laid on the religious duty of educating
and emancipating woman as an individual.

THE FAMILY IK CHINA

Chinji, though seemingly less dependent on the
supernatural for the sources of her idealism than

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 25

either India or Arabia, appears to have an intellect-
ual passion for the general good. She appreciates
every form of self-sacrifice, for the good of others,
but is held back apparently, by her eminently ration-
al and positive turn of mind, from those excess of the
ideal which are to be met with in India. She judges
of the most generous impulse in the light of its
practical application. As an example, her clear con-
ception of the importance of perfect union between
a wedded couple, never seems to have led her to
the practice of child-marriage. The age of twenty
for women, and thirty for men, is by -tier considered
perfect for marrying. 1 Nor has any inherent
objection ever been formulated in China, to the
education of wpmen. On the contrary, the National
Canon of Biography, ever since the last century B.C.,
has always devoted a large section to eminent
women, their education and their literary productions.
Many famous plays and poems have been written by
women. And as a special case in point, it is interest-
ing to note that one of the Dynastic Histqries, left
unfinished on the death of its author, was brought to
a worthy conclusion by his accomplished sister . a

The fact that a woman shares the titles of her
husband, and receives with him ancestral honours,
points in the same direction, of respect and courtesy

' MartiA.

2 Prof, Giles, Lecturer at Columbia University*

26 SISTER NIVEDITA

to woman as an individual. We are accustomed to
hear that filial piety is the central virtue of Chinese
life, but it is essential that we should realise that
this piety is paid to father and mother, not to either
alone witness in itself to the sweetness and soli-
darity of family-life. I have heard a translation of
a long Chinese poem on the discovery of the vina, or
Oriental violin, in which we see a maiden sigh over
her weaving, and finally rise from the loom and don
man's attire, in order to ride forth, in place of her
aged father, to the wars in the far north. It is on
her way to the seat of action, that she comes across
the instrument which is the soul of song, and sends
it back to her father and mother, that its music may
tell how her own heart sighs for them day and night !
All writers seem to agree in admitting that the devo-
tion of children to parents here extolled is fully
equalled by the love of Chinese parents of their
children.

The essential part of the ceremonies of ancestral
worship must be performed, in a Chinese family, by
the sons. Woman may assist, it seems, but can never
replace man, in this office. In the year 1033, the
Dowager-Empress, in the office of Regent, as a protest
against the exclusion of women, insisted on herself
performing the state worship to the ancestors, render-
ed necessary by the advent of a comet. This bold
innovation proved, 'hpwever, merely exceptional.

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 27

Again, the rule that a child shall be born in its
father's house is one of unbending rigour, m spite of
the great liberality with which women are often
allowed, after marriage, to revisit the paternal roof. 1
These facts mark the memory of an energetic transi-
tion from Matriarchate to Patriarchate, which has
failed nevertheless to obliterate all traces of the
earlier. Chinese society ascribes the end of the
Matriarchate, that * is to say, the institution of
marriage, to the mythical emperor Fou-hi, some two
and a half millenniums before the Christian era. In
confirmation of the tradition, this Emperor himself
is said to have been of virgin birth, that is to say,
his mother was unwedded, a common characteristic
of the ancient Chinese saints and heroes. 2 A similar
persistence of the memory of the Matriarchate, is
seen in Southern China, in the prevalence of the
worship of goddesses, and notably of Kwan-Yin,
Qupen of Heaven. It should be said that throughout
Asia, the worship of goddesses is vastly older than
that of gods, and may be held one of the best means
of studying the Matriarchate. The Chinese ideo-
graph for clan-name is a compound of woman and
birth, a distinct relic of the period wheji descent was
reckoned* through the mother. And finally, the.
persistance of matriarchal influence is seen, not only

1 Pr, Arthur Smithy Village life m China
'* Giles

28 SISTER NIVEDITA

in the frequent political importance of the Dowager-
Empress, or Queen-Mother, but also in humbler ranks
of society, by the vigilance which seems to be ex-
ercised by the woman's family, and even by her
native or ancestral village, over the treatment
accorded to her in marriage. According to Dr. Arthur
Smith, it is this which is Affective in staving oft
divorce as long as possible, and in punishing cruelty
or desertion. Thus woman's kindred enjoy a remark-
able unwritten power, as a sort of opposite contracting
part in the treaty of marriage, and exlercise a
responsibility and care unexampled in Europe.

Nor is pure idealism altogether unrepresented in
the life of Chinese women. / This is seen in the ten-
dency of girls to take the vow of virginity, in the
respect felt for women who marry only once, and in
the public honours accorded to such as, before sixty
years of age, complete thirty years of faithful
widowhood. Both Buddhism and Tao-ism include
orders of nuns, amongst whom the Tao-ist com-
munities are said at present to enjoy the greater social
prestige. A regrettable feature of these ideals
which may play a part however in impelling Chinese
society forward upon the exaltation of the civic life
for women is the fact that girls sometimes band
themselves together, under a secret vow of suicide in
commqta, if any of their number, should be forced
into marriage. Writers on the subject attribute this

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 29

reverence for the idea of virginity to the percola-
tion of Indian thought, into China, and such may
possible be its origin. But it is easy to understand
that it might have arisen spontaneously, from those
high conceptions of womanly honour that are
inseparable from the stability of patriarchal institu-
tions, joined to that historic commemoration of the
heroic women of the matriarchate which has already
been mentioned.

THE FAMILY IN INDIA

In India, as in China,, the perpetuation of the
family is regarded as the paramount duty of the
individual to the commonwealth. There is a like
desire for male posterity, made universal by a similar
rule that only a son can offer the sacraments of the
dead to the* spirits of his forefathers. But the practice
of adoption is very frequent, and the intervention of
a priestly class, in the form of domestic chaplains*
makes this element somewhat less central to the
Hindu system than to the Chinese, amongst whom
the father is also the celebrant.

As throughout Asia, the family is undivided, arid
in the vast households of this type, domestic matters
are entirely in the governance of women* Servants
are few in the inner or women's apartmenis, and
even women of rank and wealth give more time, and

30 SISTER NIVEDITA

contribute more personal energy, to the tasks of
cooking, nursing, and cleansing, than we should
think appropriate. Child-marriage, which, though
decreasing, is till more or less the representative
custom, renders the initial relations of the young
bride to her husband's people, somewhat like those of
a Western girl to her first boarding-school. But it is
not to be forgotten that the women shares in the
rank and titles of her husband, hence the path of her
promotion to positions of honour and priority, is
clearly marked out from the biginning. The advent
of motherhood gives her an access of power, and this
recognition culminates in the fact that in the absence
of sons she is her husband's heir, and always the
guardian of her children during their minority. As
a- widow, she has also the very important right of
adoption. Personal property of a mother goes to her
daughters.

Anything more beautiful tlian the life of the
Indian home, as created and directed by Indian
women, it would be difficult to conceive. But if there
is on r e relation, or one position, on which above all
others the idealising energy of the people spends
itself, it is that of the wife. Here, according to
Hindu ideas, is the very pivot of society and poetry.
Marriage, in Hinduism, is a sacrament, and indis-
soluble. The notion of divorce is as impossible, as
the remarriage of the widow is abhorrent. Eveti in

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 31

Orthodox Hinduism, this last has been made legally
possible, by the life and labours of the late Pundit
Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar, an old Brahminicai
scholar, who was one of the stoutest champions of
individual freedom, as he conceived of it, that the
world ever saw. But the common sentiment of the
people remains as it was, unaffected by the changed
legal status of the widow. The one point that does
undoubtedly make for a greater frequency of widow-
remarriages, is the growing desire of young men for
wives whose age promises maturity and companion-
ship. A very pathetic advertisement lately, in one
of the Calcutta dailies, set forth such a need on the
part of a man of birth and position, and added, " Not
one farthing of dower will be required ! " Probably
this one social force alone will do more than any
other to postpone the age of marriage, and ensure
the worthy education of woman. It is part of the fact
that Hinduism sees behind the individual the family,
3,nd behind the family society, that there is no
excuse made for the sin of abandoning the husband,
and deserting the burdens and responsibilities of
wifehood. If one does this, the East never plays
with the idea' that she may have fled from the
intolerable, but gravely makes her responsible for all
the ensuing social confusion. There was indeed a
movement of religious revivalism in the fift^nth
century a sort of Hindu Methodism which asserted

32 SISTER NIVEDITA

the right of woman as equal to that of man, to a life
of religious celibacy. But ordinarily, any desertion
of the family would be held to be unfaithfulness to
it. And all the dreams of the Indian people centre
in the thought of heroic purity and faith in wif ehood.
There is a half-magical element in this attitude of
Hindus towards women. As performers of ritual
worship they are regarded as second only to the
professional Brahmin himself. I have * even seen
a temple served by a woman, during the temporary
illness of her son, who was the priest ! Our prejudice,
in favour of the exclusive sacramental efficacy of
man, instinctive as it may seem to us, is probably
due to Semitic influences. Even Rome had the
Vestal Virgins ! In the non-Brahminical community
of Coorg, the whole ceremony of* marriage is per-
formed by women, and even amongst brahmins
themselves, the country over, an important part of
the wedding rites is in their hands, A woman's
blessing is everywhere considered more efficacious
than a man's in preparing for a journey, or beginning
an undertaking. Women are constituted spiritual
directors, and receive the revenues and perform the
duties, of a ' domestic chaplaincy, during the incum-
bent's minority, without the matter even exciting
comment. A little boy is taught that whatever he
may^ do to his brothers to strike his sister would be
sacrilege. A man is expected to love his mother

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 33

above any other created being. And the happiness
of women is supposed to bring fortune in its train.
The woman-ruler finds a sentiment of awe and
admiration waiting for her, which gives her an
immense advantage over a man, in the competition
tor enduring fame. These facts are of course partly
due to the intense piety and self-effacement of the
lives led by women at large ; but still more to the
dim memory of a time when they were the matri-
archs and protectors of the world. There is no free
mixing of the sexes outside the family, in any one
of the three great Asiatic societies Chinese, Indian,
or Islamic. But the degree of women's cloistered
seclusion varies considerably in different parts, being
least in those provinces of India where the communal
institutions of primitive society have been least
interfered with by contact with Muhatnmadanism,
and at its strictest, probably, amongst the Mussalman
peoples.

THE ECONOMIC STANDING OF WOMAN
IN THE EAST

Even a cursory study of the position of women is
compelled to include some mention of her economic
standing. In societies where the family furnishes
her main career, she is generally of necessity in a
position of dependence, either on father or husband*

34 SISTER NIYEDITA

Amongst Hindus, this is mitigated by a dot, consisting
of jewels, given at marriage and after. This pro-
perty, once given, becomes the woman's own, not to
be touched even by her husband, and in case of
widowhood, if there is no other fund, she is supposed
to be able to sell it and live on the interest. Amongst
Muhammad ans, a dower is named, and deeds of
settlement executed by the husband at marriage. It
is said that every Mussalman cabman in Calcutta
has undertaken to provide for his wife a dower of
thousands of rupees. To pay this is obviously im-
possible, yet the institution is not meaningless. In
case he wishes for divorce a man can be compelled
to pay to the uttermost, and God Himself, it is said,
will ask on the Day of Judgment where is the
amount that he left in default. It is easy to see
how this is calculated to protect the wife. The cus-
tota gives point also to the beautiful story of Fatima :
daughter of Mohammed and wife of Ali, who was
asked, by her father what dower she would wish
named, and answered, "The salvation of every
Mussalman ! " Leaving her own future thus unpro-
tected in the risks of marriage, God Himself would not
, be able to refuse her dower on the day of Judgment.
I have not been able to discover what provision is
made by the Chinese, for a woman, in case of a long
and lonely widowhood. Doubtless, in China as in
India, the most substantial part of her provision lies

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 35

in the solidarity of the family as a whole. If her
husband's relatives cannot support her, a woman falls
back upon her own father or brothers. As long as
either family exists, and is able to support her, she
has an acknowledged place. If she has sons, both
she and they must remain with the husband's people.

The whole Bast understands the need of a woman's
having pin-money. In China, it is said, the proceeds
of cotton-picking, and no doubt also what comes of
the care of silk- worms ; in India, such matters as the
sale of milk, cattle and fruit ; and among Muham-
madans, eggs, chickens, and goat's milk, are all the
perquisites of the mistress of the household. Like the
French, the Eastern woman is often of an excessive
thrift, and her power of saving, by the accumulation
of small sums, is remarkable. That the women
require, in the interests of the home itself, to have a
store of their own, probably every man would admit.
Of course where the circumstances of the family are
'of a grinding poverty, this cannot be.

It must be understood that the present age, in the
East even more than amongst ourselves, is one of
economic transition*. Fifty years ago there, as a
hundred and fifty years ago amongst ourselves, the
main occupation of all women, and especially of
those of gentle birth, was spinning. I have met many
a man of high education whose cjiildhood was gass-
ed in dependence on the secret earnings of, say, a

36 SISTER NIVEDITA

grandmother. Such a possibility no longer exists,
and perhaps one of the saddest consequences, East
and West, is the amount of unfruitful leisure that
has taken its place. Instead of the old spinning and
its kindred arts, W'estern woman, as we all know
owing to the growth of luxury and loss of efficiency
has become still more dependent on her husband
than she was. The main economic advance of
woman among ourselves, lies in the striking out
of new professions and careers by unmarried woman.
This is not yet a factor of great importance in the
East. In India, we have a few women doctors and
writers ; and a growing perception of the need of
modern education, is raising up a class of teachers,
who are training themselves to assist in the spread
of instruction amongst woman. Besides this, in a
lower social class, the old household industries are
giving place to the factory-organisation, and in
many places woman is becoming a wage-earner.
This change is, of course, accompanied by great
economic instability, and by the pinch of poverty in
all directions. It is one of the many phases of that
substitution of civilisations which is now proceeding.
This substitution is a terrible process to watch. It is
full of suffering and penalties. Yet the East cannot
be saved from it. All that service can attempt, is to
secijjre that institutions shall not be transplanted
without the ideals to which they stand related.

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMAN 37

Accepting these, it is possible that Eastern peoples
may themselves be able to purify and redeem the
new, transforming it to the long-known uses of their
own evolution.

INCIPIENT DEVELOPMENTS

India, it should be understood, is the headwater of
Asiatic thought and idealism. In other countries we
may meet with applications, there we find the idea
itself. In India, the sanctity and sweetness of
family -life have been raised to the rank of a great
culture. Wifehood is a religion ; motherhood a
dream ot perfection ; and the pride and protective-
ness of a man are developed to a very high degree.
The Rama^ana epic of the Indian home boldly
lays down the doctrine that a man, like a woman,
should marry but once. " We are born once," said
an Indian woman to me, with great haughtiness,
u we die once, and likewise we are married once ! "
Whatever new developments may now lie before the
womanhood of the East, it is ours to hope that will
constitute only a pouring of the molten metal of her
old faithfulness and consecration, into the new
moulds of a wider knowledge and extended social
formation.

Turning to the West, it would appear that,, the
modern age has not unsealed any new springs of

38 SISTER NIVEDITA

moral force for woman, in the direction of the, family,
though by initiating her, as woman, into the wider
publicity and influence of the civic area, it has
enormously increased the social importance of her
continuing to drink undisturbed at the older sources
of her character. The modern organisation, on the
other hand, by bringing home to her stored and
garnered maternal instinct, the spectacle of the
wider sorrows and imperfections of the civic develop-
ment, has undoubtedly opened to her a new world of
responsibility and individuation. * The woman of the
East is already embarked on a course of self- trans-
formation which can only end by endowing her with
a full measure of civic and intellectual personality.
Js it too much to hope that as she has been content
to quaff from our wells, in this matter of the exten-
sion of the personal scope, so we might be glad to
refresh ourselves at hers, and gain therefrom a
renewed sense of the sanctity of the family, and
particularly of the inviolability of marriage I Paper
submitted to the First Universal Races Congress.

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES

MISSIONARIES IN INDIA

" Behold I send you forth as lambs among wolves/ 1
" Carry neither purse, nor scrip nor shoes."
" Salute no man by the way."
" Eating and drinking such things as they give'"
" Freely ye have received, freely give."
" Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your
purposes, nor scrip for your journey, neither two
coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves/' Early Christ-
ian Mission Charges.

THE line that says u The soul of Shakespeare
could not love thee more," goes to the root of the
matter. Another critic of human life so completely
competent as William Shakespeare, has probably
never been. And his tool, the instrument of his
peculiar genius, was surely an abundant kindliness,
such as we call love, which enabled him to put him-
self behind each man's nature, so as to swim with

40 SISTER NIVEDITA

the current of his life and not against it. Which 'of
us would not have dismissed Hamlet in actual life
contemptuously as a week-kneed dreamer ? Which of
us would have distinguished between Othello and a
vulgar murderer? But once handled by the vast
reverence of the master, the shallowest dare not
commit himself to such superficiality. It would seem
as if the genius of the great dramatist has lain even
more in his gifts of heart than in those of mind.

To read the life and effort of foreign peoples truly,
we stand in overwhelming need of this;Shakespearian
nature. It is an accident of empire that the England
which produced Shakespeare should require such per-
sons more than any other country. It is fast think-
ing that our great bard, who so nobly interpreted
the sorrows and the indignation of the Jew, could
have failed with his gentle vision to pierce the
mask of the Chinaman, the Hindoo, the African or
the red Indian, and to set them before us, clothed
with universal humanity, men like ourselves, each
less large than we in some points, but in others
infinitely nobler.

No gitt receives the homage of the East like the
power of seeing transcendent oneness, where the
senses tell only of diversity. The man who can do
this in any great degree is called a rishi, or soul of
perfected insight. Such perfected insight it ,was
that distinguished Shakespeare. He had the gifts to

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 41

have been, had he lived in the wider opportunity of
to-day, the nshi of humanity, even as in our eyes
he already is of human nature For to him custom
and circumstance and manner of thought' were no
more than a vast web through which the essential
manhood of all men displayed itself in differing
garb

All important eras have left behind them their
own poetry The wandering bards of the early ordei
produced the great race epics The mediaeval Church
sang itself through the lips of Dante With the
dawn of the age of adventure Shakespeare sprang to
birth The period of which a century has gone by
is as great in its own way as any of these It sees
life made universal Never was human power so
high, never was the scope of the individual so
extensive Is there then no prophecy appropriate to
such an hour 9 Where are the wandering minstrels,
where the Shakespearian sympathy, for the stirring
self -utterance of our time ?

If it be the destiny tSf England to contribute any-
thing towards such a work, and if, perchance, one
verse of her world-po^m be already written, we
shall find it, I believe, in a book scarcely yet a three
yj&ars old, Fielding's Soid of a people In the
appearance of one such study more glory has been
shed on our country than by unnumbered successes of
tihe military and commercial kind Humanity needs

42 SISTER NIVEDITA

hundreds of minds like that of the writer in question,
and it needs them of all races, for the children
of each nationality can see and express things
that are hidden from the wise and prudent of all
others. Un embittered disinterested witnesses to
the facts of things are wanted and something
also of revelation must be added. Something of the
function of the poet who sees through and beyond
the deed to its goal, through the idea to the ideal.
It is only the first step in science to have noted
correctly the line of hairs on the chickweed stem,
or the spots of colour in the orchis. There must have
been a need or a danger to be met by one as by the
other. And when this is understood it still remains
to demonstrate their place in the drama of life as
a whole.

What is true of flowers and beasts is not less true
of man. Every one, however unlearned, has a right to
demand three things in the traveller's story : (1)
accurate statement of fact ; (2) careful elucidation of
the meaning of fact; and (3) some attempt to
perceive the law to which the fact and, its intention
stand related. The demand will be answered, of
course, with widely varying degrees of ability, but
it ought to be impossible to receive credit for ap
account that ignores N any one of these factors.

The study that leads up to such work is by no
meanS easy. Alone, amongst people of alien birth

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 43

and culture until we come to a glowing personal
enthusiasm for them at least very little things will
wound us in proportion to our sensitiveness. Not
only must we be able to forget this feeling, but we
must find out the positive meaning of omission or
commission. Society the world over hangs together
in virtue of the good fellowship and unselfishness of
its members, not through their antagonism and
mutual indifference. Virtue exactly represents, on
the moral plane, the force of cohesion on the physi-
cal. To say, therefore that to any people gratitude
or honesty or modesty is unknown, is simply to state
an absurdity and prove ourself an incompetent
witness. What is perfectly credible is that their
way of expressing these instincts is unlike ours and
follows a divergent line of intention. A trifling
illustration occurs to me. As Indian languages
contain no words for " please " or " thanks " it is
very commonly held by English people that the
courtesy of gratitude for little things has no places
in Indian life, and I had felt, as others do, the irrita-
tion of apparent negligence on such points, I learned
my lesson, however, one day when a Hindu friend
undertook to* do something for me that involved a
sacrifice and I offered him warm thanks. I can
never forget how startling was their effect ** You
gave something back" he said, evidently deeply
pained as he left the room. To-day, if any^Hindu

44 SISTER NIYEDITA

said " please " or " thanks " to me, I should share the
sensations of a mother whose children presented their
compliments to her. The instance is small, but
it represents hundreds of cases in which a little
patience and faith in human nature would add
unspeakably to our own wealth of expression and
sympathy* This truth becomes important on a
large scale. It is obviously absurd to constitute
ones own national customs an ideal standard,
against which every other country is to be measur-
ed. Hindu and Muhammadan women are not
seen much in public, either shopping or visiting ;
we are, we enjoy our custom, and call it freedom.
Does it follow that the Eastern woman's restrictions
constitute a grievance ? Would it not be wise, in
attempting to demonstrate this, to share as completely
as possible the physical and emotional environment
which have conditioned her habit ? It is conceivable
that having done this we should conclude that even
in the climate of India or Persia more muscular
activity and greater social liberty would be of benefit
to women ; but unless our judgment were fatally
warped by prejudice we should at the same time
reach tfie counter conviction that a corresponding
power of stillness and meditative peace would be a
vast gain in the West.

But the argument supposes that our wandering
minstrels have grown critical and did aetio.

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 45

we are forced to the supposition for most of them
now make pilgrimage from realm to realm with no
notion of turning their harp and singing sweet
songs in some strange lord's hall, thence to return,
like St. Francis from the Soldan, with tales of fair
welcome and hospitality, or with new songs in praise
of the courtesy and large charity of the gentle
heathen peoples. This is the tone indeed of Mrs*
Flora Annie Steel, but this curious and unaccountable
child of genius is not of the guild of the singers.
Her stories are true instances of the spirit of min-
strelsy sounding the note of a nature that loves
because it must, and sings out of very gladness of
the beauty of others. But Mrs. Steel is a strong poet
from another time and class, To-day's bards have
done as fathers did before them, turned missionary,
and are devoting their best energies to forcing round
pegs into square holes destroying in the process
poetry and mythology and folk custom as well as
rare and beautiful virtues that they are too ignorant
to appreciate. The same thing happened long ago,
when emissaries from Rome trampled out Irish
culture lest it should make against the Faith. It
happened again in the* past century when tbfe Scot-
tish Highlands were rendered barren of the folk
tales by the efforts of the Kirk now far too enlight-
ened to countenance its own vandalism ; but the
wild growths can never be replanted! n

46 SISTER NIVEDITA

happened so completely in Scandinavia and in this
fact probably lies the secret of the national vigour of
Norway.

For there can be no doubt that when all that ought
to represent Art and refined pleasure and growth of
imagination in a community turns puritan, yoking
itself to the car of a single idea, and that foreign,
tlie result 'is simply loss of culture, of course, the
May Day Festival has fled before the face of steam
factories and streets at right angles, and the Board
School Inspector ! But the people whom it has left
are less, not more well educated b^/ that fact. Lists
of European capitals and their sites will never make
up to them for live of Nature, and joy in beauty,
and eye for form and colour.

Not long ago, an acute critic, comparing visits to
England thirty years ago and now, remarked on th
number of types common then that have since dis-
appeared. We should look in vain now for a
Mr* Pickwick or a Mrs. Poyser. We have organised
the national character till it is as an monotonous as
its proto-types, the yard of calico and the daily paper.
Those add, whimsical, lovable persons of a genera-
tion ago, rich in unexpectedness full of human
nature, with surprising mental areas of illumination
^very now and then are gone. They belonged to a
time* when every man was closer to life, and to the
smell "of ploughed fields, than he is to-day: they

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 47

could no more have reached their individuation in
cities than could May Day or Midsummer's Night, or
All Hallow's Elen. Are we glad or sorry for such a
happening? shall we hasten to encourage the repeti-
tion of the process elsewhere ?

II

Surely, if missionaries realised, even in a general
way, the "lie" of such social phenomena, they
would make fewer mistakes in their dealings with
their client and we should hear less of the so-called
criticism which at the present disgraces the English
language.

A Hindu father told me how he had allowed his
little daughter to attend a school kept by two Eng-
lish women. At the end of eight or nine months he
was examining the child as to her progress in read-
ing, and found to his horror that she had acquired
the use of a large number of impossible epithets
which she employed freely in connection with the
natnes of Rama and Krishna, two epic heroes who
are regarded by most Hindus as Incarnations of tbe
Divine Being in the same sense as Buddha or Christ,
The man removed his child at once, and most of us
will ffcel that the sense of loathing and distrust with
which he henceforth regarded his English friends
was richly deserved. For whatever may be thought

48 SISTER NIVEDITA

of the worship of Rama and Krishna as divine per-
sonages and our estimates of this practice will be
as various as our own creeds we must at least
recognise them as the national ideals, guardians of
those assimilated treasures of aspiration and ima-
gination that we call civilisation and morals. It is
quite evident that were this function of the legendary
heroes recognised, even a missionary would take the
trouble to think out some theory of them as great
men, which, like the Unitarian views of the Founder
of Christianity, would leave much that they represent
intact, and continue their service to social cohesion
and amelioration. It is possible that in the particular
case in question the fault did not lie with the English
women in charge of the school, but with some low
class Christian servant or Eurasian student. But if
this were so, it is all the more clear that Christianity
in India does not stand for social integration but
rather the reverse. For it is one of the functions of
religious sects to put their followers in touch with
the great formative forces df life about them. What-
ever its faults may be, the Salvation Army does this,
amongst ourselves. The virtues which it applauds
may be elementary sobriety, honesty ; cheerfulness
for instance but they are virtues which we all
recognise as such. The men and women to whom it
introduces its recruits may be crude sometimes of type
lacking many of the graces of the drawing-room but

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 49

they are good and earnest, however limited in range
and ideal and they make steadily for strong and
hearty citizenship. On a very different plane, Com-
tism fulfils a similar function. It binds its members
into great cosmopolitan and cosmooeval groups sub-
stituting world and race for the sect and party of a
lower definition but taking ]ust their method of
emphasising accepted virtues the high intellectual
passion for Truth, and the widest reaches of human
sympathy, this time and following them up to the
characters and ideals in which they all converge.

The sect that fails to do this, the religion that tells
a man that all he has hitherto held to be right is
really wrong, is bound to do social mischief, incal-
culable social mischief, since , the learner is almost
certain to infer that in like manner what he has
hitherto held to be wrong is right. No wonder then
that Christianity in India carries drunkenness in its
wake, and that so many of those who can afford to
choose will have any rather than a Christian servant.

India has had her own great religious and social
reformers, had them repeatedly, continuously, abund-
antly. She has known no abuses which they have
not laboured to remove, Ram Mohun Roy in the
nineteenth century did not combat Sati more zealously
than Nanak in the fourteenth, Mr. Benjamin Waugh
amongst ourselves is no more eager a foe of infapti*
cide than was the same teacher. Our

4

50 SISTER NIVEDITA

friends do not work so unsparingly for equality as
did Chaitanya of Nuddea in Bengal. And these men
were no futile dreamers. Nanak founded the Sikh
nation, and is a strong influence to this day. Chitanya
did more to Hinduise non-Aryan castes than any
other single man that ever lived. Do the Christian
missionaries wish to take a place in line with these in
the national development ? If so, while they stand for
whatever regilious ideas please them, let them relate
themselves organically to the life and effort of India.
Let them love the country as if they had been born
in it, with no other difference than the added nobility
that a yearning desire to serve and to save might
give. Let them become loving interpreters of her
thought and custom, revealers of her own ideals
to herself even while they make them understood
by others. When a man has the insight to find and
to follow the hidden lines of race-intentio$ for him-
self, others are bound to become his disciples, for they
recognise in his teachings their own highest aspira-
tions and he ma^ call the goal to which he leads
them by any name he chooses, they will not cavil
about words. Indeed from such a standpoint, India
is already Christian perhaps : but, her resistance to
western propaganda, varied by her absolute indiffer-
ence to it, is infinitely to her credit.

It is strange to see those very disciples who were
so solemnly warned when first sent out against

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 51

taking money in their purse, or two coats a piece it is
strange to see those not only enjoying all the com-
forts of refined European life themselves, but hating
and despising the people about them for their greater
simplicity and primitiveness. It is the more extra-
ordinary since their Master, if he were to reappear
at their doors with all the habits and ideas of His
Syrin birth about Him, would inevitably receive a
wanner welcome, and feel more at home with their
Indian neighbours than with themselves. What was
He but a religious beggar, such as we see on the
Indian roadsides every day ? How was He provided
for? By subscriptions and endowments? Did He not
rather wander from hamlet to hamlet, taking His
chance at nightfall of the cottager's hospitality, 6r
the shelter of some humble building? What had He,
to do with the comforts of existence ? His were the
long nights of prayer and meditation on the moun-
tains and in the garden. We send our religious
teachers to the East to spend days and nights of
worldly ease and comfort in the midst of a people
who actually do these things, and they have not the
wit to rebogttise the fact, much less the devotion to
emulate it.

Nothing could be more significant of alHthis than
th'e criticisms that we hear poured out at every mis-
sionary meeting. Have we ever seen greatness of
any kind that was not associated with the power $

52 SISTER NIVEDITA

recognising one's own kinship with all ? What made
Charles Darwin ? The eye to see and the heart to
respond to the great sweep of one infinite tide
through all that lives, including himself* What
made Newton ? The grasp of mind that could hold
the earth itself as a mere speck of cosmic dust in the
play of the forces that govern us. Even the warrior,
whose whole business seems to be antagonism and
separation, becomes distinguished on condition only
of his sense of union with his followers. And the
saint or the poet never yet was to whom all was not
human and all more beautiful than myself. To such
men condemnation is not easy, slander is impossible.
An orgy of sensation provoked by libel, be it of
individuals or of nations, whether at afternoon
tea or from a church pulpit, would seem to them
unspeakable vulgarity. * They could not breathe
in such an atmosphere. Yet something of the
saint, something of the poet, we might surely
hope to 'find in those whose lives are given to
spread a message of glad tidings in far-off lands.
And surely there has been the sainthood of a
good intention. Has there been that of a noble
execution ?

If therp has, why have emissaries so rarely, on
their return, a good word to say for those amongst
whom they have been? Why, to take explicit
instances, do we never hear from them of the strength

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 53

and virtues of Indian women ? Why only of their
faults and failures ?

Why have the missionaries created and left in
tact, wherever people were ignorant enough to be
imposed upon, the picture of the crocodile luncheon
of babies served up by their mothers, along the
Ganges banks ? Everywhere I have met people who
believed this story, and I have never heard of a pro-
fessed apostle of truth who tried bo set the impres-
sion right. Infanticide occurs in India, under
pressure of poverty and responsibility, as it occurs in
all countries ; but it is not practised there any more
than here, nor is -it lauded as a religious act ; nor is
it perhaps anything like so common as amongst
ourselves. There is no custom of insuring a baby's
life for 5, when the funeral expenses are only 2,
nor is there any infant mortality ascribable to the
intemperance of mothers* in that country. "Why
have we never heard from the missionaries of the
beauty of Hindu home life, of the marvellous ideals
which inspire the Indian woman, of the Indian
customs teeming with poetry and sweetness ?

Is the answer to be found in the preconceived idea
which blinds the would-be observer, or is it the
intellectual ignorance which keeps him unaware
that there is anything to be observed? Or is it
possibly a meaner motive still, the idea that if a
true and lofty tone is taken, money will not be

54 SISTER NIVEDITA

forthcoming to support his own career ? I have had
the privilege of listening to the accounts of three
classes of persons who were supposed to be warm
religious friends of the Indian people ; educational
missionaries, ^lady doctors, and modern occultists.
Their statements were sincere and deliberate exposi-
tions of the outlook they had been enabled to take on
Hindu life. I listened in vain for one strong word
of appreciation for the problems which Indian society
has undoubtedly solved, or a single hint that they
understood the positive ends for which that country
was making. But in every case the conviction
seemed to be, that the dignity and hope of the
speaker's own gospel depended absolutely upon show-
ing the hollowness and rottenness of other form of
life* The last mentioned exposition was easily dis-
po$ed of. It was confined to a discussion of sattee,
infanticide, and thuggism as the most representative
factors of Indian experience which could be discover-
ed ; touched upon also the worst sides of caste, and
propounded the theory that England's responsibility
to the East would be fulfilled when she had persuad-
ed Oriental people to " give up their ridiculous old
habits " and take to ways which occultists would
consider more rational. From lady doctors we hear
of the medical and surgical darkness of the Indian
village greater, if they are right, than th^t of
parallel populations in England fifty years ago. One

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 55,

of the most offensive customs, to their minds, is that
of the isolation of a woman at the moment of child-
birth. Now, whatever this custom shows and it is
not perhaps universally applied with the full consci-
ousness of the reason that prompted it originally it
does certainly indicate a very elevated state of
medical culture at some past epoch in Hindu history.
The room in which birth takes place must afterwards
be broken up and taken away. Hence a simple
mud-hut is built outside the house. When once the
child is horn, for some days the mother may not be
visited by any member of the household. She is
attended only by an old nurse and whatever medical
advice may be called.

Is this treatment then so very inhumane ? Yet it
is exactly what we blame the Hindu people for not
adopting in cases of plague and other infectious
diseases. It is, of course, easy to imagine that rules
of such a nature may often be badly, even stupidly,
applied ; but there can be no doubt that they demon-
strate very clear and distinct ideas of bacteriology
at their inception. All through the caste rules, and
regulations for bathing, run similar scientific concep-
tions which astonish competent observers by their
hygienic desirability. It is, of course, a pity that
medical science everywhere is not up to the twentieth
century London level ; but in this respect India is
not more degraded than England, Scotland and

56 SISTER NIVEDITA

Ireland themselves. There is no country district, far
from railways, strong in old traditions, and contain-
ing persons who have not had the inestimable
benefits of Board School instruction, where, at the
same time, doctoring is not done that the city
hospitals and the London physician would refuse to
countenance. But this fact is a phenomenon of
ignorance (or good sense, as the case may be) : it is
not due to the wrong and vile nature of the Christian
religion. It rouses sometimes our regret, occasionally
our admiration, but never with any justice our con-
tempt or hatred. One of the evils of our present
organisation of skill is the complete inability induced
by it to appreciate the value of tradition and mother
wit. It is easy to point out flaws in Indian village
medicine, midwifery, and what not ; but how do we
account for the great dignity and suppleness of the
general physical development, and for the marvel-
lous freedom of the race from skin blemish of any
kind ? This, too, in a country where the germ fauna
is at least as dangerous as that other fauna of the
jungle which includes the tiger and the cobra. In
urging these points I am not denying that modern
science can aid, but only .that it has no right to
despise village lore.

Every system, of course, mistrusts every other.
This is the superstition of party. To this fact I trace
the phenomenon, detailed by the medical missionary

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 57

sometimes, of men of sufficient means saying, " If
you can cure her for 20s. (probably ten rupees) you
may do so " alluding to a wife or some other women-
member of the speaker's household. The Christian
charity of the lady doctor rushes immediately to the
conclusion that his wife's or mother's health is a
matter of complete indifference to her client. Ergo^
that most Hindu men are similarly careless. Ergo,
the Hindu men hate and despise Hindu women.

Supposing the anecdote to be the true, and I raise
this doubt advisedly, could reasoning be more absurd ?
It does not occur to the physican that her knowledge
or honesty may be viewed with suspicion as against
old and tried methods of treatment in which every
one has confidence.

It is impossible to deal at length with other and
more wide reaching charges. Caste, in missionary
eyes is an unmitigated abuse. They confine them-
selves to an account of its negations and prohibitions,
ignoring all its element of the trades guild and race
protection type. And they say all this while every
moment of their lives in India has been a ratification
of that new caste, of race prestige which is one of
the most striking phenomena of an imperialistic age.
But if I were a Hindu I do not think that mission'-
ary criticisms of caste would disturb ine much, I
should realise that this was the form which the life
of my people had assumed, that in it was

58 SISTER OTVEDITA

all that the word honour connotes in Europe ; and
that the critics in question has given no sign as yet
of understanding either their own society or mine
intelligently. The point that I should find seriously
annoying would be their animadversions on the
position of women in India. To prove that these
can be very galling I need only say that in one
speech to which I listened I heard the following
thirteen statements made and supported : (1) That
the Hindu social system makes a pretence of honour-
ing women, but that this honour is more apparent
than real 5 (2) That women, in India are deliberately
kept in ignorance ; (3) That women in India have no
place assigned to them in heaven save through
their husbands; (4) That no sacramental rite is
performed over them with Vedic texts ; (5) That
certain absurd old misogynist verses, comparable to
the warnings against " the strange women " in the
Book of Proverbs, and representative of the attitude
of Hindu men to their women folk in general ;
(6) That a girl at birth gets a sorry welcome ; (7)
That a mother's anxiety to bear sons is appaling,
" her very wifehood depends on her doing so ; (8)
That the infanticide of girls is a common practice in
India ; (9) That the Kulin Brahman marriage system
is a representative fact ; (10) That the parents un-
able to marry off their daughters are in the habit of
marrying them to a god (making them prostitutes)

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 59

as an alternative (" The degradation of the whole
race of Hindu women lies in the very possibility for
any one of them of the life which a* temple girl must
live ") ; (11) That Hindu wedding ceremonies are
unspeakably gross ; (12) That the Hindu widow lives
a life of such misery and insult that burning to death
may well have seemed, preferable ; (13) That the
Hindu widow is almost always immoral. To which
in like manner -flie following replies may be made :

(1) That the observer must have been incom-
petent indeed. There are few great relationships in
human life like" that between a Hindu man and his
mother. Hindus cannot even excuse Hamlet for re-
proaching Gertrude. " But she was his mother they
exclaim, when all is said. And this little fact is
very significant.

(2) That the incompetence of the observer is evi-
dent once more. It is clear that illiteracy is the form
of ignorance referred to. It is not true that women
are deliberately kept so; but if they were, is their
knowledge of house-keeping and cooking of no value?
Is their trained common sense worthless? Can a
woman even be called illiterate when it is merely
true that she cannot read and write, though at the
same time she is saturated with the literary culture
of the great Epics and Puranas ? It is interesting to
note that the best-managed estate^ in Bengal, are in
the hands of widows. Lawyers invariably respect

60 SISTER MVEDITA

their opinions Ahalya Bliai Rani was an instance of
the same kind in the Maharatta country.

(3) What this means I have been unable to find
out. If it had been said that the husband had no
place save through his wife it would have'been more
intelligible. For the Vedic views made the man a
responsible member of the religious community only
after marriage and as long as both lived.

The whole motive of Sattee, moreover, was that
the wife's sacrifice might ensure heaven to the hus-
band. Was the speaker perhaps thinking of Muham-
madans ? Even on their behalf I would repudiate the
statement.

This appears to be simply untrue. Some of the
greatest teachers mentioned in the Hindu Scriptures
are women. And it is now many hundreds of years
since the Ehagavad- Gita was composed for the sake of
bringing recondite truths to the knowledge of even
unlearned persons, including women and the work-
ing classes.

(5) THe speaker does not mention that every
Hindu husband names bis wife " my Lukshmi " or
" Fortuna".

(6) This may be true in some cases, as it is in
England, and in all patriarchal societies. I know
numbers of families in which the opposite is true, and
such 'an attftude is unth ought of, as we expect to be
here.

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 61

(7) Generally speaking a Hindu woman's wife-
hood no more depends on her bearing sons than an
English woman's. The need of a son can always
be met m India by adoption.

(8) Infanticide of girls did occur commonly at a
given period amongst certain Rajputs, and amongst
these only. It is in no sense a common Indian
practice, any more, if as much, as it is a common
London pactice.

(9) Another instance of the same kind. Kuhn
Brahmans are a particularly high caste. If a marri-
age cannot be made for a daughter of this caste, her
father may give her to any man of sufficient rank
and the marriage may be merely nominal, or may
extend to making her once a mother. This is an
abuse of caste. It concerns a very small number,
however, and began to die the instant the modern
organisation of information drew the attention of
society to it. A leading orthodox Hindu, Iswar
Chandra Vidyasagar, led the crusade against it. I
should like to add that the custom is not, to my think-
ing, an abuse of the worst type such as 1 the desire
of parents to make eligible matches for their
daughters may lead to in all countries since it
is quite compatible with the physical vigour of
the bride, and with her efficient discharge of
whatever duties of motherhood may fall to her
share.

62 SISTER NIVEDITA

(10) The expression "marriage to a god" is
nowhere in use in Northern India. The statement
bears its regional birth mark on its brow. It is in
Southern and perhaps Western in application. We
touch here on a new class of social phenomena
Indian prostitution customs. To say that it occurs to
the respectable Hindu father to make his daughter a
prostitute because he cannot find a husband for her,
more easily than the same idea would present itself
to an English gentleman, is utterly untrue. It is
absurd on the face of it. The whole of caste is born
of the passionate depth of the contrary sentiment.
The chastity of women is the central virtue of Hindu
life. " The degradation of the whole race of Hindu
women lies in the very possibility for any one of
them of the life which a temple girl must live." This
is no more true of Hindu women than a correspond-
ing statement would be of English women. There is
a sense in which the pitfalls of life yawn before the
most favoured feet. But it is a limited sense. If a
Hindu woman once leaves her home unattended, with-
out the knowledge and consent of her mother-in-law
or her husband she may be refused re-entrance for
ever. But this is a witness to the severity of the
moral code, not to its laxity.

(11) " That Hindu wedding ceremonies are un-
speakably gross. They are not so, amongst people
who are not gross. Like ihe Church of England

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 63

Form for the Solemnisation of Matrimony, they may
sound a note in the music of life more serious and
responsible than is to the taste of an afternoon tea-
party. Colebrook's " Essays " give all the details
and translations which will enable the student to
compare the two rites. All that I can say is that I
have been present at many Hindu weddings, and
have been deeply touched by the beauty and delicacy
of all the proceedings. ^ There is a good deal of non-
sense and teasing of the young bridegroom in the
women's apartments. Not unlike such half-obsolete
festivals as All Fools * and Saint Valentine's Days.
On this occasion the youth makes friends with his
tuture sisters-in-law. The fun is a little more
exuberant than grave elders may enjoy, but it is one
of the few opportunities of the kind which Hindu
breeding -permits to boys and girls. It requires
vulgarity of mind to read more serious offences
into it.

(12) As to the misery of Indian widows, it is not
too much to say that every statement yet made by a
Protestant missionary has been made in complete
ignorance of the bearing of the facts, Hindus are a
people amongst whom the monastic ideal is intensely
living, In their eyes the widow, by the fact of her
widowhood, is vowed to celibacy and therefore to
poverty, austerity, and prayer. Hence her life be-
comes that of a nun : and if she is a child her

64 SISTER NIVEDITA

training must lead to the nun's life. It is not true
that she is regarded by society with aversion and
contempt/ The reverse is the case. She takes
precedence of married women as one who is holier.
We may regret the severity o the ideal, but we
have to recognise here, as in the case of monogamy,
that it indicates intensity of moral development, not
its lack. It may bear hard upon the individual, but
redress cannot lie in lowering of standard, it must
rather consist of a new direction given to the moral
force which it has evolved.

(13) The last contention which I have noted is
the most serious of all, and I have heard it repeatedly
in England and America in the course of missionary
descriptions. I need hardly say that I know it to be
grossly untrue.

It is interesting to note that these thirteen state-
ments fall into three different groups, (a) statements
which are absolutely and entirely false (1), (3), (?),
(11), (13); (b) statements which are the result of
misinterpreting or overstating facts (2), (5), (12) ;
and (c) statements which may be true of certain
limited localities, periods or classes, but to which a
false colour has been given by quoting them as
representative of Hindu life in the whole (4), (8), (9)
and (10).

The last group is the most important for two
reasons ; in the first place it has an air of seriousness

.AMBS AMONG WOLVES

and security which goes far to give credibility to the
whole argument, and in the second it furnishes a
complete exposure of the method of making up
evidence.

In the case of (4), we have a quotation from an old
catechism of many centuries ago : " What is the chief
gate to hell? A woman. What bewitches like
wine? A woman," etc., etc. ; made as if it were the
most uptodate collection of modern Indian proverbs.
We see the use of the thing the moment we look at
it, but the missionaries continue to quote it with
their accustomed gravity. One understands that in
their eyes anything is justified that will warm the
heathen of the error of his ways, but surely this poor
little dialogue has been seriously over-worked. I
have never read a missionary publication on the
woman question in which it was not used, and I
have never met with a Hindu, however learned, who
would otherwise have known of it. On investiga-
tion one discovers that sentiment of this kind was
common in the monkish literature of the Buddhist
period. It could probably be matched from the
monastic writings of our own middle ages. In (8)
we have an abuse which concerned one ^caste in th$
Rajput districts, used as if it were true of all castes
all over India, and this in face of the* terrible
tu quoque which might be retorted against the
accuser* It cannot be too clearly understood that

66 SISTER NIVEDITA

India is a continent, not a country and that to
gather together the exceptional vices and crimes of
every people and province within her borders and
urge them against " India " or " Hinduism " is about
as fair as to charge a Norfolk farmer with practising
Corsican vendetta, on the strength of the latter's
being a " European " custom. In (a) one more we
have the sin of a small and high caste charged in a
way to make it seem true of the whole country.
Kulin Brahmans cannot be more than one in 1,000
of the Bengali population, and they exist only in
Bengal. We have also the deliberate ignoring of the
way in which Hindus themselves have worked
against the abuse.

And in (10) we have the sweeping-in of prostitu-
tion customs, without a word of warning* as if they
were part of the respectable recognised life of the
Indian people, and as if in the possession of such a
class at all, the Indian people were incomparably "
depraved. Do the missionaries really affect such
innocence ? But if they do, at least let them observe
the Indian fact accurately. In this custom of
marriage to a god (or to a tree, as in Bengal); quaint
as it sounds, there is a tremendous protecting fence
thrown round girls. No Hindu man, however
abandoned will outrage the unwedded maiden. Be-
fore these poor victims, therefore, can take up the
practice of their profession, they have to go through

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 67

a form of marriage. Hence the device in question.
Can we make as good a statement for ourselves ?

If the outrage were on the other side, if Hindus
had been in the habit of sending in their emissaries
to convert us from the error of our ways, and if these
emissaries on their return had grossly abused our
hospitality ; had forgotten the honour of the guest
and blazoned our family misfortunes to the whole
world ; had made harsh criticisms on us as individuals,
because they had been allowed the opportunity of see-
ing us by the hearthside, when the formalities of
public life were put aside, if in fact they had violated
our confidence, what should we have felt? What
should we have said ? Yet their doing so would have
been comparatively insignificant, for power and
influence are in our hand, not in theirs. Probably
no single fact has tended to widen the distance
between the races in India like that of missionary
slander. Certainly nothing has so deepened our
contempt. For, say what he will, the only class of
Europeans who have been admitted to Hindu homes
at all, and have made a business of reporting what
they saw there, has been Protestant missionaries*
medical and others. It seems as if to them nothing
had been* sacred. In all lands, doctors and clergy-
men see the misfortunes of the home, and professional
honour keeps their lips sealed. But here all has
besn put upon the market. Medical records

68 SISTER NIVEDITA

unpleasant reading) have been detailed in public,
from platform and pulpit. And the professional
consideration. ;that ought to have prevented such
dishonour only intervene, if at all, to forbid the use
of speaker's names in connection with statements
made by them in full publicity to large audiences.

Another miserable fallacy remains. There are
three classes of people whose opinions are quoted by
missionaries in evidence of the sins and weaknesses
of Hinduism. They are : (1) native reformers ; (2)
Christian converts ; and (3) any exuberant fool who
has been discovered.

We all know how much the first kind of evidence
is worth. Just picture the "Woman's Rights"
agitator comparing the positions of Eastern and
Western women ! How does she receive the sugges-
tion that the Oriental has points of right aifd of
authority which she cannot emulate ? The idea is
intolerable to her. Yet only an hour ago she may
have been pointing out the bitter degradation of her
own position, classed as she is in the voting lists
with " criminals, lunatics, and paupers ". It is evi-
dent that the anxious reformer uses languages
amongst its equals that he would be very sorry to
hear taken au pied de la lettre by the would-be
interpreters of his country's customs. He would be
<the first then to point out that the Expressions he
had used had a purely relative value.

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 69

Mtich more is this true of the utterances of the
reformer who has lived for years blinded by the ink
of his own gall. We know how in such cases there
can be a growth of bitterness and perversity which
isolates the thinker and makes his conclusion on
social problems absolutely worthless.

Christian converts in India are isolated by the very
fact of baptism. And the present generation having
been born Christian, have- often little more than the
missionaries account, of it, for the life habits of t&eir
own country people.

It cannot be too widely understood that one writer
like Mrs. Steel, or one disinterested student of Indian
life like Fielding in Burma, is worth all that has yet
been contributed from all missionary sources put
together* And if it is too late to change the present
generation of workers, surely it is only the more
timely to demand on the part of English people such
a standard of sympathy and culture that the mission-
ary without a thorough and appropriate education for
his task shall twenty years hence be a thing of the
past.

Ill

We have held up a double standard of the artistic
opportunity open to the class we have been consider*
ing, and of the obligation of professional discretion*

70 SISTEB KIVEDITA

When we hear the banker publicly discussing his
client's accounts or the physician making known his
patient's poverty and ignorance we conclude that at
least these people are not held as human beings,
since service of their need has no more bound the
server to keep their confidence than it would bind
ilhe veterinary surgeon or the dog. doctor. But it is
not, at any rate conscious. The whole raison detre
of the missionary's positions is a passionate impulse
of human brotherhood. The idea that the souls of
men are in eternal peril if they do not hear a certain
tabulated historical statement may be true or false.
It is sure that as long as such an idea appeals to
conscientious people they are bound to make some
missionary efforts. And the intention must approve
itself to us as noble. But that sustained integrity
which constitutes nobility of action is a vastly more
difficult matter than this. And at this point the
missionary is hampered by the tradition of his class.
A certain given interpretation of caste, of zenana,
of the native intellect, is imposed upon him at the
utset, and few minds could break through such
preconception even to the extent of fulfilling
the first conditions of the disciplined student of
phenbmena.

- As artist and scientist then we must perhaps con-
sider him lost. There still remains the ideal of the
religious teacher. Why should he not succeed in

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 71

this? It is a part that admits of sectarian bitter-
ness, provided only it be backed up by holiness
of personal life in some form that we can under-
stand. It admits also of intellectual ignorance,
provided there be spiritual insight. Was not the
strongest empire that the world ever saw convert-
ed by a few fishermen. The Apostle need* not be
a scholar, he need not be an artist, he must be
a saint.

It is here that we come upon the most curious
paradox of all. Preaching an Eastern religion to
an Eastern people, the ideals of the East are for
once perfectly in place. It is a golden moment
Count Tolstoi may have difficulty in obeying the
words of Christ literally, while fulfilling the demands
of life. But in India the one teacher who would be
understood would be he who possessed neither gold
nor silver nor brass in bis purse, who had not two
coats, neither shoes nor yet staves who saluted no
man by the way being top much bent on the errand
before him, and the repetition of the Name of God ;
who would be absolutely indifferent to the conse-
quences for himself personally, offering himself up in
very truth as a lamb amongst wolves. Every door
'in that country would swing upon before such a
visitor even if- he railed against the family gods.
The Christian ideal might be demonstrated success*
fully in India now as it was in Italy, in the days 9t

72 SISTER NIVEDITA

St. Francis. By the Begging Friars, for India has
retained the ideal of such life even more completely
than Italy ever had it. To the Individual Christian
therefore who is willing to accept the charge laid
upon him, the way is clear. Let him go forth to
the gentle East strong in his mission filled with
burning renunciation " as a lamb amongst wolves ".
There will be no room here for marrying and bring-
ing up of children ; no room for distinctions of
rank or of race ; np room for anxiety about provision
or gain.

Is this the ideal that the Missionary follows ? If
not, why not ? True it is not the only useful career
that he may adopt. An educator who has deeply
understood the problems of India, and is ready to
help her to solve them in her own way is perhaps
even more necessary. The poet who makes two
races love each other and the country is worthy of
all the admiration he excites.

But has the missionary any right to claim the
indulgence without the criticism of all these rolls ?
Has he any right to be fanatical like the religionist
withbut being ascetic like him ? To be wanting in
common sense and accuracy like the poet, without
contributing joy and beauty? To be in receipt of
regular pay and live a comfortable life like the pro-
fessional man, without any regard for the profes-
sional man's honour ?

LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 73-

And are the public, who have so long permitted,
this thing to be, entirely without blame ? Let us
demand something better, and something better
must be offered. The appeal is to Csesar. West-
minster Review.

THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT 75

hope and enthusiasm into even the oldest workers.
And there is no reason why the movement should
fail in India. The fact that America could not
maintain her own industries without a high protec-
tive tariff, the fact that no Swadeshi movement,
resting on a purely moi al and voluntary basis, could
possibly succeed in any European country, is no
argument against the success of such a movement
amongst ourselves. To begin with, the man who
has a choice of weapons by which to make his
strength felt, may be indifferent to a particular kind,
but tjae situation changes when that is all he has.
His whole power of resistance, his whole impulse of
self-preservation, is then concentrated on its use.
And the Swadeshi movement is all* we have. In
Western countries moreover, there is a certain
minimum- line of comfort, below which people cannot
go. But with us, there is no such line. The Indian
power to abstain is without a limit. But there is
even more in our favour. For, it cannot be denied,
that while Eastern peoples have hitherto shown
themselves to be weaker than Western in certain
kinds of co-operation and self-defence, they have,
throughout the whole course of human history/
proved themselves vastly stronger, in ability to unite
tor the affirming of a given idea, in self-surrender
to a moral impulse, in the power steadily to endure
all the discomfort and deprivation or refusal for ttoe

76 SISTER NIVEDITA

sake of right. Thus, the whole history of India fits the
Indian people for a struggle in which there is no force
to uphold the Dharma against the temptations of self-
indulgence, of comfort, and of individual selfishness
save that of the human will and the human consci-
ence. It may be that no other modern country could
succeed in this ordeal. Yet, even that would not
condemn the holy land to fail. The Indian people
have heard, so far, of nothing but their weaknesses.
The time has now come when they should meditate
on their own strength, and proceed to prove it*
What about the wealth of self-contr6l and self-direc-
tion, handed down by generations of austere and
clean-living ancestors, and put out to interest in the
steady routine of Hindu piety, day after day, and
year after year? Besides, is it true that mankind
always does the cheap thing? Is the human will
really like water, always to be carried to the lowest
available level, by its own momentum ? If this had
been so, how should we explain that great transition,
by which Hindus once upon a time, ceased to eat
beef? They were accustomed to the food, and liked
it. It was convenient to kill cattle and feed a house-
hold, in times of scarcity. But an idea of mercy and
tenderness, aided by the permanent economic inter-
ests of the civilisation, came in, and to-day, where is
the Hindu who will eat beef? The Swadeshi move-
ment is the cow-protecting movement, of the present

THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT 77

age. There will yet come a time in India when the
man who buys from a foreigner what his own coun-
tryman could by any means supply, will be regarded
as on a level with the killer of cows to-day. For
assuredly, the two offences are morally identical.

Again, if it were true that man always took the
easiest course, what society could ever hope to rise
out of savagery ? All our higher instincts, like clean-
liness, refinement, love of learning, have been built
up of refiAals to go to the easy way, to take the
cheaper of two results. Bather, is it true to say, that
man is man in virtue of his inherent power to curb
his grosser appetite and will, in favour of some finer
and more remote purpose. l[an is man in proportion
only as he does not live the blind instinctive life of
his first impulse, his immediate convenience, his
individual self-interest, but a higher life of struggle
against these primitive desires and their supersession
by others which are subtler, less self -regarding, and
further reaching. It is precisely in a matter like the
keeping of the Swadeshi vow that the Indian people*
specially, can find an opportunity to show their
true mettle. Their civilisation looks meagre enough
and poor enough, beside the luxury and complexity
of that of the West. But if it, with all its bareness,
should prove to contain unsuspected moral potential-
ities, if it should hide a power, unknown to others,
of choosing right at any cost, then which will force

78 SISTER NIVEDITA

the acknowledgment of its superiority, the magnifi-
cence of Europe, or the poverty of the mother
land?

If we are told that no people will voluntarily buy in
a dear market when they might buy in a cheap, we
answer : this may be true of Western peoples, educat-
ed in a system of co-operation for self-interest, and, at
the same time, it may be untrue of the Indian nation,
educated in a system of co-operation for self-sacrifice*

I have spoken of this as a struggle oil behaff of
Dharma. But is this true ? Is the Swadeshi move-
ment actually an integral part of the National Right-
eousness ? The Mother-Church at least, has spoken
with no uncertain voice. Like a trumpet-call has
gone forth the Renewal of Vows at the Ealighat, in
Calcutta. Throughout the whole country has been
heard the fiat issued at Puri. Henceforth it will be
held sacrilege to offer foreign wares in worship.
Here and there we learn of personal sacrifice, such
as that of the poor purohits in the Eastern districts,
who" volunteered to offer only gumtchas, or coarse
towels, during the recent Pz</a, incases where country-
cloth could not be had in the ordinary quantity,
though to do so meant a year of proverty for them*
But there is human proof forthcoming, also. In the
commercial quarter of Calcutta, as soon as the
Boycott began, it was found that the cry of " Pick-
pocket ! " hitherto, alas, of hourly occurrence on the

THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT 79

pavements of the Burra Bazaar! was no longer
heard. It had actually become unfashionable for
small boys to be constantly subjected to the harass-
ing attentions of the police, and the jail as a school
for our children was falling out of use ! On investi-
gation the merchants concluded that the dexterous
fingers of the little folk were now busily employed
in rolling the leaf-cigarettes, or country biras, that
had superseded the English,

During the National Celebration of the 16th of
October, a Bengali Muhammadan was heard address-
ing a crowd of his fellows. " Brothers," he was
saying, " a while ago, we could not earn four annas
a day. You know that a man had to steal for his
opium, and how many of us spend eight months of
every year in prison, while our women ate outside
their homes ! But now, how everything is changed !
Ten annas a day, with comfort and decency. No
more stealing, no more prison, and our women cook
for us and for themselves ! " Of Calcutta it may be
said that in all directions small industries have
sprung up like flowers amongst us. Here are whole
households engaged in making matches. Somewhere
else, it is ink, tooth powder, soap, note-paper, or
what not. There, again, is a scheme for pottery, or
glass, on a more ambitious scale. And this, without
mentioning the very staple of the country, its cotton
weaving. Where before were only despair

80 SISTER NIVEDITA

starvation, we see- to-day glad faces, and feel an
atmosphere of hope.

Again, where people are habitually below the line
of proper feeding, the first sign of a wave of prosperity
must be the appearance of more food-shops. And in
the Indian parts of Calcutta, these greet the eye on all
sides, with a more varied assortment of better food-
stuffs than of old. Hope has come to the people.
A chance of self -help has dawned upon them. And
we may lay a wager that when that season Arrives,
the plague returns will show how hopeless is the
siege laid against the citadel of a higher comfort.
For the truest hygiene lies in being well nourished.
The best medicine is sufficient food.

Now what does all this mean ? Could there be any-
thing more -pathetic than the joy of a confessedly
criminal class at the cessation of a need for crime ?
In Europe, who have to deal with men who will not
woric, and commit crime, it is said, for the love of it.
But -can this be said of our " little brothers " of the
Indian lower classes? Surely, if thereby one could
give an opportunity to such sweetness and honesty
and child like purity of heart, as have revealed them-
selves through the unconscious lips of a Muhammadan
workman, if one could thereby protect them, and aid
them their struggle on and up, one might be glad
oneself to commit a thousand crimes and steep
own soul in the lake of fire for evejr. Oh

THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT 81

the Indian People, voice of the downtrodden, voice
of the ignorant and helpless, speak louder yet, that
we, your own flesh, may hear your cry, and know
your innocent gladness, and join our hands and
hearts with yours, in a common suffering and a
common love : If it be true that by an attitude of
of rigid self-control we can help to turn jail-birds
into honest men, give to children, who are now
forced into dishonesty by the poverty of their homes,
an education in labour, and a sufficient provision for
life, bring food to the starving, and hope to the
despairing, and finally strengthen the people to with-
stand the attacks of disease, is there any question as
to the Swadeshi tapasya being Dharma? Let none
talk nonsense about other lands!! On Indian men and
women is laid the responsibility of caring for the
Indian poor. And let there never be forgotten the
curse of the Gita on the man who does another's
duty instead of his own. " Better for a man is his
owfl duty, however badly done, than the duty of
another, though that be easy. The duty of another
leaps into great peril. Let Manchester gd! Let
London go ! It is for the Indian People to do t keif
own duty.

But let us turn to the rewards of this t t apasya> if
successfully carried dut. First we must understand
that no work was ever wasted. Every vibration of
struggle brings its own result. When enough

82 SISTER NIVEDITA

has gone out, victory is the return. Ultimately,
there is no such thing as defeat. A clear will frus-
trated, only becomes the clearer. Loss becomes then
nothing but a gain delayed. Again, victory depends
only on effort, never on talk. All India is watching
to-day the struggle that is going on in Eastern
Bengal. Scarcely a wo*d appears in the papers, yet
the knowledge is everywhere. The air is tense
with expectation, with sympathy, with pride, in
those grim heroic people and their silent Strug-
gle to the death, for their Swadeshi trade. Quietly,
'all India is assimilating their power. Are they
not a farmer people engaged in a warfare
which is none the less real for being fought with
spiritual weapons ? But let him who stands in the
path of right, beware ! Clearer and clearer grows the
will unjustly thwarted, Sterner and sterner become
they who are taught to depend on their own strength,
and in all history there comes an hour when the
merciless man trembles, and cries out himself orf the
mercy of God, to find it gone !

The first result of faithfulness to Swadeshi, is then,
the power to be more faithful still. Here we find
the value of our difficulties. It is only a fool or a
coward who tamely submits to opposition. The
.manly man feels that nothing else is so effective in
forcing him to keep the fires of his own enthusiasm
ablaze.

THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT 83

But the second result is much more tangible. The
movement to-day is only in its initial stage. It
cannot be allowed to end till it has stopped the whole
of the commercial drain upon the country. Now if*
the impoverishment of India is a matter of the
amount of an annual drain put out at compound
interest, which it is, it follows that the amount saved
by the Swadeshi movement, so long as the level
gained is maintained, is turned into prosperity at
compound interest. Every pice circulated in India
represents a value periodically added, in an accumu-
lating ratio, to the Indian soil. If the Swadeshi
movement, then, can only be adhered to with
firmness, we may even begin to hear, from the
politicians of the Congress of an economics of hope,
instead of an economics of despair !

What, then, of the difficulties of the Swadeshi
movement? Apart from political opposition, which
is, as has been said, rather a spur than otherwise, it
has several serious obstacles to overcome. Amongst
these I do jiot count that slight ebbing of interest
which comes sooner or later in some degree to all-
things human, when the first eagerness of th#
multitudes is overpast. On the whole, this movement
is rooted so deep in the trained habits of our women
and our priests, that the tidal ebb is an extraordinarily
small factor in the sum of action. And the whole
of this is to *be taken up and eliminated later,

84 SISTER NIVEDITA

the advance of the sea upon the land shall wash away
the very shores themselves. No, the serious difficulties
of the Swadeshi movement lie in the two great fields
of Production and Distribution. The obstacle offered
by insufficient production is understood by all of us.
Indeed, it has been the strong and spontaneous union
of efforts to bring production up to the required level,
in which has lain the dawning hope and joy of
all the workers. In Distribution, however, we
have a problem equally refractory to solve. For
even when we know that a certain article is
made in the country, we do not yet know
where to obtain it. Or the shop at which it can
be bought is apt to be inaccessible, or insufficiently
supplied. The first Soap Factory started in Calcutta
formed a notable exception to this rule* The sale of
this soap was organised with as much care as its
manufacture, with the result that it was immediately
obtainable in the small quantities required for house-
hold use, at plenty of well known plaqes in Calcutta.
Its success, therefore, was great and immediate. The
same is not the case, however, with jams and chut-
neys, with Hindu biscuits, with ink, matches, note-
paper, and other equally necessary commodities*
Indeed, if the opportunity of purchasing some of
these were a boon conferred on the consumer at as
miich sacrifice to the manufacturer as parting with
a trade secret, it could hardly be more effectually

THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT 85

withheld ! Now this is extremely natural. It is only
what was to have been expected. The channels of
distribution, and the small shops which are the real
distributing centres in every city have been so long
in the hands of the foreign trade, that they require to
be re-captured now, for their own. Above all, these
small shops must be captured by the Swadeshi. For
they take, to whole quarters, the place which the
housewife's store-room plays to the family-mansion.
The four-anna shop, or the four-pice shop, is the
store-room of the poor. There the school-boy buys
his ink, his stationery, and his pencils. There the
housewife stops, on her road from the river, to
purchase a gift or a utensil. It is here that our own
soap, ink, paper, matches, toys, and the rest must be
made to assail the eye in all directions. A place in
the shop- window is the best advertisement. And
only when this state of affairs has been brought
about, can the Swadeshi movement really penetrate
beyond the palace and the temple, into the remotest
corners of villages and huts.

For this to be done, it will be necessary, either
that each small industry which is started shall em-
ploy an agent for the special purpose of attending to
the distribution of , its particular product, or that each
town shall form a Swadeshi Committee, fco keep a
register of all industrial undertakings, and of the
shops at which the products can be found, and also

86 SISTER NIVEDITA

to promote the sale of Swadeshi; rather than Bideshi
articles at the local shops. There is so strong an
inclination in this direction all over the country,
that a little organised propaganda, and a little well
directed effort, will go a long way in this direction.
But we must be prepared to sustain those efforts.
The system of commercial credit is such that the
shops must be; assisted as far as possible to disentangle
themselves from the foreign trade, and this will take
time, patience, and a deeper enthusiasm than a
movement can show.

There is, however, another difficulty, which makes
the organisation of such bureaus, and their issuing
of lists of approved shops, necessary. This lies in
the practice of trade forgery. Several articles have
already appeared on the market, bearing marks and
lables which have been affixed in India, while the
goods themselves are of foreign make. To publish
the names of these would, perhaps, constitute libeL
Moreover, the offence will become more common.
Obviously, the only way to defeat the fraud is by
the publication of white lists, under the authority of
trusted leaders of the Swadeshi movement. These
leaders themselves, further, must be personally cog-
nisant of the source of every article for which they
vouch. It is our own fault if we cannot overcome
so obvious a device as this. It can be overcome, but
to do so needs patience and forethought.

THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT 87

The clear sight that shows us -where to strike, and
the strong love of our own people, the helpless,
" the little children " of the Mother land, that is to
make every blow tell, these, and these only, are the
conditions that we want. Having these, we cannot
fail. And we shall not fail. For all the forces of
the future are with us. The Swadeshi movement
has come to stay, and to grow, and to drive back for
ever in modern ]jidia, the tides of reaction and des-
pair. The Indian Review.

THE LAST OF POUS
AN INDIAN STUDY

IT is empty now, the place on my desk where the
little ship of flowers has stood all day. But out on
the chill edge of the Ganges, as darkness comes on,
the tiny bark lies drifting hither and thither, scarce-
ly determined yet betwixt ebb and flow, as we, with
a few of the children, launched it an hour ago. It
was early still, when we went down to the riverside,
and as we turned away, but one worshipper had
arrived besides ourselves a solitary girl of eleven or
twelve to send her offering out to the Great Un-
known. We stayed a while then and watched her
as she carefully removed the sacramental food from
her birch-bark vessel, and set m the stem the little
light, and then floated it boldly on the waters. But
after that, what could we do but stay and watch and
watch with breathless ijiterest, as long as ever the
star shone clear in the fragile craft, that we know,
with the turn of the tide, would reach the main
current and be carried far out to sea ?

Ah, innumerable fleet of little nameless boats,
floating on tanks arid rivers in all the villages of

THE LAST OF POUS 89

Bengal to-night, bearing each your twinkling lamp
into the all-enshrouding dark, how like ye are to
life, how like to death !

For this is the last day of the Bengalee month of
Pous. 'It is the day for pilgrimage to Gangasakar
the island where the river meets the sea. And more
than this, it is the day of prayer for all travellers, all
wanderers from their homes, and for all whose foot-
steps at nightfall shall not lead to their own door.
It was in a crowded street this morning, as I passed
the end of a small bazaar, that I noticed the eager
faces and hurrying feet of men and women, hasten-
ing to carry to those at home their ships of flowers.
They were rude enough, these little ships, that I too
bought forthwith, to load with spoil of prayer and
loving " thought Roughly pinned together, they
were pf the shining white core of the plantain-stem
and masted and arched from stem to stem with
splinters of bamboo run through the hearts of yellow
marigolds. Here and there the dealers had made
attempts to imitate more closely with coloured
paper, flags and string, the sails and cordage of the
old country-boats. But for the most part they were
mere suggestions, glistering vessels and bummg-
hearted flowers.

Mere suggestion truly, but of what ? Can we not
see the quiet women, sitting absorbed before the
symbol at their feet, loading it with offerings,

9tf SISTER NIVEDITA

leaves, flowers consecrated fruits and grain ; and
praying, with each fresh gift, for some beloved life,
that through the coining year it may go safe amidst
whatever tide, that even now if peril somewhere
threatens it, it may be brought safe back ? Have we
not here to-day the perfect picture of humanity,
man battling on the distant frontier-line of toilsome
life, and women for love's sake, not for God's, hold-
ing fast to prayer ? One thinks of the cry of the Jew,
sonorous through the ages, the Jew, who loved not
the sea, but lifted his eyes to the hills to find his
help, and lost himself between " I " and " thee " in
an inflood of blessedness.

" The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy
coming in, from this time forth, and even for ever-
more." One thinks of the churches of Brittany and
of the small model of a ship, barque de ma vie, that
hangs before every altar and in every private
oratory. And there comes back the echo of the
sailor's cry, amidst surf and storm, 'Sainte Anne !
Sainte* Anne ' !

Here too, in Bengal, we have a maritim'e people,
once great amongst the world's seafarers, and here
on the last day of Pous we celebrate the old-time
going forth of merchant enterprise and exploration.
It was a traffic cut off from that of Phoenicia, and the
well-omened people of the middle sea, but unmistak-
ably great in the East, China and Japan, Cambodia

THE LAST OF POUS 91

and Burma have welcomed the coming of these mann-
ers of Bengal to their ports, being glad thereby for gain
of wealth and honour. Fa-Hian, Hiouen-Tsang and
I-ching are but three names out of the countless host
of pilgrims to whom they belonged, who sought the
shores of India and left them in the name of the
knowledge and impulse that she had power to send
to other and less-favoured peoples. But why cast
our memory^ so far back ? It is little more than a
hundred years ago that Indian shipbuilding was
famous through the world* And how should the
seacraf t of India win renown, if her merchants and
sailors had not the courage to dare and die !

All day long from the altar-shelf above my desk,
the flaming marigolds, like a curved line of sanctuary-
lamps have shone down upon me and stirred a maze,
a multitude of dreams and memories in heart and
brain. " The Lord bless the Lord bless going out,
coming in and ever more ..." Hold we a
moment ! Let others pray for the well-being of their
beloved! But as for me and mine, we pray for
nations. And to-night we load our ship with name
and vision of a future glory, greater than that of the
marigolds, greater than that of the past, the
of Bengal that it is to be. Indian World.

THE HINDU SACRED YEAR

WHETHER or not it is true, as some have held, that
all sacred years are built out of 'the wreckage of
more ancient civil years, ;it is certain beyond any
possibility of cavil or question, that behind the
Hindu sacred year lies another, a weather-year, full
of the most loving and delicate observation of
Nature. Each great day as it comes round, is mark-
ed by its own particular glinting of sunlight on the
leaves, its own rare bite in the morning air, or its
own dancing of the blood at noon. When, in the
early autumn, the tiny joinquil-like flowers are found
fallen at dawn, from the shefalika bushes, and the
children pick them up blossom by blossom for
worship, men say, with something of the gladsome-
ness of childhood itself, " Mother is coming ! Mother
is coming ! " for they remind them of the festival of
Durga, by this sign near at hand. In spring-time
when the asoka tree begins to adorn itself with its
bunches of red flowers that are said never to bud till
the tree has heard the footsteps of a beautiful
woman, and the long slender buds of the leaf-almond
begin to appear, the low castes are glad, for now

THE HINDU SACRED YEAR 93

is coming Holi, the Easter ot primitive peoples. On
the birth-day of Krishna, late in the summer, it must
rain, 'in memory of the night so long ago when
the Lord of all was carried as a babe, by Vasudeva,
through wind and storm. The Kali-puja, with its
myriads of tiny open lamps, seems always to happen
on the night of some marriage-flight amongst the
insects, and always the little winged creatures suffer
death by fire on these altars of the Mother.

But there is no nature-festival to be compared with
that of Rash. All through the growing moon of the
beautiful month of Kartik^ the women have gone to
the Ganges-side at evening, night after night, with
flowers and lamps to offer vows. Now has come the
full moon. It is the first of the cold weather. The
winter flowers are beginning to bloom. The world is
full of relief from the lessening of the long heat. The
very trees seem to rejoice in the unwonted coolness,
and this was the moment at which Krishna went
with the cowherds to the forest. Throughout the
rains, the cattle had been kept in the villages, and
now they were taken to the distant pastures. Oh*
the joy of the forests ! the long moonlight nights,
the whispering trees, the enfolding dark, the presence
of the Cowherd who is in truth the Lord Himself !
Iiv these temples which have the necessary buildings,
the image' of Krishna is taken at evening out of its
sanctuary, and conveyed in procession to a li

94 SISTER NIVEDITA

Chapel of the Exposition, there to be worshipped
publicly until the morning. Here for three days in
the small hours of the night, when the moon has
scarcely yet begun to wane, come the women to sit
and worship, or to go round and round the altar in a
circle, silently praying. And choirs of priests chant
the while. And image-sellers drive a brisk, though
almost silent, trade, and the precincts of the temple
are thronged with life, imagining itself out in the
forest amongst the cowherds, playing with the Lord.
Every full moon has its own special morsel of lorfe.
To-night, at some hour or other, the sweet goddess
Lakshmi will enter the room, and we must on no
account sleep, lest we miss her visit. Again, it is
unlucky this month for the heads of the family to
see the moon. Therefore they must not look out of
the window, and this is well, for to-night is the
.Orchard-robbing festival, when the boys of the village
have right to enter the garden and carry off ripe
fruit. What wonderful coincidence fixed it to fall
just when the harvest of the jack -trees is ready for
gathering I

The whole of Hinduism is one long sanctification
of the common life, one long heart, and relating of
soul to the world about it, an<J love of pilgrimage
and the quest of sacred shrines speak of that same
desire to commune with nature as the village-feasts,
The holiness of nature is the fundamental thought of

THE HINDU SACRED. YEAE 95

Hindu civilisation. The hardships of life in camp
and forest are called austerity. The sight of grass
and trees is called worship. And the soothing and
peace that come of a glimpse of a great river is held
a step on the road to salvation, and the freeing of
the souL

How did this passion for nature become fixed and
ritualised, in the series of the year's fasts and feasts ?
Here opens out a field of most fruitful study. A
fixed system of universal consent, in matters such as
these, always presupposes some central authority,
which persisted long enough not only to pronounce
authentically on disputable matters, but also to radi-
ate as custom what had been thus determined. This
central authority existed in India, as the empire
whose seat for nearly a thousand years was Patali-
putra. By its rulings was Hinduism, in so far as it
is universal throughout the country, shaped and
determined, and in order to know exactly what this
was in its daily working, it would be necessary to
study in detail worships of Madras and the South,
For here we have, more or less in its purity, tlie
Hinduism which grew up, antithetically to Buddhism,
during the Buddhist period. It differs in many wayn
from that of Bengal since there the faith went
through a much longer period of elaboration. Pata-
liputra was succeeded by Gour, the <3hiptas by the
Sens, and in the year A,D. 78 Adisur Sen, Emperor

96 SISTER NIVEDITA

of the five Gours, as was his title, brought to his
capital, and established there for the good of his
people in matters of faith and scholarship, the cele-
brated live Brahmins of Kanauj. And they made
the face of Bengal to shine, which is a brief way of
saying, probably, that this king established an
ecclesiastical college of reference at Gour, which
went on impressing its influence on the life of Bengal,
long after the original five, and their king, had been
gathered to their fathers. Even after the Hindu
sovereigns had fallen altogether, and Muhammadan
rulers had taken their place, this Brahminical influence
went on living and working. It was in fact the
Bengali form of the Papacy, and before we rebel
against it too much, before we asperse it too bitterly
for the cerecloths of orthodoxy which it bound upon
the people, we ought to know what were the pro-
blems that it had to solve. It gave continuity to
the social development of the community, in face of
the most appalling political revolutions. It made
the faith a strong ground of taste and manners and
gave it consciousness of its strength. It made the
village into a true civic unit, in spite of complexity
of caste and origins* It maintained the growth of
the literature and the epic-making faculty. And
above all, the supreme gift of Hinduism, it went on
deepening and widening the education of the people
by that form of mind-cultivation which is peculiar

THE HINDU SACRED YE^R 97

to India, the form that she knows not as secular
schooling but as devotional meditation, the power to
which she will one day owe her recovery, should it
be given to her to recover her footing at all, in the
world of nations.

The power of the Brahmin was never broken in
Bengal, till modern education brought new tests to try
men by. Muhammadamsm had never touched it. The
new religion of Chaitanya was not even defiant of
it. Automatically, it had gone on working and grow-
ing. The world is always ready to call any overthro-
wal of the old by the name of reformation, because
in anything long established there is always much
that deeds overthrow. Pruning and weeding are a
parable of necessary processes in thought and society
also. But how can we call this a reformation unless
we know what new ideals are to be substituted for
the old ? That destruction has taken place is indis-
putable, but does destruction alone constitute refor-
mation ? In any case Bengal owes her own solidarity,
her unity in complexity, her Hmduistic culture and
the completeness of her national assimilation, more
perhaps to Adisur and the Brahminical college that
he established than to any other single fact of these
many centuries.

If this theory be correct, if the wider Hinduistic
formalism was the work of the Guptas of Pataliputra,
and th orthodoxy of Bengal more especially that of
the Sen kings of Gour, a wonderful arnoufat of history
lies in the study of the differences between the two.

98 SISTER NIVEDITA

We shall in that case expect to find more ancient
and less homogeneous fragments of the faith lying
outside Bengal. We shall look moreover to study
the development of the popular faith in parallelism
with Buddhism, outside Bengal. For here <a long
obscuring process has been superposed upon the other.
Those elements of Hinduism in which it has marked
affinities to the classical and pre-classical religions
of Europe must for the most part, be sought ojitside,
in distant provinces, and at the conservative 'centres
of the great pilgrijpage-shrines. But for the potenti-
alities of Hinduism, for its power to bind and unite,
for its civilising and liberalising effect, we cannot do
better than go to Bengal. Here we may disentangle
gradually the long story of the influences that have
made it what it is. Did the first image-makers come
from China ? And when ? In what order were the
main worships introduced ? What was the original
place of the planetary deities, of snakes, and of trees
in the scheftie of things ? Who were Satya-Pir and
Staya-Narain ? These questions, and a thousand like
them, have to be answered, before we can under-
stand, and assign time and source to all the elements
that have gone to the making of the sanathan
dharma in Bengal. Yet wherever we go, north, east,
or west, we shall always find that India herself has
been the inspiration of Hinduism, and that the faith
without the land is a name without a person, a face
without soul, Hindustan Review.

THE RELATION BETWEEN FAMINE
AND POPULATION

NOTES OF LECTURES HEARD IN PARIS AT THE
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OP SCIENCE, 1900

I

THE need of bread is the blackest incident of human
life. Blackest, because simplest, easiest and most
fundamental to overcome. The one success of which
we are assured in the case of our own for-bears,
every man and woman of them, up to a given year
of life, has been food-snatching of some sort, from
other men, or from the Earth. Uiiless this had been
so, we had not been here, The present generation is
the naturally -selected product of ages of food-victory.

Yet famine remains. Sometimes it is the hunger
of a man or a family. Sometimes starvation, like the
arctic winter of tl\e glacial period, bursts its bounds,
and sweeps over great territories of humankind.
Why?

Obviously there are two factors in the problem*
When a nation or a race starve to deajfti all together
it -may be because climate and soil have combined

100 SISTER NIVEDITA

against them to produce no food. The red man
perished in North America when the white man drove
the bison from their ancient feeding-grounds. Practi-
cally, under these changed conditions, the race was
wiped out. But when two or three individuals, or
even two or three thousand, die of hunger, in the
midst of a city that feasts and is merry, it is because
something is wrong with the distribution of food, and
something wrong too with those human relations
that brought no hurrying footsteps with pity and
help, to every sufferer over whom had fallen the
shadow of despair.

The modern world is such a city. Nowhere to-day
is man so far from man that one has any right to die
of want of food, while another lives. Nowhere. And
yet they die. The two or three become many millions.
The heedless city about them becomes the whole
indifferent world. And the old drama is played out on
the large scale. As want grows fierce in one place*
luxury and waste increase in another. Here men are
brutalised by starvation. There by gluttony, more
men here, and more there. This is the change that-
we call progress. One mother, mad with hunger, kills
her child that she may not see it starve. An other, ab-
sorbed in pleasure, has no time to see her own child eat*
What one spends on her toilet, would lift the other out
of hell. Surely this shows want of adjustment. But
why?

FAMINE AND POPULATION 101

Why do some men die of hunger, for the food that
others wasle? Why?

The answers are manifold. All the outstanding
age-old problems have had their changing age-inter-
pretations. And hunger as a social phenomenon is
one of these. But the theories proposed in era after
era remain with humanity in a confused mass. We
remember them all, only we do not relate them. We
make no study of the circumstances out of which
each rose. We do not analyse our own peiiod, to
know whether or not a given interpretation could
apply. Meanwhile, facts stare us in the face, with
their perpetual question. We turn to one another
"and ask it, and society returns one glib explanation
after another, giving only more formulations of fact
which the dominant classes in each age have found
useful to themselves. Let us however put these in
their proper sequence, and they may answer many a
question for us. Instead of the feeblest alternatives
for utter ignorance, they may become luminous
enough, and. enable us to distinguish the essentials of
the problem : Why do millions of people die of Jiunger
in a world in which there is abundance of food ?

The Age of Primitive man. In the forests, mar-
shes, and caves of the primitive era, death was a
constant feature of human experience- Possessed of
few weapons, man had but little means of determin-
ing his own chance in the hunt. It was not

102 SISTER NIVEDITA

perhaps, till continuity of affection had made the
grave remembered and beloved by women, that the
seeding and growth of flowers were even noticed.
There could not, therefore, be any agriculture. Wild
roots and fruits, and animals of all kinds found
dead, or killed in the chase or snared were the
only food. Sometimes days of hunger and search*
with constant exposure, would elapse, before prey was
found. Terrible want would be succeeded by au
equally terrible orgy. Of each, some members of the
horde would die. Social feeling was probably im-
mensely strong. Risks were shared. One brother
would stand by another when he was down, for
his protection. These things we see, even amongst
successful animals, and man's great weapon of
ascendency has been his superior social instinct. Yet
dn spite of this, one overtaken by weakness or fever
died, almost as certainly as he who was torn by the
pangs of the prey. Risks to life, therefore, being:
almost infinite, the on,e duty of woman was mother-
hood. One pf the greatest tests of prosperity and
strength of the Woreby-kmi community, as a commu^
nity, was either the largeness of its birthrate, or the
physical fitness of its women. In this period, there-
fore, we find the root of the idea that increase of
population constitutes the well-being of a people.

But this very importance of motherhood rendered
inevitable the development of its emotional and

FAMINE AND POPULATION 103

ethical content. From a greater or less impermanence
of all relations, one, that of mother and son, began to
acquire stability. Enter the Matriarchal Period.

The Matriarchate. The feelings and habits of
woman had taken many centuries to dawn as a
social force. They were essentially feelings and
habits of forethought and protection. Secretly, lest
her wild sons and impulsive companions should be
rendered toQ indolent or too extravagant, she had
experimented on the growth of seeds. The wife
offering to the husband in the hour of need her secret
hoard, is very old in the relations of man and
woman ! It had even occurred to woman to snare the
small game, and preserve it alive, as a permanent
source of food. The domestication of plants and
animals ai*ose, and became an absorbing occupation.
Fire was discovered and later, tamed. Life grew
more secure. But work multiplied. There were not
hands enough for all that could be done, in that
great humanising age. Therefore woman still shone
$s the mother, and the commands to " be fruitful and
multiply, and to replenish the earth " were regarded
as one and the same thing. Famine occurred, bttt it
tended to be less a personal chance, and more arid
more a communal misfortune, arising when the hot
winds swept in from the desert, and the scratched
soil refused to bear; when a murrain broke out
amongst beasts ; or when an insect blight fell on the

104 SISTER NIVEDITA

apricot and the wild fig, and caused to them to shed
their untimely fruit. And in this form, kindly
housewife ways could do much for its mitigation.
Throughout matriarchal nations, the habit of storing
through years of plenty, against years of scarcity,
obtained. And the oldest epic of India contains a
- passage of a thousand lines in which we have the
ripest wisdom of antiquity on this point actual
receipts of the mother-craft handed on for kingly
tise,

Every order contains the elements of its own
decay. Side bj side with the vision of Seis and Biris,
the Divine mother and son, grew up the outragje of
the scarlet women. The chivarly of men defending
the independence of the mother-house was now
undone by the shrinking desire of woman to be won
and retained. The matriarchate fell, and Babylon
was remembered with a mystic horror amongst
societies moulded on the patriarchal idea.

The Patriarchal Age. One great advantage of
patriarchal over matriarchal society, ,lay in its
superior nobility. Civilisations in which woman
was really central would always tend to remain in
the river valleys. Those to which man gave
permanence and form could cross even the mountains,
the wilderness, or the seas. The seasonal imigration
of herds to summer pastures, and the fact that
herdsmen and women would go together, may have

FAMINE AND POPULATION 105

produced some of its deepest and earliest
merits for pastoral and nomadic peoples are typically^
patriarchal. In any case, the patriarchal organis-
ation must by degrees have included all occupations,
with their burying ideals. And in all alike, the
notion of family-increase was associated with
well-being.

To the shepherd, this could hardly fail to be a re-
flection from the habit of his work. To the peasant,
the advantage of more hands to dig and sow, not
only for present use, but also for future contingencies,
was a long established ideal.

In all simple states of society, where a man had
the fruits of his own labour assured jfco him, the power
of the earth to produce food, clothing, and shelter,
would impose the only limit on the desirability of
population. And even now, wherever there is abund-
ance of food, patriarchal societies retain the old
prejudice in favour of the birth of children knowing
that each person added means an increment of
wealth to the community, above the individual power
to consume. The only exception to this is in the case
of un-fathered children, against whom patriarchal
societies will assume a characteristic attitude of
disapproval,

Whether, however, increase of population is in-
variably a sign of prosperty in the more complex
developments of this form of society, remains to b$

106 SISTER NIVEDITA

tested and observed throughout historic periods, by
the question of its relation to the food-supply

Mediaeval Europe. The Middle Ages offer us a
long period of very varying conditions. Under
Feudalism, the condition of the people was indeed
hard. War, poverty, and serfage, with the constant
possibility of epidemics, were more or less established
features of life. Obviously, a certain margin of
births over food-productivity was essential to the
maintenance of communities subjected to such exces-
sive risks.

The Church set her face to steady encouragement
of the family. She was influenced no doubt by some
perception of the economic fact. Also there was
the desire, in a world where public relations were so
productive of misfortune, to bring about a predomin-
ance of elements of joy and humanisation. Besides
these general considerations, she had the more techni-
cal idea of increasing the number of her baptised
members. And doubtless there was also the sincere
democratic impulse to add to the number and power
of the burdeli-sharers.

In the rise of the Cistercians, Dominicans,
and Franciscans, the Church proved her power
to assert the ideal and apply the check of celibacy,
whenever she chose, and in the case of the first two
orders, to direct the labour of the celibate clas
to high communal ends. The fact that she had

FAMINE AND POPULATION 107

this power, moreover, would make her fearless of
over-population. The idea, therefore, that growth
of numbers is on first principles a sign of well-
being, has the old sacerdotal authority on its
side.

Throughout the straggles of the middle ages, how-
ever, we perceive the evolution of two classes, with
conflicting interests. Obviously, the more men Wat
Tyler could lead, or John Bull inspire, the better for
that class, and the worse for the class they oppossed.
It becomes no longer possible, then, to discuss the
question of advantage as if this were evenly distri-
buted. Henceforth we must distinguish between the
advantages of class and class. Further, there are
degrees of distance from famine in each case. A
population that lives on wheat can change its diet
for a less sufficient many times before reaching
grass and bark. A population which already has
nothing but potatoes, cannot. Remembering this r
our enquiry must include the question * is increase
of population a sign of prosperity amongst those who
are already close to the famine-line? Do added
numbers *tend to produce more food than they con-
sume, w to consume more than they produce?
According to our decision on these points, must our
estimate of the advantages, or disadvantages, of an
increasing density of inhabitants on a given area,
be varied*

108 SISTER NIVEDITA

Evidently, the question is largely one of place.
Up to a certain point of fertility, land will repay
labour spent on it, in an accelerating ratio. Where
one man cannot efficiently work his farm at all, two
men co-operating can more than double its powers
of production. Evidently, however, this process
cannot be continued indefinitely. When a certain
density is reached, it will become increasingly
difficult to add another inhabitant to the area. The
law of diminishing returns will now begin to take
-effect.

A good deal of the flood and thunder of the
Middle Ages is the play of contending portions of
the feudal classes, while agriculture and the burghs
are steadily progressing towards their limit of
advantage. But the fact that increase of population
is in this case associated with growing prosperity, is
not to be taken as establishing a universal principle.
It is obviously a phenomenon which is special to the
age and conditions of mediaeval development.

The devolution. With the invention of steam
machinery, we enter on the industrial revolution. In
all the theories born of this age, the man to be bene-
fitted is the man who holds the machinery, the
capitalist. To him, quantity of production becomes
the aim. Every labourer more means increase of
quantity, and a percentage more even, if popula-
tion should increase beyond the point of demand- for

FAMINE AND POPULATION 109

labour, an increasing percentage on your man him-
self. For where numbers are few and work
abundant, A gets high wages : when numbers are
great, and demand for stuff remains the same, he
gets little. Hence the actual interests of employer
and employed may at this point come into conflict
the growth of population being to the advantage of
the capitalist, and to the actual disadvantages of the
labourer. This point is commonly obscured, of
course, by the fact that we hear only the employer's
point of view.

Meanwhile, the flow of wages goes on. The flow of
production goes on. The elementary conditions of
well-being are met. The labourer finds bread plenty
and clothing plenty. There may be no real progress y
no increased mastery of conditions, no additioti to
intellectual resources. People* who have not yet
learnt the need of these, proceed the hurl themselves
back ,into the poverty from which they have just
emerged, by increasing their marriage-rate with the
fall in the price of bread.

Population grows and the Manchester School of
Economists utters its poem of thanksgiving for the
so-called progress of Lancashire- It is the joy of the
capitalist over a large material for exploitation
and the labouring-classes, with the characteristic
inhumanity of the period, become the proletariat,
the breeders.

110 SISTER NIYEB1TA

Essentially, the industrial revolution does not
mean increase of production so much as concentra-
tion of labour. And even if the growth of Lan-
cashire cities had constituted progress, it would
probably have entailed loss elsewhere. In whose
hands was the making of cotton heretofore? And
BTQ there still work and food for these ?

Again, what 5 does it mean to fasten the attention
of a people on this function, of increasing population.
It means that human beings become domesticated
animals the live stock on the capitalistic farm
and follow the same biological laws as others. One
of these is that excessive reproduction causes
degeneration of race. Woman is exhausted as an
individual. Man spends what ought to have been
surplus energy in routine drudgery. Feeble cere-
bration and accelerating physical deterioration
ensue. "The industrial revolution, therefore, only
betokens as oscillation of the centre of prosperity,
not absolute progress, and a rapidly-increasing
population, even where based on the abundance of
food, is more apt, other things being equal, to signify
squalor and degradation, than prosperity and progress.

But increase of population does not always pro-
ceed from a fall in the price of bread. That the
more you feed (up to excess) the more you breed, is
true. But the opposite affirmation is also true*
The more you starve, the more you breed. The fact

FAMINE AND POPULATION 111

is, extraordinary conditions in either direction act
first in stimulating this activity.

The Age of Empire. The excessive productivity
of the Age of Revolution gives place to the Age of
Empire everywhere always. It may he the
empire of the city over the Country side. It may
be the empire of London over the Antipodes. Force
must he employed in its interest. The rich struggle
to acquire the territory of the poor. One race
struggles for supremacy over another.

In the latter case, all the complex machinery of
Government and army has to be maintained. The
expense is great. It must be met by taxation. The
larger the population, as long as the means of produc-
tion are capable of extension, the larger the imperial
harvest to be gathered. The less, too, is the incidence
per head. Increase of population will thus always be
quoted by a ruling class as a sign of prosperity, even
though it be accompanied by famine. It is the sign
and means of the ruler 's prosperity. The inferiors,
moreover, being squeezed to the utmost, are thrust
back upon this acivity as their only relief. Thus it
becomes true that the more you starve (within limits
of complete physical inanition), the more you breed*

And the proof is that the poorest populations have
everywhere the largest birth rate. The slum swarm-
ing with little children, and the comfortable middle-
class street with its few well-tended and provided for.

112 SISTER NIVEDITA

form a contrast true also as of nation against nation,
and city against city. Degradation of type to Less
human and more gorilla forms is the inevitable result.
The Age of Finance. The organisation of Empire
produces the Age of Finance. That is to say, the
estimates of the banker and the Mint-master now be-
come the popular theory of life. People lose all sense
of the relation between money and things. They
mistake riches for wealth. They forget that gold
and diamonds must be measured in terms of corn and
bread, not vice versa. The plain fact that if rice be
taken from a country, less rice remains there, has no
meaning for them. They are confussed by the fact
that money goes back in exchange.

Judgment now goes by the standpoint of the share-
holder. That a railway must increase prosperity as
long as it pays a dividend, is supposed to be obvious.
People f assume as self-evident that railways bring"
food into a country. They leave other considerations
out of the question, such as that stamped coin is given
for food, and is brought from cities that obviously,,
therefore, railways take coin into a country, and corn
out of it. And coin is not food.

It is under the spell of the characteristic ideas of
this age that we hear seriously of a " money famine.**
A superstitious reverence associates itself with trade
and the stability of finance, and no consideration
justifies tampering with these- In the Russian

FAMINE AND POPULATION 113

Famine of 1895, M. Hilkoff, Minister of the Interior,
1 stopped the trains of wheat on their way to Odessa,
and ran them into the famine -stricken districts. To
this good man it seemed obvious that what hungry
people needed was bread. The British in India, on
the contrary, shrink with horror from any act so
calculated to ruffle the composure of the merchant.
They venture on no remedy that would disturb the
operations of commerce. The correct theoretical
relation between man, money, and food must be
observed at all costs, even if only in resemblance.
And in this way they arrive at the startling paradox
that what a hungryman needs is work !

It is interesting to note, however, that one order
produces, for a given brain, both God and the Devil.
For while financial considerations now supply the
* supreme object of reverence, it is also held in all good
faith by minds of this class that famines are produced
in India by the habit of " engrossing," selfishly prac-
tised on the part of local shopkeepers for their own
profit. It is difficult to persuade a man who is capable
of entertaining this theory, that while it would
account for a few trade credits and debits, it would
never account for the famine itself, the actual occasion
of the said losses and gains.

The Financial Age accepts the conclusion of its
progenitor, the age of Empire, that increase of popu-
lation shows general prosperity, because this is not a

8

114 SISTER NIVEDITA

problem that belongs to its own form of research. It
is not, therefore, called to any individual opinion on
the point. If it were, however, a budget and a list of
Post Office savings would furnish its main store of
facts, and it would be found capable of arguing that
a country in which sixty million people were being
seriously affected by loss of harvests was growing
steadily richer.

As a matter of fact, we must, in considering such
questions as the increase of population or the causes of
famine, distinguish carefully between the imperial or
financial theories of the thing, and the actual facts
themselves. We must determine what constitutes
prosperity from the people's point of view, and see
whether this is aided by growth of population or the
reverse* Also we must consider special cases of famine,
and determine what are the essential facts of each.

II

Man's individual hope has always lain along the
line of the effort to perfect some special process. But
in doing this, as we saw behind all the raising of
castles and hurling of arrows in the Middle Ages, he
has subserved a larger function, his collective activity,
that of earth-remaking, the technical and geotechnic
processes. Combined with these, and overwhelming
them, is their common resultant, the evolutionary or

FAMINE AND POPULATION 115

man-making tendency. In these three, technics,
geotechnics and evolution, is summed up the signifi-
cance of every period.

The industrial arts of the Middle Ages were pro-
gressively s^ nthetised and applied in the spread of
agriculture and the growth of the burghs This was
earth-remaking. But the ultimate meaning of even
a phenomenon so imposing as this must be sought
outside itself, in the manner of men and nations
which it produced.

In the same way, the revolution is based on a
renewal of processes. But the needs of extended pro-
ductivity* compel an empire. Again the value of
empires will be estimated finally by their effect on
the humanity which they involve. And here, incon*
testably quality will supersede quantity.

We cease then to be able to applaud a mere growth
of population. We cannot even be congratulatory
when we have assured ourselves that this was due
to a fall in the price of bread. We are still less -
complacent when it is accompanied by scarcity of
the elements of physical well-being. In either case
the result tends to be the same, degradation of type
followed by famine or famine followed by degrad-
ation of type.

Facts. So far we have been establishing a theory.
We have laid down considerations which should
guide us in determining the value of certain

116 SISTER jSTIVEBITA

phenomena, in regard to famine and excessive popula-
tion. Let us proceed to the examination of actual facts
of famine. With regard to Ireland in 1846, it is no
uncommon thing to hear the remark, " it was a
money-famine." This expression, in itself, has no
meaning, since men cannot eat money. But what
the speaker really intends to convey is the fact that
there was grain enough in Ireland in that year, and
food of the best kinds enough to have fed a popula-
tion many times greater than actually died of want.
What the dying people needed was money to arrest
the export which was steadily proceeding Jbhe while.
It was not the loss of quantity which affected the
country so disastrously, but unevenness of distribu-
tion. It does not need Sir Robert Ball's delightful
story, to convince us of the importance of distribution
'as a factor in provisioning. The astronomer has
been explaining to the young man from Manchester
how a succession of eight month winters and four
month summers had produced the Glacial Period of
.Northern Hemisphere. But the young man was hard
to convince, " I do not see," he remarked, " how
that could be since you say that the total amount
of heat in the year was always the same. How
could a mere change of distribution make any
difference?" Sir Robert eyed his man. "Do you
keep a horse ? " he said. " Yes." " What do you give
him ? " "A stone of oats a day." " Well," said the

FAMINE AND POPULATION 117

astronomer gently, " just try two stones a day for
six months, and then other six months give him
nothing and see what * mere ' re-distribution will
do ! " So with the Irish Famine. It was merely the
distribution of food that was at fault. The story has
been put on record by eye-witnesses, of the carts
leaving the villages laden with butter and cheese
and farm produce, and passing to the coast along
roads where every now and then men, women and
children lay dying or dead for want of food.

The fact is, in every country there is a caste-system
of food stuffs. In Ireland, the highest classes live on
wheat, flesh, milk and eggs. A lower rank consumes
oatmeal, herrings and buttermilk. Still further down
comes the population that lives on the protato. And
after them is nothing save the grass and bark of
famine. Obviously, if the wheat-crop fail/ the class
that depended on it heretofore will fall back on other
foods, including the oatmeal of the next caste, for an
equal bulk of consumable material. The lower caste
will have recourse to the potato which will conse-
quently rise in price, and the lowest class will find
food scarce. The heaviest incidence of the scarcity
will fell on them even when it is not their own crop
which has failed. But there are mitigating circufaa*
stances in this case* In the first place the whole
society feels the pinch at the same time. There is a cer-
tain lightening of the social bond, with;a possibility

118 SISTER NIVEDITA

of guaging the extent of the need by the price
of the commodity. Secondly, although the potato
rises in value, it is not wholly withdrawn from its
consumers. An equal bulk of potatoes for the wheat
withdrawn, is not of equal value as nourishment.
Moreover, as the potato-eater has received money for
his sale, it is possible to make a commercial re-
adjustment, which for his own shake, he will affect
as rapidly as possible. Obviously, under failure of
the wheat-crop the lower classes do not remain
unaffected, but they are not necessarily affected to
the degree of famine.

What happened in 1846 was somewhat different.
The potatoes rotted in the field. The experiments of
certain biological workers on reproduction by fission
have established a law which enables us to recognise
this phenomenon as perfectly natural and calculable
for the future. But in 1846 it came as a surprise.
And it fell heavily on no class save that which
depended on the crop for its staple article of diet.
It selected these out and killed them, as soon as their
power of living on grass and bark was exhausted.
The fact that other commodities were almost undis-
turbed in value, and that export went on amongst
the exporters as usual, has given rise to the fallacy
that the Irish famine was a "money famine," It
fell on those who are always suffering from " money
famine," but it was itself an added burden of loss of

FAMINE AND POPULATION 119

even such food as is possible under similar financial
distress. We see, therefore, what is meant by this
expression.

Let us turn to the present Indian famine. 1 Sixty
or seventy millions of people are being affected by
what is, we are loudly assured, the act of God. Five
or six millions of those who have reached the depth
of starvation are on the relief works. What is the
meaning of this ?

In the first place, the act of God, as it is called,
undoubtedly exists. There has been failure of crops
in a certain part of central India, caused by want of
rain for some years in succession. This must be
admitted. The evidence assures us that such are the
facts. But in pase of natural disaster there is always
a second factor to considerand that is the resistance
which the country is able to oppose to it.

We al*e continually assured that India is in a state
of growing prosperity under our rule. Is her inability
to meet the persent crisis a, sign of her growing pros-
perity ? Let us look at the facts fairly.

The arguments put forward in proof of the bene-
ficence of our rule are two-fold, (1) the increase of
population, (2) the spread of the railway system, the
control of the forests, and the cutting of canals. A$
to the advantage of the last-named public works
there can be no doubt. If we could turn all our

These lectures were delivered m the year 1900.

120 SISTER NIVEDITA

energy to canal-making, we should be sure of
improving the country in one respect at least.

As to the control of the forests, there is .some
question whether we are not largely responsible for
a change of climate in Central India, by our own
waste of forests, which is directly behind the present
catastrophe. On both these points of irrigation and
afforestation, there is a distinctly constructive policy
open to the English Government, which needs
further development and indefinite multiplication
of strength.

But when we come to the spread of the railway
system, we include a more doubtful feature amongst
our geotechnic activities. The railway adds nothing
to the productivity of the soil ; it merely aids re-
distribution. As a matter of fact, this re-distribution
always acts by centralising markets. The goods of
the country are eaten in the city. The peasant who
can now only sell his commodities in a certain
given place may not be richer ultimately for the
power to get there. The fare may absorb his margin
of profit. Therefore the fact that railways are
much used does not prove anything about their use-
fulness. That could only be established as a general
thesis by a careful series of observations in various
qountries during < a term of years. It is our personal
conviction that such observations would lead to the
conclusion that they are destructive of prosperity

FAMINE AND POPULATION 121

rather than the reverse. And that Central India is
as exact proof of this as Siberia or Russia caii furnish,
we have no doubt. Since the point is so disputable*
therefore, we cannot accept railways as an evidence
of the good wrought by English rule, and the growth
of population, as we have seen, is rather a sign of
misery than of a flourishing condition.

It is indeed an evidence of the pre-social unscienti-
fic state of our thought on such subjects that we can
offer arguments such as these in all good faith.
Obviously, Empire is designed primarily for the good
of the ruler, and could accrue to the advantage of
the governed only if conducted in a spirit persistent-
ly generous and illumined by pientific knowledge of
the most real kind. It would be too much to claim
that either of these characteristics is ours. The
utmost that we can do at present is to assert a dogged
honesty on the part of European races in facing
truth, however disagreeable, and putting an end to
our own misconceptions.

But what have been the causes of the Indian
Famine ? Partly natural, catastrophe, no doubt ; partly
social and political, certainly ; but exactly what, as
yet undetermined, Yet some few ^points with regard
to famine in general are settled* First, growth of
population is not , in itself, any sign of national pros-
perity. Secondly, to say that a famine such as we
are now witnessing is the result of the tricks of local u

122 SISTER NIVEDITA

grain -merchants is foolish ; and if it were true, we
have the remedy in our own hands, immediate
stoppage of grain-export at the ports. This would
disturb the natural course of trade, however, and we
are under the superstitions of the Age of Finance, so
we do not venture on such a step. And thirdly, it is
surely evident that relief ought to be organised on a
progressive basis, and that it is not at present so
organised.

-There is something diabolical in the account which
an honest English traveller recently gave of a visit
to India. He had spoken with the greatest enthusiasm
of the administration, and being asked what had so
impressed him by its munificence, jnade this extra-
ordinary reply " They are tackling the problem of
the famine," he said, " and I am especially delighted
with this, because for a whole day's work they are
not paying a whole day's wages, and thereby they
avoid disturbing the course of trade."

True Tests of Progress. What are then, the true
tests of a growing prosperity ? This question is easily
answered. In the first place, are processes being
developed ? Other things bein& equal, that country
which is ceasing to export manufactures, and taking
entirely to raw material is becoming impoverished.
Certainly that country which is ceasing to produce
manufactured goods to meet its own requirements,
and beginning to import the necessaries of life, is

FAMINE AND POPULATION 123

being essentially impoverished. But it is not enough
that men should continue to meet their own needs,
nor even that they should progressively modify the
means by which they do this. This is little better
than a stationary condition. They must remake their
country. Most of the European landscape is entirely
artificial.

Heather is as much of man's ordering on a Scottish
moor as wheat in an English field. It is easy to
admit that the scenery of Berkshire or of Normandy
is not Nature but Art. The geotechnic test, then, is
fairly to be applied to all places for which a claim of
progression is made. How far is Siberia a land of
fields and cities, of quarries anxi hedges ? How far is
the growth of human habitations intelligent and
beautiful ? How far are the forces of nature at the
bidding of man ? In the Tropics what is being done
for re-afforestation, for irrigation ? Who is taming
the desert ? Who is improving the milking cow who
is enriching the wheat ? The French in Algeria are
engaged on oasis-making. This is one of the noblest
activities of our epoch. It is one of an endless
possible series, pointing to a^i ultimate transforma-
tion of the Sahara into a renewal of the earthly
Paradise. In the same way the dessication of
Asia is a problem, which ^engages the earnest
attention of geographers and geotechnists, for
the scope which it affords to future activity of this

124 SISTER NIVEDITA

order. There is no reason why the rivers should con-
tinue to run into the sea. They may well be
harnessed to the plough of Agriculture, and drawn
aside from their original outlet. Other and vaster
functions can be discovered for the waterfalls which
shall substitute a new beauty for the old. This is
enough to suggest the immense possibilities of
industrial development which our planet contains. A
few centuries hence, wlien man's outlook upon life is
better informed and organised than at present,
society will look back with amazement upon a period
when crowds of starving unemployed assailed the gates
of rich people whose fortunes were devoted to the
production of pate defoie gras * for private consump-
tion. The point of view that saw nothing to be done
for the increase of the food supply in the 19th century
will be inconceivable to the minds of that generation,
and they will survey calmly $ long series of French
Revolutions by which such a mental confusion will
have been eliminated, as something beneficial in the
main to the human race.

Perhaps the most civilised countries in the world,
feom this geotechnic point of view have been ancient
Egypt and modern China and Flanders. Paris occu-
pies the corresponding place amongst modern cities*
And in the case of the Frencfct population we come

1 An epicunan delicacy consisting of the morbidley -fattened
of the goose.

FAMINE AND POPULATION 125

upon what ought to be a hint of one of the great
evolutionary consequences of this creative collabora-
tion the moralisation of marriage, leading to self-
regulation of numbers which will arise with the
heightening of the sense of moral and social respon-
sibility. Because this is a necessary characteristic
of a further evolved humanity, we do not need to
fear that future progress will be simply a climbing of
the hill to find the same problems begin over again
at its top. First, improved methods of raising crops ;
second, only the best crops and plenty of them. Some-
thing like these are the immediate step in the line of
advance. But they necessitate and imply the third.
If the soil of a country be bettered by making of its
people a race of slaves, there is no gain. The more
human beings are raised to the human level, the
more the Messianic hope is kneaded to into common
man, so much the greater is our civilisation. This
and no other, must be its ultimate test. Where
standards conflict this consideration must have the
casting vote. Not New Zealand, but the land where
provocation to the highest life is greatest, will, after
all, stand first. By its influence not simply on
national prosperity, but on national man and woman
making through prosperity must the work of a
country be judged at last.

Conversely, we cannot establish any quantitative
standard of progress whatever. This is an age of

126 SISTER NIVBDITA

the improvement of transport. The world is being
centralised by railways, telegraphs and electrical
machinery. Unless all this adds to the fitness of the
earth for man on the one hand, and to the manhood
of man on the other, it is no advance but rather a
retrogression.

Not the rapid multiplication of consumers, but the
extension of the best crops is the programme before
us. We have once more to set to work to make the
herth a fit dwelling place. Forests, canals, improved
varieties of wheat and rice these things are gains
in geotechnics, and to use them we do not want
more men, but better men, men of greater wisdom,
strength, and mastery than heretofore. For the
bringing down of the Messianic hope to common
life is th*e end of all things. The nations live
on in the hope of the childhood that shall be*
First, the physical basis, and then the moral and
intellectual ideal, such are the lists that must
be fulfilled* This can only be achieved in proportion
as we substitute vital for wasteful activities in any
given area. We must know that the provision of
sound education for the people is a greater proof
of our beneficence than any increase of revenue;
that justification of conquest lies in multiplication
of careers for the ruled, not the ruling classes,
that no nation could be rich that spent its money
lawfully.

FAMINE AND POPULATION 127

In this way are produced royal races like the
ancient Greeks. Genius is created and conserved,
as in modern France. Practical problems find a
national solution, as in China. And last of all per-
haps, the hope and philosophy that it has taken
centuries to gain, are given to the world at large, to
form a historic faitli, as ancient India to modern
Europe, Arabia to Africa, and it may be, India to
the humanity of the future.

[As in honour bound, I have reported the teach-
ings which I heard in Paris in the year 1900 from a
group of sociologists of European reputation, as I
conceive that they intended them. For the benefit
of my readers, however, I would point out, that even
scholars find it difficult to be altogether disinterest-
ed. To the Indian youth it ought not to be a
question as to what the French do or do not do in
Algeria, or what the English do in India. The
question is, what is he himself prepared to do for
his own country? Foreign organisers may be re-
minded of one of the basic truths of educational
science that * when we do for a learner what the
learner might have done for himself, we injure acid
cannot boast of benefiting him.'] Hindustan
Review.

THE NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA'S LIFE AND WORK

/

OF the * bodily presence of him who was known to
the world as Vivekananda, all that remains to-day is
a bowl of ashes. The light that has burned in
seclusion during the last five years by our river side,
has gone out now. The great voice that rang out
across the nations is hushed in death Life came
often to this mighty soul as storm and pain. But the
end was peace. Silently, at the close of evensong,
on a dark night of Kali, came the benediction of
death. The weary and tortured body was laid down
gently and the triumphant spirt was restored to the
eternal samadhi.

He passed, when the laurels of s his first achieve-
ments weje yet green. He passed, when new and
greater calls were ringing in his ears. Quietly, in
the beautiful home of his illness, the intervening
years with some few breaks, went by amongst plants
*apd animals, unostentatiously training the disciples
who gathered rounAh!m, silently ignoring the great
fame that had shone upon his name. Man-making
was his own stern brief summary of the work that

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 129

was worth doing. And laboriously, unflaggingly,
day after day, he set himself to man-making, playing
the part of Guru, of father, even of schoolmaster, by
turns. The very afternoon of the day he left us, had
he not spent three hours in giving a Sanskrit lesson
on the Vedas ?

External success and leadership were nothing to
such a man. During his years in the West, he made
rich and powerful friends, who would gladly have
retained him in their midst. But for him, the
Occident, with all its luxuries, had no charms. To
him, the garb of a beggar, the lanes of Calcutta, and
the disabilities of his own people, were more dear than
all the glory of the foreigner, and detaining hands
had to loose their hold of one who passed ever onward
toward the East

What was that the West heard in him, leading so
many to hail and cherish his name as that of one of
the greatest religious teachers of the world ? He made
no personal claim. He told no personal story. One
whom he knew and trusted long had never heard that
he held any position of distinction amongst his Guru-
bhais. He made no attempt to popularise with
strangers any single form of creed, whether of God or
Guru. Bather, through him the mighty torrent of
Hinduism poured forth its cooling waters upon the
intellectual and spiritual worlds, fresh from its secret
sources in Himalayan snows* A witness to the vast

9

130 SISTER NIVEDITA

religious culture of Indian homes and holy men he
could never cease to be. Yet he quoted nothing but
the Upanishadas. He w taught nothing but the
Vedanta. And men trembled, for they heard the
voice for the first time of the religious teacher who
feared not Truth.

Do we not all know the song that tells of Siva as
he passes along the roadside, " Some say He is mad.
Some say He is the Devil. Some say don't you
know ? He is the Lord Himself ! " ? Even so India
is familiar with the thought that every great per-
sonality is the meeting-place and reconciliation of
opposing ideals. To his disciples, Vivekananda will
ever remain the arch-tybe of the Sannyasin. Burning
renunciation was chief of all the inspirations that
spoke to us through him. " Let me die a true
Sannyasin as my Master did," he exclaimed once,
passionately, " heedless of money, of women, and of
fame ! And of these the most insidious is the love of
fame ! " Yet the self -same destiny that filled him
with this burning thirst of intense vairagyam
embodied in him also the ideal householder full of
the yearning to protect and save, eager to learn and
teach the use of materials, reaching out towards the
reorganisation and re-ordering of life. In this
respect, indeed, he belonged to the race of Benedict'
and Bernard, of Robert de Citcaux and Loyola. It
may be said that just as in Francis of Assissi, the

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 131

robe of the Indian Sannyasin gleams for a moment
in the history of the Catholic Church, so in Vivekan-
anda the great saint, abbots of Western monasticism
are born anew in the East.

Similarly, he was at once a sublime expression of
superconscious religion and one of the greatest
patriots ever born. He lived at a moment of national
disintegration, and he was fearless of the new. He
lived when men were abandoning their inheritance,
and he was an ardent worshipper of the old. * In
tarn the national destiny fulfilled itself, that a new
wave of consciousness should be inaugurated always
in the leaders of the Faith. In such a man it may
be that we possess the whole Veda of the future.
We must remember however, that the moment has
not come for gauging the religious significance of
Vivekananda. Religion is living seed, and his sow-*
kng is but over. The time of his harvest is not yet*
"But death actually gives the Patriot to his-
country. When the master has passed away from
the midst of his disciples, when the murmers of hi&
critics are all hushed at the burning-ghat, then the
great voice that spoke of freedom rings out un-
challenged and whole nations answer as one m&iu
Here was a mind that had had unique opportunities
of observing the people of many countries intimately*
East and West he had seen and been received by
the high and low alike. His brilliant intellect

132 SISTER NIVEDITA

had never failed to gauge what it saw. " America
will solve the problems of the Sudra ; but through
what awful turmoil ! " he said many times. On a
second visit, however, he felt tempted to change his
mind, seeing the greed of wealth and the lust of
oppression in the West, and comparing these with the
calm dignity and ethical stability of the old Asiatic
solutions formulated by China many centuries ago.
His great acumen was yoked to a marvellous
humanity. Never had we dreamt of such a gospel
of hope for the Negro as that with which he rounded
on an American gentleman who spoke of the
African races with contempt. And when, in the
Southern States he was occasionally taken for " a
coloured man," and turned away from some door as
such (a mistake that was always atoned for as soon
as discovered by the lavish hospitality of the most
responsible families of the place), he was never
known to deny the imputation. " Would it not have
been refusing my brother ? " he said simply when he
was asked the reason of this silence.

To him each race had its own greatness and shone
in the light of that central quality. There was no
.Europe without the Turk, no Egypt without the
development of the people of the soil, England had
grasped the secret of obedience with self-respect*
To speak of any patriotism in the same breath with*
Japan's was sacrilege.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 133

What then was the prophecy that Vivekananda
left to his own people ? With what national signi-
ficance has he filled that gerrua mantle that he
dropped behind him in his passing? Is it for us
perhaps to lift the yellow rags upon our flagpole, and
carry them forward as our banner ? Assuredly For
here was a man who never dreamt of failure. Here
was a man who spoke of naught but strength.
Supremely free from sentimentality, supremely
defiant of all authority (are not missionary slanders
still ringing in our ears ? Are not some of them to be
accepted with fresh accessions of pride ?) he refused
to meet any foreigner save as the master. " The
Swami's genius lies in his dignity," said an
Englishman who knew him well, "it is nothing
short of royal ! " He had grasped the great fact
that the East must come to the West, not as a
sycophant, not as a servant, but as Guru and teacher,
and never did he lower the flag of his personal
ascendancy. ** Let Europeans lead us in Religion ! '*
he would say, with a scorn too deep to be any-
thing but merry. " I have never spoken of revenge,"
he said once* "I have always spoken of strength*
Do we dream of revenging ourselves on this drop of
sea--spray ? But it is a great thing to a mosquito ! "

To him, nothing Indian required apology. Did
anything seem, to the pseudo-refinement of the alien,
barbarous or crude? Without denying, without

134 SISTEE NIVKDITA

minimising anything his colossal energy was immedi-
ately concentrated on the vindication of that parti-
cular point, and the unfortunate critic was tossed
backwards and forwards on the horns of his own
argument. One such instance occured when an English-
man on boardship asked him some sneering question
about the Puranas, and never can any who were
present forget how he was pulverised, by a reply that
made the Hindu Puranas, compare favourably with
the Christian Gospels, but planted the Vedas and
Upanishads high up beyond the reach of any rival.
There was no triend that he would not sacrifice without
mercy at such a moment in the name of National
Defence. Such an attitude was not, perhaps, always
reasonable It was often indeed frankly unpleasant.
But it was superb in the manliness that even enemies
must admire. To Vivekananda, again, everything
Indian was absolutely and equally sacred "This
land to which must come all souls wending their way
Oodward ! " his religious consciousness tenderly
phrased it. At Chicago, any Indian man attending
the Great World Bazaar, rich or poor, high or low,
Hindu, Muhammadan, Parsi, what not might at
any moment be brought by him to his hosts for
hospitality and entertainment and they well knew
that any failure of kindness on their part to the
least of these would immediately have cost them his
presence.

SRI JUMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA

SWAMI VIVEKAKANDA 135

He was himself the exponent of Hinduism, but
finding another Indian religionist struggling with
the difficulty of presenting his case, he sat down and
wrote his speech for him, making a better story for
his friend's faith than its own adherent could have
done 1

He took infinite pains to teach European disciples
to eat with their fingers, and perform the ordinary
simple acts of Hindu life. " Remember, if you love
India at all, you must love her as she is, not as you
might wish her to become" he used to -say. And it
Vas this great firmness of his, standing like a rock
for what actually was, that did more than any other
single fact, perhaps, to open the eyes of those aliens
who loved him to the beauty and strength of that
ancient poem the common life of the common
Indian people. For his own part, he was too free
from the desire for approbation to make a single
concession to new-fangled ways. The best of every
land had been offered him, but it left Kim still the
simple Hindu of the old style, too proud of his
simplicity to find any need of change. "After
Ramakrishna, I follow Vidyasagar ! " he exclaimed,
only two days before his death, and out came the
oft-repeated story of the wooden sandals coming
pitter patter with the chudder and dhoti, into
the Vice-regal Council Chamber, and the surpris-
ed "But if you didn't want me, why did you

136 SISTER NIVED1TA

ask me to come"? of the old Pundit, when they
remonstrated.

Such points, however, are only interesting as
personal characteristics. Of a deeper importance is
the question as to the conviction that spoke through
them. What was this ? Whether did it tend ? His
whole life was a search for the common basis of
Hinduism. To his sound judgment the idea that
two pice postage, cheap travel, and a common
language of affairs could create a national
unity, was obviously childish and superficial.
TJiese 'things could only be made to serve
old, India's turn if she already possessed a deep
organic unity of which they might conveniently
become an expression. Was such a unity existent or
not ? For something like eight years he wandered
about the land changing his name at every village;
learning of every one he met, gaining a vision as
accurate and minute as it was profound and general*
It was this great quest that overshadowed him with
its certainty when, at the Parliament of Religions*
he stood before the West and proved that Hinduism
converged upon a single imperative of perfect freedom
so completely as to be fully capable of intellectual
aggression as any other faith/

It never occurred to him that his own people were
m any respect less than the equals of any other
nation whatsoever. Being well aware that religion

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 137

was their national expression, he was also aware
that the strength which they might display in that
sphere, would be followed before long, by every
other conceivable form of strength.

As a profound student of caste his conversation
teemed with its unexpected particulars and paradoxes !
he found the kev to Indian unity in its exclusive-
ness. Muhammadans were but a single caste of the
nation. Christians another, Parsis another, and so on !
It was true that of all these (with the partial exception
of the last), non-belief in caste was a caste distinction.
But then, the same was true of the Brahmo Samaj
and other modern sects of Hinduism. Behind all
alike stood the great common facts of one soil ; one
beautiful old routine of ancestral civilisation ; and the
overwhelming necessities that must inevitably lead
at last to common loves and common hates.

But he had learnt, not only the hopes and ideals of
every sect and group of the Indian people, but their
memories also. A child of the Hindu quarter of
Calcutta, returned to, live by the Ganges-side, one
would have supposed from his enthusiasm that he
had been born, nojv in the Punjab, again in the
Himalayas, at a third moment in Rajputana, or
elsewhere. The songs of Guru Nanak alternated
with those of Meera Bai and Thana Sena on his lips.
Stories of Prithvi Rai and Delhi jostled against those
of Cheetore and Pratab Singh, Siva andUma/JEtadha

138 SISTER NIVEDITA

and Krishna, Sita-Ram and Buddha. Each mighty
drama lived in a marvellous actuality, when he w^s
the player. His whole heart and soul was a burning
epic of the country, touched to an overflow of mystic
passion by her very name.

Seated in his retreat at Belur, Vivekananda received
visits and communications from all quarters. The
vast surface might be silent, but deep in the heart of
India, the Swami was never forgotten. None could
afford, still fewer wished, to ignore him. No hope
but was spoken into his ear no woe but he knew it,
and strove to comfort or to rouse. Thus, as always
in the case of a religious leader the India that he
saw, presented a spectacle strangely unlike that
visible to any other eye. For he held in his hands
the thread of all that was fundamental, organic,
vital; he knew the secret springs of life; he
understood with what word to touch the heart of
millions. And he had gathered from all this
knowledge a clear and certain hope.

Let others blunder as they might. To him, the
country was young, the Indian vernaculars still un-
formed, flexible, the national energy unexploited.
The India of his dreams was in the future. The new
phase of consciousness initiated to-day through pain
and suffering was to be but first step in a long
evolution. , To him his country's hope was in herself.
Never *in the alien. True, his great heart embraced*

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 139

the alien's need, sounding a universal promise to the
world. But he never sought for help, or begged
assistance. He never leaned on any, what might be
done, it was the doer's privilege to do, not the
recipient's to accept. He had neither fears nor hopes
from without. To reassert that which was India's
essential self, and leave the great stream of the
national life, strong in a fresh self-confidence and
vigour, to find its own way, to the ocean, this was
the meaning of "his sannyas. For his was pre-
eminently the sannyas of the greater service. To
him, India was Hinduistic, Aryan, Asiatic. Her
youth might make their own experiments in modern
luxury. Had they not the right? Would they not
return ? But the great deeps of her being were moral,
austere and spiritual. A people who could embrace
death by the Ganges-side were not long to be
distracted by the glamour of mere mechanical
power.

Buddha had preached renunciation, and in two
centuries India had become an Empire. Let her but
once more feel the great pulse through all her veins,
and no power on earth would stand before her newly
awakened energy. Only, it would be in her own life
that she would find life, not in imitatiop. ! from her
own proper past and environment that she would
draw inspiration, not from the foreigner. v For he
who thinks himself weak is weak : he who believes

140 SISTER NIVEDITA

that he is strong is already invincible. And so for
his nation, as for every individual, Vivekananda had
but one word, one constantly reiterated message :
" Awake ! Arise ! Struggle on.
And stop not till the
G-oal is reached ! " The Hindu.

THE FIRST CITIZEN OF BENGAL

THERE is no son or daughter of India who will not
take the untimely loss of Mr. A. M, Boseasan
irreparable bereavement. To many it will serve like
a personal loss, for he had a gift, far above the
common, of giving himself closely and entirely to
those who sought his counsel or asked his service.
And these were innumerable. Indeed, to some of
those who knew him best it may seem as if a less un-
tiring helpfulness, a more discriminating generosity
in giving himself, might have kept him longer in our
-midst The fruit was ripe, it is true, but might it
not have hung longer on the tree ? And full ten
years too soon, we have lost one of the noblest sons
of the motherland.

Mr. A, M. Bose's public career and its distinctions
are known to all of us. They are in all men's
mouths ; and if a measure of his ability is needed,
we may find it, in the words of Mr, Fawcett,the
blind Postmaster-General of England, who, after
having seen Mr- Bose to conduct a political meeting
for him exclaimed* " If that man would only stay in
England, he might try to he Prime Minister ! ** But

142 SISTER MVEDITA

brilliant as was his mind, the supreme value of his life
to his own country lies in the fact that his character
towered high above it. Gifted with the full Hindu
measure of the capacity for sainthood, he nevertheless
set his face freely towards the realisation of citizen-
ship instead. His whole mind was concentrated on
his country, and even more than his mind, his heart.
This was so much the case indeed, that in the years of
illness which have now ended fatally, his thoughts
were constantly upon public affairs, and this fact was
felt by his family as a serious difficulty in nursing
him. He would weep as he read the news of the day,
and no personal sorrow seemed to touch him like those
magnified and extended tragedies which to-day are
so closely associated- with the name of India. It is
the love and incorruptibility of such souls as this that
form the best promise of the present for the mourning
Motherland. I write as a disciple of a movement
which feels that his devotion and disinterestedness
were not the only things for which we, the followers
of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, will do well to
honour the name of A. M. Bose.

Over and above this, his was the realisation of that
universality of sympathy, that Catholicity of heart,
which to us are as a watch-word. His was the posi-
tion of President in the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, of
which the Swami Vivekananda, as a young mau,
was a formal member. He belonged, in fact, to a

THE FIRST CITIZEN OF BENGAL 143

sect, and in a sense to a rival sect to that of the
disciples of Ramaknshna. Yet his was the first
hand shake of welcome to greet our great leader when
he landed in Calcutta on his return from the West.
The Swami Vivekananda never forgot this fact.
" All fight between us was forgotten," Mr. Bose also
used to say, " and all he could remember was that
an Indian had done something ' " This was not,
probably, either the first or the last time that Mr. A-
M. Bose showed such large-heartedness. For it was
no effort to him, but came freely and spontaneously.
Indeed he could not have imagined feeling or acting
differently. But on this occasion, he met with one
as generous as himself to understand the rarity of
such brotherhood.

A stern sense of justice and inflexible integrity
were Mr. Bose's characteristics in dealing with
authority. He never let things slide or called lazi-
ness by the name of mercy. He withdrew his name
from the University Text-Book Committee, when it
framed rules that he felt honest men could not con-
done. And the most pitiful feature of the Senate
of the Calcutta University, under the new Act, was,
in Bengali eyes, its attempt to constitute itself with*
out his presence. Of his connection with the cause
of nationality, it is needless to speak ! such devotion
as his makes of it a religion. Those who Kere pre-
sent at the burning-ghat, on the morning of the 21st

144 SISTER NIVEDITA

August, saw in that place on the heart where the
men of more favoured countries might have worn
their sovereign's decorations, in that place where
the Sadhu might have held his Gita and his beads,
in that place where many of us carry the Ishtam,
nothing more than a scrap of embroidered silk bear-
ing the inscription. . . Bande mataram. Nor does
any one need to be reminded of the great ceremony,
of the 16th October, last year in which the foundation-
stone of the Federation Hall was laid in his name
and in which his presence and his part will for ever
assure that the spot shall be looked upon as an altar,
the day as a sacred anniversary. Whenever he
passed that place afterwards, he said to some one,
he made a silent salutation. For verily, he could
not but regard it as the most sacred of all the
temples of the Motherland. He had come there
from his death-bed, he told the people, and his words
have proved to be only too true. But now that this
first of our standard-bearers has fallen, shall not a
thousand leap forward to carry into the fire of
battle those colours he held so high ?

The permanance of a movement, said the Swami
Vivekananda, is a question of the character it repre-
sents. Let us who are called by a religious name be
the first to acknowledge that the great civic ideal
which A. M. Bose, and the men standing round him
and owning his influence, have built up amongst us,

THE FIRST CITIZEN OF BENGAL 145

when judged by this test, promises a mighty future.
Let us take this life, so unspotted in its record, so
noble in its achievement, and, by loving imitation,
let us make it our own. It is possible for Indian
men to be great citizens and loyal sons of India, for
here is one who has done it. May he be but the first
of a great new order.

Aveel vale ! Hail and farewell ' So said the Latin
peoples to their honoured dead. But for us, here
there shall be no vale ! Rather in each civic and
national hero of the future shall we feel that we
have a right to greet once more the departed
greatness of Ananda Mohan Bose. For he went
first along that road, where to follow him, in the
after-time, there shajl be many millions.

Let us make our own his incorruptibility, his
chivalry for the defenceless and unknown, and, above
all, his stern passion for righteousness. And we may
rest assured that if we can make of ourselves such
characters, there is no power on earth that can defeat
us. For freedom cannot be achieved without free
hearts and free minds, nor, to men who have these,
can it be long refused. Blessed are these, for they
'force open the Kingdom of Heaven, and all the world
enters in their wake.

And, so in the beautiful words of the Hindu bene-
diction, may it 'be unto him "Peace ! Peace ! Peace P*
and -may he attain the fulfilment of his heart's desire.
* Inditm World,

10

REVIVAL OR REFORM?

How did the ' Pope go to Avignon ? says a Euro-
pean proverb. ' En-protestant ' as a protestant.

EVEN the Pope, then, in face of an usurper, may,
till he is reinstated, act the part of a protestant.
Even a Hindu, in a similar place, may call himself
a reformer. It would be sad, however, if the Pope,
in love with the attitude of a protestor, were
permanently tinged with the originality and dis-
content of that character. The great church of
which he is the head, divided thus against herself,
could no long stand intact under the blows that
would then be dealt her by her chief pastor. And
similarly of the reformer. The work of reform is
always limited in any given direction, and nothing
can be more mischievous than the temper of the
professional reformer. One reform there indeed is,
which may ,be pursued day and night, in season and
out of season, but this is the reform effected by pure
ideas. The same unifterisality does not belong to
reform proper, that is to say to the displacement of
one institution by another. Never, for instance, can

REVIVAL OR REFORM ? 147

we sufficiently realise, never can any sufficiently aid
us to realise, the highest ideal of faithfulness in
woman. But who could presume to dictate to
another the form in which this should be pur-
sued ? Picture the folly of one who tried to force
the exclusive imitation of the Blessed Virgin on un-
willing followers in the East, or that of Sita on
equally reluctant disciples in the West ! Imagine the
disastrous removal of all familiar exemplars in order
to spread submission to the ideal of the preacher. It
is clear that the result would be moral and social
chaos. Only the pure idea, the concept of faith and
purity itself, can be universal. The form must
always be of localised application. Only the cru-
sader of the ideal, then, can claim passports without
limitation. The rights of the reformer of institutions-
are definite, and have a beginning and an end.

It follows that the ideal itself binds together both
reforming and unreformin-g. For if it be universal,
it must be common to these two. In the great ends
of human striving, the orthodox and the modern are
at one. Both alike are struggling to reach the
ideal; Both alike recognise good as good and evil as
evil. We may take it, however, that the reformer!
often onei 1 who understands the reality of a need to
"Which the rest of his society is blind* The members
of the Arya'Samaj for instance, are admirably san^ y
in their attitude towards the waters of baptism., It

148 SISTER NIVEDITA

would be well if Orthodox Hinduism could see as far.
How shall they, in whose veins flows the blood of the
rishis be permanently contaminated by a Christian
ablution ? It is perhaps strange that those who talk
most of the rishis should attribute least of saving
efficacy to their kinship. Orthodox Hinduism will
lose a . great deal, in this hour of a deepening
nationalism, if she can find no 'way to take back her
christianised children, who seek reconciliation with
their own mother.

We are usually one-sided in our perceptions. All
the world must prostrate itself in admiration before
women who were capable of performing suttee. But
Ram Mohan Roy was indubitably right when he
took any means that lay to his hand to forbid women
in future that liberty. The patriot admires the heroic
wifehood and admires also the lion-hearted reformer.
Hinduism has appropriated, in this matter, the
labours of the agitator. Hindus know well that his
stern prohibition must be eternally enforced. They
hold only that in his person, original as was his
impulse, national as was his whole upbringing it
should be recognised that a Hindu and not fereigners,
put an end to custom.

Ram Mohan Roy's was the apostolate. The
response of his own people was the sanction, All
that foreigners contributed was the assistance of the
police, on definite occasions.

REVIVAL OR REFORM? 149

This is indeed tine mode of all social progression.
Custom grows rigid or becomes exaggerated. Protest
arises in the person of seer or saint or teacher, and
society opens her arms, embraces her rebel son, and
takes her stand henceforth on that wider basis which
his work has built for her.

Or to put it otherwise, a healthy reform group
represents anr -experiment in the laboratory of social
growth. The Brahmo Sarna] in Bengal may be
looked upon as a community segregating itself from
Orthodox Society for the purpose of working out
certain results that were requisite to that society
itself. It was desirable to show that Hinduism was
capable of offering' all that Christianity could ofifetf
in the religious life and organisation, without
de-nationalism. The tragedy of Christianity in
India is its imperialistic character. It may be quite
true that the under-dog is not always in the right,
still, no self-respecting under-dog will wag his tail
over the upper dog's statement of his own ideals !
But congregational worship, the weekly sermon, the
Sunday-School and the mutual aid of sectarian
organisation, were undoubtedly valuable contribu^
tions to the social side of reKgious activity.

On the purely human side, again by opening
society to women, 'Brahmoism silently made the
important assertion that men stand or fall by their
obedience to as high a moral standard as is required

150 SISTER NIVEDITA

of their wives and sisters. Henceforth, in fine
Indian Society, men must be ashamed to associate
even with men, if these should be unfit for the finer
tests imposed by the company of good women. The
beautiful old reverence of the orthodox for woman-
hood was not lost; the exquisite reserve of the
Indian householder, guarding the privacy of his
home, remained. Only for those who were proved
worthy of the honour, there was now opened a social
sanctum where fine men might meet good women
and make an exchange of courtesy and thought.

Freedom as to food and marriage did not mean
the transcending of all social limitations. The
Brahmo appears to the outsider to be as much a
man of his own 'class as any other. But wherever
he may have come from, belongs to a caste now,
that is determined by its education, and any
newcomer may join it, by reaching the required
development.

Work and citizenship, meanwhile were being
< realised as religious avocations. Only in some such
way could a great public life be built up. New types
were being prepared and channels opened at the
same time for their social activity. The Brahmo
who has travelled far to find knowledge is invited,
on his return, to share his treasure with his own
people, and amongst Indian religious sects I know
of no other in Calcutta who can invite every

REVIVAL OR REFORM? 151

distinguished stranger who visits the city to come
and tell his tale of knowledge to a full house.

The Pope went to Avignon as a protestant. True.
But he came back. And when he did return, it
was as good Catholic, glad to be at home, in
familiar places, glad to be freed from the neces-
sity of protesting against anything. So of re-
forms in general. A good deal of dust is stirred
up by their inception. A good deal of antagon-
ism and mutual conflict is required at first, partly
to weed the ranks of recruits who might not
be, helpful. But in the end there assuredly comes a
time when the pioneer stage of the labour is ended.
Then a new duty arises on both sides. On society it
is incumbent to appropriate consciously all that the
social experiment has achieved and evolved. On the
reformers it is desirable to draw closer the bonds that
unite them to the old fold, and to sum themselves
once more in those communal thoughts and senti-
ments from which, for a while, they were necessarily
isolated.

Then arise fresh and still more living ideals. The
divided consciousness of conservatism on on& side
an4 new-moulding on the other gives place to the
seaase of a great task of upbuilding to be performed
irt'conoznoxL Men realise that they are after all but
the chiWren of their own fathers ; that, could they
reach th^ fullest significance of their own institution^

152 SISTEE NIVEDITA

the achievements would be tantamount to the most
perfect reform. The radical sees that his own moral
fervour and love of integrity were handed down to
him from his orthodox forbears, who must have been
to the full as good men as himself. The orthodox
man, on his side, realises that a mer^ religion of the
kitchen could never represent Dharma. Instead of
casting stones at others for their errors of sympathy*
it is his duty to widen his own, activity. The Brahnio
is no longer to be blamed for abandoning the
ancient forms of caste, and neither is the orthodox
to rest content with his own petrifaction of custom*
For Nationality has arisen, as the goal of all sections
of society alike, and side by side must work brothers
of all shades of opinion, of all forms of energy, for
the recreating of the Dharma, for the building anew,
in the modern world, of Maha-Bharata, Heroie
India,

II

Our watchword, then, is no longer * reform i In
its place, we have taken the word l construct ! ' We*
have to re-create the Dharma. We have to build
again the Maha-JBharata. It was said that the
church and its protestants, society and the reformer^
are now to exchange achievements and become fused
once more. For, after all, Humanity is greater tham

REVIVAL OR REFORM? 153

any church. Society was made for man, not man
for Society.

But even reunion must have a principle of unity
clearly seen, deeply and definitely followed out. As
long as this is lacking, schism and reconciliation
alike are but vague driftings, erratic, unreliable.
Even the most comprehensive group must have ite
impulse, its reasons, its goal. The modern sects have
shown by facts how useful are the four walls of the
congregation to its members. The world of modern
India is a tournament, and many are the knighte
who tilt in it. True. But each one of them began in
some smaller world, as part of a limited society. Here
he trained himself, first as page, and then as horse
and swordsman. And here, too in some higher
reach of it, he kept vigil all night over his future
arms, and received the accolade and spurs that were
to fit him for the contents of the wider world without*
Where did each of those men who belong now to the
whole Indian world find the smaller play-ground of
his preparation? This man, undoubtedly, in school or'
college ; another yonder, in village, estate, or
kingdom ; still a third in the office or at professional
work ; a fourth amongst his fellows in religion, A
society or a nation is rich morally or socially in
proportion to the number of institutions it possesses,
which .offer distinct and well-graduated steps of
evolution to their aspirants. A country or a race that

154 SISTER NIVEDITA

is robbed of all chief appointments in Government*
in railway organisation, in administration of great
offices and departments, in the activities of shipping
and transport, that has no trading organisation of
her own, available for her most educated classes, a
country or a race that is not consciously making
experiments, and coining to conclusions of its own,
in agriculture, in commerce, in literature, in art, in
science, in public works, in private comfort and
utility, in social amelioration, such a country, such a
race, is by this fact deprived of thousands of schools
of manly character and human development.

It is essential then, that a rich efflorescence of
such opportunities be produced. It is essential that
the best brains of the race be set to the task. Every
industry created, every factory established, however
insignificant it may appear in itself, is a school of a
manhood, an academy where shrewdness and res-
ponsibility and integrity are to be studied in the
lesson-book of experience, an ashrama where young
souls may ascend the first steps of the ladder towards
rishihood. The task is the creating of a nation to
take possession of its country. The men are to be
produced by hard experience* The method is to be
unity. But where is this unity to be learnt f The
reformers have taught us the value of the fixe]d
congregation that takes a pride in the achievements
of its own members. But it could not be expected,

REVIVAL OR REFORM? 155

it could not even be desired, that the body of the
orthodox should drift into the camp of the heretics.
How, then, can they appropriate the results of their
experiments ? It could not be asked that the reform-
ers should return to ,the city from which for con-
scientious reasons they set out, and abandon in the
eyes of the world all for which, in the past, they
have fought. Where, then, are the two parties to
meet and confer together ? Where are they to attack
the common problem in common ? Where and what
standard are they to assert their unity ? The answer
is simple. They are to meet on the common ground of
place. For rebuilding the Maha-Bharata, the village
is to be the work-room. The city is the factory. The
whole country is the site of the new building. Jn all
that concerns the interests of India the neighbours are
Indians, willing to avail themselves of all that can
be learnt, from far or near, ready to obey any one,
whatever his personal convictions on other subjects,
who has the strength and wisdom necessary to lead*
Nor is this any despairing counsel of perfection,. To
an enormous extent it is true in India that good
neighbourhood creates good feeling. The visito|*
coming to the city is received and entertained by
$presentatives of all factions and all opinions. This
is true, of India as perhaps of no other country, in the
world* So far from there being any colour of truth
in the statement that she has been ^ hopelessly,

156 SISTER NIVEDITA

divided and sub-divided for thousands of years," the
very reverse is the case. We do not regard the
garden as divided against itself, because the flowers
in it are of many different hues. Nor Is India divided.
She has, on the contrary, unfathomed depths of
polsentiahty for common civic organisation, for united
corporate action. But she must understand that she
has this power. She must look at her own strength*
She must learn to believe in herself. The power of
steam is not a whit greater to-day, though it drives
the railway engine and the ship, than it was of old,
when it merely made the cover rattle over the pot
where the rice was cooking. Steam is not more
powerful than it was. But man has recognised its
power. Similarly, we may stand paralysed in all our
strength for ages, all for want of knowing that we
had that strength. After we have faced the fact,
there still remains the problem of how to control' and*
use it. And long vision is not given in this kind to
any of us. Only now and then, for hard prayer and
struggle, do the mists blow to one side a little, letting
, us for a moment, catch a glimpse of the mountain
path. Yet, without recognition of our strength*
there can be ( no possible question of using it.
Without right thought, there cannot possibly be right
action, To us, then, the recognition; to us, the-
thought. India is not divided and sub-divided to
any effective sense of those words. She is not divided

REVIVAL OR REFORM ? 157

in any way that could possibly hinder the working
out of a great common nationality. We are working
comrades, not because we speak the same language
or believe the same creeds. Should I cease to be the
brother of my own mother's son because he went
abroad and learnt a foreign tongue, or took up the
worship of Mahadev instead of that of Vishnu or
Parthasarathy ? We are working comrades on no
basis so limited as that of creed or language, which
after all, would limit us geographically to a province
and spiritually to a single line of development. We
are working comrades because we are Indians, children
of a single root tree, dwellers around one bamboo
olump. Our task is one, the rebuilding of Heroic
India. To this every nerve and muscle of us tingle
with response. Who so foolish as to imagine that
a little political "petting and pampering can make
half a nation forget its kinship with the other half?
Nonsense! We are one! We have not to become
one. We are one. Our sole need is to learn to
demonstrate our unity. Indian World.

NOTE ON INDIAN HISTORIC PAGEANTS

NEWS comes by the present mail of the Warwick
1 Pageant. " The Scenery,'* says one who was pre-
sent, u consisted of grass and trees and sky with the
River Avon behind. The spectators on each day
numbered some five thousand and the performers
fifteen hundred at least. The whole began with a
procession of fifty Druids, old men clad in white*
green and blue with long white beards, carrying the
golden sickle and the misleto-bougL Then these
took their places behind and remained throughout
the performance as chorus. As Queen Eliza-beth was
rowed down the Avon in her state-barge, words fail
to tell how impressive was the scene. When shall
we have the history of India represented thus ? "

When Indeed? Nothing could be imagined which
ould better give actuality to the geat progression
of Indian history. And a national consciousness ex-
presses itself through history, even as a man realises
himself by the memorie^ and associations of his own
life. Already the historic drama is proceeding apace
amongst us, and our city is realising that the theatre
riiay have the greatest and noblest of all tasks, that of

NOTE ON INDIAN HISTOKIC PAGEANTS 159

visualising and spreading a world-changing idea. For
some time a further notion has been agitated amongst
some of us, namely that of living pictures, or
tableaux, of Indian historic cities. A group might
easily be arranged, for example, to symbolise Delhi,,
or Cheetore, or Benares, or Amritsar or Poona. The
costumes would be almost as valuable an element in
such pictures as the dramatic character of the
groups themselves. Thus in a picture of Delhi, red
must predominate, in one of Agra, white, and so on.
After a series of these symbolic scenes, it might be
feasible to have a grouped scene representing the
cities of a given period. And finally, by way of the
fifth act, as it were, a group, with Delhi high in the
centre, representing the historic cities of modern
India, first, as they now are, second, as we may yet
hope to recreate them.

But the idea of the Historic Pageant is much sim-
pler than this. India is the land of civic pageants.
Every wedding, every puja, involves its procession
through the lanes, the bazaars, and along the Ganges-
side. And in every such procession we find the, idea
of the pageant in embryo. Here, as in so many other
directions also, it needs only that under the master-
impulse of nationality, the elements in which our life
is already rich shall be swept up and organised, for
the expression of a great purpose. Nor need it be
supposed that the presence of women is essential to

160 SISTEK NIVEDITA

this. In the days of Shakespeare in England, and in
the Greek drama of a -^Eschylus the place of women
on the stage was always taken by boys. Woman
has never been seen amongst the actors, when drama
was at its greatest. There is no reason whatever,
therefore, that such pageants as are here spoken of
should be any source of controversy on this much-
disputed point For the whole thing can be organised
and carried out by students, would indeed be best done
by their means.

Nor ought we to urge the rudeness and simplicity
of the means at our disposal. It is not costume, nor
scenery, that makes drama great, but its power of
dramatic suggestion. A play acted in a village barn,
if there be present an actor of genius, may be far
more impressive than anything London or Paris can
show. If we in India are ever to reach the power to
make a Warwick Pageant, it must be by beginning
where we can. No matter how simple the first
attempt, the imagination of the people once at work
on the matter, the historic procession will carry itself,
eacl; year will see it become more perfect, each
occasion will find us more competent to organise it,
But from first to last, it will be the intensity of the
historic suggestion speaking through it that will make
the pageant great and successful. We would like to
see it taken up irj every village, in every school-rooin
and play -ground* We want the children and the

NOTE ON HISTORIC PAGEANTS 161

uneducated to play and pose and group themselves
spontaneously, in realisation of their country's
history. If this sort of thing could become a
passion, like the imitation of the Ram Lila:
among the children and peasants of the Punjab, like
the mourning of the Mohurrum amongst the Shiahs
of the North West, like the Virasthomi Procession in
the Hindu Native States and like that of Janmas-
tomi Day at Dacca, then we might hope that great
memories "would indeed stir effectively in the minds
and hearts of those who are called of the Mother's
voice to make themselves once more a mighty nation.
For in order that nationality may become a reality,
it is essential that the history of the country should
become a direct mode of consciousness with all her
children.

It is proposed then, that for the celebration of the
16th of October All India Day in this and suc-
ceeding years, while the religious ceremony will
always of course be the JRakhi bondhon, the tying of
the JRakhi, there should also be a civic ceremony
consisting of a historic pageant by the students
through the streets. It is proposed that the cart or
dais so much used in marriage processions should
here be employed for the historic groups* Before
each dais or cart will go the s&onfc-blowers and
heralds of 'that scene and after it will come musi*-
dans and banners* There might be from twelve ife
11

J62 SISTER NIVEDITA

twenty scenes altogether. But in the last, modern
India should be depicted mourning. The procession
might take place by day-light, or at night by torch-
light. In the latter case, it might also be lighted
up occasionally by coloured fire. But it must be
remenlbered that few things are so grand an element
in processions, as rough torches, with their leaping
flames.

It is desirable that only strictly historical scenes
should at first be included in these pageants. There-
fore it would probably be well to begin with the
reign of Chandragupta or if prior ages were to be
indicated at all, it would be better to do this by
means of a scene from the forest-ashramas of the
Upanishads, or the fire-sacrifices of the Vedas, than by
entering upon the too complex matter of the Maha-
bharata and Ramayana. It is the History of India ?
that we want to concretise, not the memories of the
faith. A very beautiful element in such festivals
would be added, if Mohammedan students would
arrange to contribute those pictures which repre-
sented their own heroes and emperors; but while
such assistance would be welcome, such co-operation
wholly delightful, it ought not to be regarded as
essential. The students of the city, whether Hindu or
Mohammeden ought in every case, as citizens, make
themselves responsible for the due representation and
glorification of the past. Calcutta, having but little

NOTE ON HISTORIC PAGEANTS 163

local history, has the advantage of being able to
yield herself up to the history of India as a whole.
Cities like Lucknow, Benares, Bankipore and Poona,
on the other hand would have a strong view of their
own to add to this, and would thus be comparable
to Warwick itself, for that city portrays its local
history, for the world's delight.

It is clear that we have here not an entertainment
merely, but a great new means of culture. Pro-
grammes printed in the vernacular and distributed
broad cast, will give the name of each scene, with a
brief explanatory note. Roofs, verandahs and pave-
ments will furnish spectatorium, and in every house-
hold of women there will be present some man in his
capacity of protector and household guardian, who can
answer eager questions and make meanings still more
clear. Thus, during the hours of the procession, a
whole city will be, as it were, at school, but at school
with its heart, as well as with its head* Indian
World.

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM

I
THE BASIS

"The true Hinduism that made men work, not
dream."

. J. a BOSE

ONE of the most valuable generalisations of the
modern era is that which was first arrived at, just
about the time of the French Revolution, that the
individual^ in his development, follows the race. Each
man and woman, that is to say, when perfectly
educated, becomes. an epitome of the history either
of Ms or <her own race, or of Humanity as a whole.
This great perception made itself felt as a definite
element in a new scheme of education, through
PESTALOZZI, the saint and guru of teachers in the
twentieth century West. Pestalozzi saw that, were
there ever to be hope for the people, it must be
through an education at once modern, that is liberal,
psychological, that is founded on a knowledge of
mental laws, and in accordance with the historic
development of man.

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 165

The problem which the young student Pestalozzi,
son and lover of the people, had to face at the end of
the French Revolution, in Switzerland, was of trifling
magnitude, compared with that which confronts the
son and lover of India to-day. And yet, in their inner-
most nature, the two are identical. Fcr this, like
that, consists in the difficulty of opening up the
human field to a new thought-harvest, while at the
same time avoiding the evils of mere surface-culture.
The soil that has brought forth the mango and the
palm, ought not to be degraded to producing only
gourds and vetches. And, similarly, the land of the
Vedas and of Jnana Yoga has no right to sink into
the role of mere-critic or imitator of European Letters.

Yet this is the present condition of Indian culture,
and it appears likely to remain so, unless the Indian
mind can deliberately discipline itself to the historic
point of view. To do this is like adjusting oneself to
a n3w dimension. Things which were hitherto merg-
ed in each other, all at once become distinct. That
which till now was instinctive, is suddenly seen to
Jbave a goal, which is capable, in its turn, of clear
definition. The social and the religious idea, under
Hinduism as under Islam, were, in the past, indis-
tinguishable. Philosophically, of course, every tyro
ould detach one from the other : in practice, how-
ever, they were one, and could not be separated. For
religious reasons as was supposed, we must eat in a

166 SISTER NIVEDITA

certain way, wear specified clothing, and fulfil a
definite scheme of purification. Suddenly, through
the modern catastrophe, the sunlight of comparison,
contrast, and relativity, is poured over the whole
area, and we discover that by living up to custom,
we have been not accumulating pious merit, but
merely approximating to that ideal of absolute
refinement, cleanliness, and purity, which is the
dream of all fine human life, and which may as well,
or better, be achieyed, by some other canon, as by
our own. Seeing the goal thus clearly, we become
able to analyse and compare various methods, to add
to our own conduct the virtues of others, and to
eliminate from it the defects of all. Above all we
find out how to distinguish effectively between the
social idea, and religion. It is thus that it becomes
possible to talk of " an aggressive Hinduism ".

Aggression is to be the dominant characteristic of
the India that is to-day in school and classroom,
aggression, and the thought and ideals of aggression*
Instead of passivity, activity ; for the standard of
weakness, the standard of strength ; in place of a
steadily -yielding defence, the ringing cheer of the
invading host. Merely to change the attitude of the
mind, in this way, is already to accomplish a
revolution. And the inception of some such change
will have become evident to us all within a dozen
years.

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 167

But before the first step can be taken, there must be
clear thought about essentials. The object of all
religious systems is the formation of character. Theo-
cratic systems aim at the construction of character
through the discipline of personal habit. But at bot-
tom it is character and not habit, that they desire to
create. No one will dispute that her ideals are a still
prouder , fruit of Hinduism than her widespread
refinement. It is true that India is the only country
in the world where a penniless wanderer may sur-
pass a king in social prestige. But still grander is
the fact that the king may be a Janaka, and the
beggar, a Suke Deva.

Let us, then, touch on the comparative study of
the value of habit as a factor in the evolution of
character. We find in India that society watches a
man all the years of his life, ready to criticise him
for the hour at which he bathes and eats and prays,
the mode of his travel, the fashion in which, per-
haps, he wears his hair. To attempt a serious
innovation on social custom, in such directions &s
marriage or education, seems to horrified public
opinion not merely selfish, but also sacrilegious.
And this kind of criticism becomes more and more
powerful over the individual, as the villages empty
themselves into the cities. For the man who might
have had the courage to make his mark in the
smaller community, would think it presumptuous id

168 SISTER NIVEDITA

go his own way, in the larger. Hence the aggrega-
tion of men tends to become the multiplication of
their weaknesses and defects. It is the mean and
warped judgment that gains fastest in weight.

But let us look at a community in which active
ends and ideals are energetically pursued. Here, a
certain standard of personal refinement is exacted of
the individual, as rigidly as in India itself. But
public opinion, being strong enough to kill, does not
stoop to discuss such points. The learning of the
method is relegated to the nursery, where it is
imparted by women. Having * passed through this
stage of his education, it is not expected that the
hero will fall short in future, of its standards ; but if
he did so, society would know how to punish him,
by ignoring his existence. Both he and society,
meanwhile, are too busy with other efforts, to be
able to waste force on what is better left to his own
pride. For a whole new range of ideals has now
*x>me in sight. From the time that a Western child
steps out of the nursery, it is not quietness, docility,
resignation, and obedience, that his teachers and
guardians -strive to foster in him, so much as
strength, initiative, sense of responsibility, and power
of rebellion. Temper and self-will are regarded
by Western educators as a very precious power,
which must by no means be crushed or destroyed,
though they must undoubtedly be disciplined

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 169

subordinated to impersonal ends. It is for this reason
that fighting is encouraged in our playgrounds, the
only stipulation being for fairplay. To forbid a boy to
undergo the physical ordeal, means, as we think,
undermining his sincerity, as well as his courage.
But for -him to strike one who is weaker than himself
is to stand disgraced amongst his equals.

That is to say, a social evolution which in Asia has
occupied many centuries is in the West relegated
to, at most, the first ten years of a child's upbringing,
and he tfcen passes into the period of chivalry.
Indeed if, as some suppose, the ten Avatars of Vishnu
are but the symbol of a single perfect life, India her-
self has not failed to point this lesson. For after the
stages of fish, tortoise, boar, and man -lion, are all
safely and happily passed, and the child has become
" a little man," it still remains for him to be twice a
Kshatriya before he is able to become a Buddha.
What is this, but the modern generalisation, that the
individual in his development follows the race? And
in the last sublime myth of Kalki, may it not be that
we have the prophecy of a great further evolution,
in which Buddha-hood itself shall plunge once more
into a sovereign act of redeeming love and pity, and
initiate, for every individual of us, the triumph
oi active and aggressive ideals ?

Let us suppose, then, that we see Hinduism no
longer as the preserver of Hindu custom, but as the

170 SISTER NIVEDITA

creator of Hindu character. It is surprising to think
how radical a change is entailed in many directions
by this conception. We are no longer oppressed
with jealousy or fear, when we contemplate en-
croachments on our social and religious consciousness.
Indeed, the idea of encroachment has ceased, because
our work is not now to protect ourselves, but to
convert others. Point by point, we are determined,
not merely to keep what we had, but to win what
we never had before. The question is no longer of
other people's attitude to us, but, rather, of what we
think of them. It is not, how much have we kept ?
but, how much have we annexed ? We cannot afford,
now t to lose, because we are sworn to carry the
battle t&r beyond our remotest frontiers. We no
longer dream of submission, because struggle itself
has become only the first step towards a distant
victory to be won.

No other religion in the world is so capable of this
dynamic transformation as Hinduism. To Nararjuna
and Buddhaghosha, the Many was real, and the Ego
unreal. To Sankaracharya, the One was real and
the Many unreal. To Ramakrishna and Viveka-
nanda, the many and the One were the ^me Reality,
perceived differently and at different times by the
human consciousness. Do we realise what this
means? It means that CHARACTER IS SPIRIT-
UALITY, It means that laziness and defeat are not

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 171

renunciation. It means that to protect another is
infinitely greater than to attain salvation. It
means that Mukti lies in overcoming the thirst
for Mukti. It means that conquest may be the
highest form of sannyas. It means, in short, that
Hinduism is become aggressive, that the trumpet of
Kalki is sounded already in our midst, and that it
calls all that is noble, all that is lovely, all that is
strenuous and heroic amongst us, to a battle-field on
which the bugles of retreat shall never more be heard.

II
THE TASK BEFORE Us

" Forgiveness, if weak and passive is not good : fight

is better

Forgive, when you can bring legions of angels to
an easy victory." VlVEKANANDA.

It is small wonder if, in the act of transition from
old form to new, from a mode of thought some
centuries venerable, to one untried, and at best but
modern, it is small wonder it, in the throes of so
great a crisis, India should have passed through a
generation or two of intellectual confusion. Tht
astonishing phenomenon is rather the speed and ease
of her re-adjustment. Within fifty years to have assi-
milated a new language, and that of an unforeseen
type, and to have made changes at almost every rung
in the ladder of ideal culture, is this a little thing ?

172 SISTER NIVEDITA

Is it a fact that could be duplicated anywhere ? To
speak, in reply, of Japan, is mere foolishness. The
problem of Japan, when midway through the nine-
teenth century, could hardly be compared with that of
India. A small and compact people, of single origin
inhabiting island, and strong in their sense of insula-
rity could naturally mobilise themselves in any
direction they pleased. The number of people in
India to-day who speak English fluently woulc^
people two or three Japans more than once. And in
spite of all efforts to prevent it, the knowledge of
English will go on spreading.

The trouble hitherto has been that the people were
-as passive to modern culture as to ancient. In a
land where the segregation ~of the soul has been the
-aim of the highest thoilght and life, for thousands
of years, it has not been easy to turn every energy
suddenly in the direction of activity and mutual co-
operation. At bottom, however, there is strength
enough in India, and in spite of the demoralisation of
hunger and baffled hope, her people are about to set
foot on the threshold of a new era. The ebb of the
tide has already reached its utmost. The reaction of
fortune is about to commence. That this is so, is due
to the fact that at the beginning of the twentieth
century the Indian people can take a bird's-eye view
of their past history, and are able to understand
their true position.

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 173

There is a saying in India that to see through Maya
is to destroy her. But few realise how literally this
is true. The disaster or difficulty that has ceased to
confuse and bewilder us, is about to be defeated.
The evil about which we can think and express our-
selves clearly, has already lost its power. To measure
our defeat accurately, is to reverse it. When a people,
as a people, from the highest to the lowest, are
united in straight and steady understanding of their
circumstances, without doubt and without illusion 9
then events are about to precipitate themselves. Dis-
crimination is the mark of the highest spirituality,
Spirituality is the only irresistible force. Like the
fire that wraps a forest in flame, is the power of the
mind of a whole nation.

From the year 1858 onwards, there has been no
possible goal for the Indian people but a complete
assimilation of the modern conscioiisness. At that
point the Mediaeval order was at an end. Prithvi
Rai and Shah Jehan, Asoka and Akbar were mingled
in a common oblivion. Only the soil they had loved*
only the people they had led, remained, to addres^
themselves to a new task, to stand or fall by their
power to cope with a new condition- Sharp as the
contrast between the Ghinga and the Jumna w#s*
the difference between the Mediaeval and the Modem*
Invincible as the resistless current of the Bhagfrathi*
is that new India, that is to be born of both.

174 SISTER NIVEDITA

Up to the present, however, in the exhaustion of
the transition, it has not been possible for the nation-
al mind to envisage the problem, so as to see or state
its terms clearly. To-day this first stage is over.
The Indian mind is no longer in blind "collapse. It is
awaking to fresh strength, and about to survey both
past and present, that by their means it may deter-
mine and forecast its future.

What are the differentia, what is the precise pro-
blem of this modern age ? Definitions are proverbial-
ly rash, but it is not difficult to state some facts and
considerations bearing on this subject, with great
precision. The outstanding fact about the modern
period has been, undoubtedly, the geographical dis-
covery of the world as a whole. The one charac-
teristic of the modern mind, that make it unlike the
mind of any other age, is the completeness with
which it is able to survey and define the surface of
the planet Earth. The discovery of steam, with the
consequent invention of railways and steamboats,
has undoubtedly been the efficient cause of this ex-
ploration, and out of the consequent clash of faiths
and cultures, has come the power to make the per-
sonal or mythological equation ; to cancel, more or
less to one's own satisfaction, all the elements of
local prejudice in a given problem ; and from thisi
again has been bom the ideal of modern science, of
modern culture, generally, the attempt to extract the*

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 175

rootfact from all the diversity of phenomena in
which it clothes itself.

In this way, the intellectual and spiritual dis-
covery of the world has followed hard on the physi-
cal or geographical. In culture, a new era has been
proclaimed. It is no longer enough to know one
thing well. It is also incumbent upon us to under-
stand its place amongst other things, and its relation
to the scheme of knowledge as a whole.

The pioneers of modernism, meanwhile, have been
dominated by the ideal of the machine, to which they
have owed so much of their success. To this fact
we may trace our present-day standards of order
and efficiency. A large house of business, with its
staff, is simply a human machine of an intricate
kind. It has been said that the Oriental regards
his servants as personal attendants, the Western as
so many hidden machines. Nothing could be more
true. The Oriental is in every case an agricultural-
ist, accustomed to the picturesque disorder of seed-
time and harvest, cowshed and barn, and far from
irritated by it. Every thought and habit of /the
Western, on the other hand, is dominated by the
notion of mechanical accuracy and efficiency, and by
the effort of the mechanician to achieve a given end
by the most economical possible means.

In a society in which the highest knowledge
fulfils the twofold test of order and synthesis, the

176 SISTER NIYEDITA

great sin is provincialism. And here the new world
differs from the old, in which the tastes of aristo-
crats were supreme, and mortal crime lay in vul-
garity.

But while the great intellectual and social failure of
to-day lies in provincialism, no serious mind assumes
that the world-idea is to be arrived at easily. Only
the tree that is firm-rooted in its own soil can offer
us a perfect crown of leaf and blossom. And simi-
larly, only the heart that responds perfectly to the
claims of its immediate environment, only the charac-
ter that fulfils to the utmost its stint of civic duty,,
only this heart and mind is capable of taking its place
in the ranks of the truly cosmopolitan. Only the fully
national can possibly contribute to the cosmo-
national.

And this is understood to-day by cultured persons,
all the world over. The cheap superciliousness of
the young man who, on leaving his village in Kamsr
chatka or Uganda, has been initiated into the habits
and manners of the European democracy, and takes
himself for this reason as an exalted and competent
critic of hi$ own people, only evokes a smile. No
one desires his acquaintance, for he has nothing to
add to the thought-world of those with whom he is
so proud to have been associated. Every act, every
movement, writes large across his forehead the word
44 snob ".

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 177

On the other hand, to take one's stand persistently
on the local prejudices of the village in Kamschatka
or Uganda, is, though infinitely more manly and
self-respecting, almost as futile. It is better to be
provincial than to be vulgar, for our horror of vul-
garity is the longer-grown. But both miss the
effective achievement. What the time demands of
us is that in us our whole past shall be made a part
of the world's life. This is what is called the reali-
sation of the national idea. But it must be realised
everywhere, in the world-idea. In order to attain a
large power of giving, we may break through any
barrier of custom. But it is written inexorably in
the very nature of things that, if we sacrifice custom
merely for some mean or selfish motive, fine men
and women "everywhere Will refuse to admit us to
their fellowship.

Cosmo-na;tionality of thought and conduct, then,
is not easy for any man to reach. Only through a
perfect realisation of his own nationality can any-
one, anywhere, win to it. And Cosmo-nationality *
consists in holding the local idea in the world-idea. It
is well known that culture is a matter of sympathy,
rather than of information. It would follow that
the cultivation of the sense of humanity as a whole,
is the essential feature of a modern education. But
this cannot be achieved by mere geographical know-
ledge. The unification of the world has emancipated

178 SISTER ISTIYEDITA

the human mind to some extent, and we now
understand that a man's character is the sum of his
assimilated experiences ; in other words, that his
history is written in his face. And what is true of
persons we see also to be true of countries. The very
landscape is a key to the hopes and dreams of men.
Their hopes and dreams explain to us the heritage
they have left. History, then, is as essential to the
modern consciousness as geography. It is the second
dimension, as it were> of TRUTH, as we now seek it,
naked and dynamic.

Our changed attitude changes all our conceptions.
We make a new survey of our knowledge, and are
no longer content to view dog as dog and cow as
cow, but must needs learn all the links and develop-
ments between them. Their very differences are
now regarded by us as a guarantee of their funda-
mental community of origin. We break open the
rocks and scour the waste places of the earth, that
we may find forms which will explain to us the
divergence of horse-hoof from cow-hoof, reptile from
fish, and bird from both.

Or we turn to the study of art and letters. Here
again, our scrutiny has entered on the comparative
stage. If we investigate the records of Baghdad, we
must understand also those of Moorish spain It is
not enough to follow the course of chivalry in
France, unless we also assist at its birth in German

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 179

forests. Our idea of unity has become organic,
evolutionary, and some picture of the movement and
clash of the world as a whole is an overmastering
need.

Yet even the finest mind is limited by its own
ignorance. What a painful blank in modern
culture, whenever we come upon the word ' China ' !
How little has it been possible to say about India to
which any cultivated Indian can give more than a
pitying smile ! And how utterly misunderstood is the
Mahommadan world ! The world of culture, be it
remembered is not tainted by political corruption*
Race-prejudice has no place in the ideal aspiration
after knowledge. Why then should a silence,
almost political, pervade the spaces that ought to
be filled with Oriental interpretation, in modern
thought ?

The reason, as regards India, is easy enough to find.
The Indian mind has not reached out to conquer and
.possess its own land as its own inalienable share and
trust, in the world as a whole. It has been content,
even in things modern, to take obediently whatever
was given to it. And the newness and strangeness
of' the thing given, has dazed it The Indian people
as a whole, for the last two generations, have been
as men walking m a dream, without manhood,
without power to react freely against conditions,
without even common-sense.

180 SISTER NIVEDITA

But to-day, in the deliberate adoption of an aggres-
sive policy, we have put all this behind us. Realis-
ing that life is struggle, we are now determined that
our wrestling with the powers that are against us,
shair enable us to contribute to the world's sum of
culture, not merely to make adaptations from it*
Our part henceforth is active, and not passive. The
Indianising of India, the organising of our national
thought, the laying out of our line of march, all
this is*to be done by us, not by others, on our behalf.
We accept no more programmes. Henceforth are
we become the makers of programmes. We obey no
more policies. Henceforth do we create policies. We
refuse longer to call by the name of f education,' the
apprenticeship necessary for a ten-rupee clerkship.
We put such things in their true place. We ordain
ourselves intellectually free. * What, then, is the
task before us ?

Our task is to translate ancient knowledge into
modern equivalents. We have to clothe the old
strength in a new form. The new form without that
x>ld strength is nothing but a mockery; almost equally
foolish is the savage anachronism of an old-time
power without fit expression. Spiritually, intellec-
tually, there is no undertaking, but we must attempt it.

Great realms of the ideal open for our exploration.
New conception of life and duty, and freedom ; new
ideas of citizenship ; untried expressions of love and

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 181

friendship ; into all these we must throw ourselves
with burning energy, and make them our own.

We must create a history of India in living terms.
Up to the present that history, as written in English,
practically begins with Warrren Hastings, and
crams in certain unavoidable preliminaries, which
cover a few thousands of years, and, troublesome as
they are, cannot be altogether omitted ! All this is
merely childish and has to be brought to the block.
The history of India has yet to be written for the
first time. It has to be humanised, emotionalised
made the trumpet-voice and evangel of the races
that inhabit India. And to do this, it must be re-
connected with place. Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay,
are the present view-points ! Surely the heroes that
sleep on ancient battle-fields, the forefathers that
make for themselves the wide- walled cities, th^
scholars that left behind them precious thought and
script, have laughed sometimes when they have not
wept to see from high heaven the grotesque docility
of their descendants ! The history of India consists in
truth, of the strata, of at least three thousand years.
Ocean-bed and river-sands, forest and marsh, and
ocean-floor again, lie piled one upon the other and in
each period some new point is centre. Ayodhya and
Hastinapura, Indraprastha and Pataliputra, Ujjain
and Delhi, Conjeevaram and Amaravati, what of the
vanished worlds of which ill these were born ? There

182 SISTEB NIVEDJTA

is no evangel without worship. Throw yourselves,
children of India, into the worship of these and your
whole part. Strive passionately for knowledge.
Yours are the spades and mattocks of this excavation.
For with you and not with the foreigner, are the
thought and language that will make it easy to un-
earth the old significance. India's whole hope lies
in a deeper research, a more rigid investigation of
facts. With her, encouragement, and not despair, is
on the side of truth !

Great literatures have to be created in each of the
varnaculars. These literatures must voice the past,
translate the present, forecast the future. The
science and the imagination of Europe have to be
brought, through the vernacular, to every door. India
cannot afford to imitate foreign institutions Neither
can she afford to remain ignorant of foreign ideals.
The history of the past has to be re-written, in simple
terms. True hope for the time to come must fill all
hearts, like a nation's Common Prayer. On the crea-
tion of such vernacular literatures, depends the
effective education of women.

Art must be re-born. Not the miserable travesty
of would-be Europeanism that we at present know.
There is no voice like that of art, to reach the people.
A song, a picture, these are the fiery* cross 1 that

1 " A rough cross of charred wood used to be passed from clan to
clan m the Scottish Highlands, as the call to war. We all know the
folded chapathy of the Indian villages.

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 183

leaches all the tribes, and makes them one. And art
will be re-born, for she has found a new subject,
India herself. Ah, to be a thinker in bronze and
give to the world the beauty of the Southern Pariafa
as he swings, scarce-clad, along the Beach-Road at
Kadras ! Ah to be a Millet, and paint the woman
worshipping at dawn beside the sea ! Oh for a pencil
that would interpret the beauty of the Indian Sari ;
the gentle life of village and temple ; the coniing
ard going at the Ganges side ; the play of the
children ; the faces, and the labours, of the cows !

But far more, on behalf of India herself, do we
netd artists, half poets and half draoaghtsmen, who
car wake in us the great new senses: -We want men
of ihe Indian Blood, who can portray for us the men
of :>ld, Bhishma and Yudhirasthira, Akbar and
Sher Shah, Pratap Singh and Chand Bibi in such
fashbn as to stir the blood. We want through these
to fed out, as a people, towards the new duties of the
time t> be- Not only to utter India $o the world, but
also, 10 voice India to herself, this is the mission of
art dhine mother of the ideal when it descends to
clothe tself in forms of realism.

At e<,ch step, then, the conquest must be twofold*
On this side something to be added to the world's
knowledge, and on- that, an utterance to be given for
the first tme, for India to herself. This is the battle
that opeis before the present generation. On our

184 SISTER NIVEDITA

fighting a good fight, the very existence, it may be,
of the next depends. Our national life is become,
perforce, a national assault. As yet the very outworks
of the besieged city are almost unstormed. Here-
with then let us sound the charge. Sons of the Indian
past, do ye fear to sleep at night-fall on your shields?
On, on, in the name of a new spirituality, to con-
mand the treasures of the modern world sack ! On, en,
soldiers of the Indian Motherland, seize ye the battle-
ments and penetrate to the citadel ! Place garrison
and watch within the hard-won towers, or fall, tlat
others may climb on your dead bodies, to the height
ye strove to win.

Ill

THE IDEAL

"Be what thou prayest to be made."
The adoption of the active or aggressive atitude
,of mind changes for us all our theories. Wf sight
now nothing but the goal. Means have Jecome
ends, ends means. The power to count the c)st and
hesitate, is gone for ever. We seek great objects and
created them, scorning small hopes. The Inda about
us has become "Maha Bharata," " Heroic India ".
The future offers wider chances of sacrificgthan the
past. We look to make our descendant greater
than our ancestors.

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 185

Words have changed their meanings. Karma is no
longer a destiny, but an opportunity. Do I behold
injustice ? Mine the right to prohibit oppression, and
I do it. Before the honest indignation of one fearless
man, the whole of Maya trembles and departs.
Destiny is passive before me. I triumph over it.
Strength is the power to take our own life, at its
most perfect, and break it, if need be, across the knee.
This strength is now ours, and with it we conquer
the earth. No one is so invincible as the man who
has not dreamt of defeat, because he has a world
beyond victory, to achieve.

Our desires have grown immeasurable. But they
are desires to give, not to receive. We would fain
win, that we may abandon to those behind us, and
pass on. For that which is dearer to us than self, we
long greatly to throw away our life, and this defeat-
ed sacrifice transforms all our work with energy. The
whole of life becomes the quest of death, 'those that
are close to us become associated with ourselves in
our risks and defiances. We learn to realise that in
this fact lies their beatitude. Buddha did not sacrifice
Yasodhara when he left her. He conferred on her
the glory of renouncing with him.

Or is it brahmacharyat This is not only for the
monk. Nor is it wholly of the body. " Abstinence/*
says one, u without a great purpose, is nothing. It
is only the loss of another power". But even

186 SISTEE NIVEDITA

brahmdcharya has to be made aggressive. Celibacy,
here, is only the passive side of a life that sees human
beings actively as minds and souls. Marriage itself
ought to be, in the first place, a friendship of the mind.
Exchange of thought and communion of struggle, is
far beyond the offering of comfort, and the one need
not exclude the other. The brahmacharya of the hero
makes marriage noble, for it seeks the good of another
as an end in itself. In true brahmacharya is involved
the education of women, for a radiant purity
comes to its perfect fruition in thought and know-
ledge, and assimilation of experience, and there
is a brahmacharya of the wife, as well as of the
nun.

In the life of tapasya is constant renewal of energy
and light. Every task becomes ealy to the worship-
per of Sarasvati. He spurns ease. Daily and hourly
does the impersonal triumph in him over the personal.
His ideal aspires upward, like a rising flame. Each
circle reveals fresh heights to be gained. The wife
shares in the ideals of her husband. She protects
them, as if they were her children, even against him-
self. She urges him on towards them, when, alone,
he might have flagged. She measures their common
glory by the degree of this realisation. Her woman-
hood is grave and tender, like some sacrament of the
' eternal. * Not this, not this,,' is the cry ever in the
ears of both. Counting happiness for self a little

AGGEESSIVE HINDUISM 187

thing, each gives it to the other, in seeking to bestow
it on the world around.

Sannyasit again, is a word charged with new signi-
ficance. It is not his gerrua cloth, but his selflessness,,
that makes a monk. There may be monks of science
and learning, monks of art and industry, monks of
the public life and service, and monks for the defence
of the defenceless. Great is the impulse of renuncia-
tion : greater is the sustained self-sacrifice of a heroic
life. In the soul ol the maha-purusha, it is difficult,
sometimes, to tell whether soldier or Sannyasi is pre-
dominant. He combines the daring of the one, with
the freedom of the other. Years leave no mark on
the aggressive life. It is as ready to cast itself down
from the palm-tree's height, in old age, as it was in
youth. Or more. For the spiritual will has grown
stronger with time. Nothing is measured by person-
al hope or fear. All is tested by the supreme pur-
pose, as making an end in itself. Self ceases to be a
possible motive. The hand once put to the plough*
it grows there, and the man would not know how
to turn back. The Sannyasin cannot be touched
by misery. For him defeat is merely a passing-
phase. Ultimate victory is inevitable. He is light-
hearted in failure, as in success.

Obedience to the Guru becomes eager fulfilment
*of an idea, and a seeking out of new ways in which
to bring about fulfilment. Every act of attainment

188 SISTER NIVBDITA

is now understood to be a spiritual achievement,
and there is no rest without the handing on of each
realisation, as to disciples. At the same time, the
standard of discipleship has grown inexorable. There
is no passing of the spurious coin as genuine. < The
aspirant must serve, because without much service
there is no germination of truth. He must worship,
because without loyalty there is no manhood. But
one stain of insincerity, one blemish of self-interest,
and the Guru must recognise though to do so be
like going maimed for life that this is not that
chela for whom all Gurus seek.

Love and hatred are now immense powers. Love,
when no longer personal, when all strength, becomes
rousing, invigorating, life-giving. Hatred is the
refusal to compromise. It cuts off meanness and
falsehood, root and branch. Love, now, finds unity
of intention behind everything that is sincere. Pride
is too proud to found itself on a lie. The man is
silent until he has first acted. Nor dare he boast
himself of the deeds of his ancestors or the achieve-
ments of his fellows. A fierce humility mingles
with all his ambition and tells him that praise from
unworthy lips is sacrilege.

And finally the life's purpose has become a con-
suming fire. The object is desired for its own
sake. Like Shivi-Rana, whose whole soul was set
on sacrifice, the left side weeps that to the right

AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 189

alone it is given to suffer. Like Myer the German
chemist, who had an eye and an arm torn bff in the
discovery of nitrogen compounds, the soul kneels in
the midst of agony, to give thanks in an ecstasy
that enough is still left to continue the search for
knowledge. The vibration, of the word "Work"
when uttered by such workmen, carries the thrill of
Jnana to other hearts.

Strong as the thunderbolt, austere as bramacharya
great-hearted and selfless, such should be that
Sannyasm who has taken the service of other as his
Sannyas, and not less than this should be the son of
a militant Hinduism. Indian Review,

THE TASK OF THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT
IN INDIA

YOUNG India is fascinated by the political spectacle
in European countries : fascinated, and also perhaps
hypnotised by it, She imagines, perhaps, that until
she can reproduce the bear-garden of opposite parties,
she has failed to emulate the vigour and energy of
Western patriotism. This, at least, is the only excuse
for that evil fashion which has made its appearance
amongst us, of mutual recrimination, and mutual
attack. Those who are fighting on different
parts of the self -same field are wasting time and
ammunition by turning their weapons on each other,
instead of on a common foe. The fact is, young
India has yet to realise that hers is not a movement
of partisan politics at all, but a national, that is to
say, a unanimous progression. There is no difference
of opinion on national questions, amongst honest
men, in India. Put Hindus and Mahomedans together
on a Legislative Council Have they not always to
be reckoned with as a single opinion? Who cares
the Brahmin eats, or whom he invites to his

NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN INDIA 191

dinner parties? Do he, and the Kayasth, or the
Vaidhya, or the Kshattriya, make opposite demands
on the University Senate ? As citizens, in the Muni-
cipality, is the good of one the good of the others, or
not ? It is wonderful how long dust can be thrown
in men's eyes, by talk that absolutely contradicts
facts. It is wonderful how far the hounds can be
drawn on a false scent. A large amount of misdirect-
ed activity and confused political thought arises in
India, from the mere fact that the political method
here is largely imitative, and is apt to imitate the
wrong things.

The one thing that strikes a first-time visitor to
the Congress, for instance, a visitor who goes with
a determination to ignore precdftceptions and judge
as far as possible from facts, is the extraordinary
agreement of all the members, from extreme right to
extreme left* An old man in this corner considers it
so ill-advised to make a certain pronouncement that
he will retire from the body if its enunciation be
insisted on. A youngster over there pooh-poohs this
over-caution, and challenges the old man to express
his disbelief in the principle asserted. As likely as
not, the young man is in the right. But these are
the disagreements, ye gods, over which young India,
looking on, is like to lash itself into a fury of vitu-
peration and despair ! It is clear to every outsider
meantime that there is here no stuff of difference.

192 SISTER NIVEDITA

whatsoever, and that, at such a computation the ship
of the national movement in India must be manned
by educated India, solid.

Thus the Congress represents, not a political, or
partisan movement, but the political side 6f a national
movement a very different thing. It is successful, not
In proportion at it sees its debates carry weight in
high quarters, not in proportion as its views are
officially adopted, but in proportion to the ability
and earnestness with which it conducts its own
deliberations, in proportion to the number which it
can call together and make efficient in political
methods, and in proportion to the information it can
disseminate throughout the country on questions of
national significant. If these fundamental facts be
once clearly understood, it will matter very little
thereafter what form the resolutions take in Con-
gress, matters very little about an act of politeness
more or less, or about the number of adjectives in a
given sentence. For it will be understood that the
real task of the Congress is that of an educational
body, educating its own members in that new mode
of thinking and feeling which constitutes a sens of
nationality ; educating them in the habit of prompt
and united action, of political trustiness of communal
open-eyedness ; educating itself, finally, in the know-
ledge of a mutual sympathy that embraces every
member of the vast household which dwells between

NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN INDIA 193

the Himalayas and Cape Comorin, between Manipur
and the Arabian Sea.

This implies, however, that the main body of the
army is not in the Congress, that the Congress as a
whole is merely one side, the political side, of an
incomparably vaster, though less definitely organised
host. And by the antithesis, not opposition, between
the efforts of the two; progression is secured. Thus,
corresponding to the Congress, the National Move-
ment must have another, and non-political limb, as
it were. But at the same time, it is clear that this
non-political must have greater difficulty than the
political element in defining to itself its own
ob]ective.

And yet a programme, not a rigid platform but a
suggestive immanation is almost a necessity to it.
What are the tasks that the National Movement has
to face and in what order ?

The task of all alike is one, the education of the
whole nation, in all its parts, in a common sentiment
of unity with each other and with their soiL But it
is a mistake to think that this education will in
every case come scholastically. Reading and writ-
ing will facilitate it, but it will not wait for the
schoolmaster. Already we have seen the women
expressing themselves through the Swadeshi tapasya.
In national and civic existence this cause has given
them a step onward and upward that will never be

13

194 SISTER NIVEDITA

retraced. But while the appeal made to them sym-
pathises so effectively by this cry of the Home-land,
when made to the people themselves the inarti-
culate, un-educated helpless masses it must be by
means of the industrial reconstruction which the
Swadeshi Vow has necessitated. Practice first, theory
afterwards. First, mutual love and loyalty, and
secondly, all that ideas, all that instruction can do to
give to that new-born consciousness of brotherhood,
intellectual depth and steadiness. What the National
Movement as a whole has to do them as to nationalise
and vocalise two great areas of moral force that are
at present nationally almost mute. These areas
consist of the women and the peasants. Let every
ten students in the City Colleges band themselves
together and take a vow to maintain one missionary
for this purpose. Let the missionary, travel with
the magic lantern, with collections of post cards,
with a map of India and with head and heart full of
ballads, stories, and geographical descriptions. Let
him gather together the women, let him gather
together the villagers, let him entertain them in the
gar4en, in the courtyard, in the verandahs, beside
the well, and under the village tree with stories and
songs and descriptions of India ! India ! India !

We love that which we think of, we think of that
which we know. First then we must build up a
clear conception, and afterwards love will come of

NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN INDIA 195

itself, ahd thus through the length and breadth of
our vast country will go the thrill of the great
thought " this and no other is our Motherland ! We
are Indians every one ? "

Here then we have one extreme of the task of
nationalisation, to be carried out by that immense
body of nation-makers to which every student and
every educated man and woman in India belong by
natural right. At the far end of this line are those
whose task it is to carry the national colours to
higher ground. Here are the original workers in
science, in history, in art, in letters, sworn to let
never a European pass them in this race for excel-
lence, vowed, whatever be their task, to conquer in
it or to die. The question which arises heire as to
the nature and duties of the pioneer intellect is quite
different from a similar question as applied to
workers of the second generation. The great majo-
rity of the nation-making generation bear to mission-
aries and architects of that consciousness the same
relation that the ordinary grihasta bears to the sadhu,
They cannot live that life themselves, yet by their
sympathy and silent support, they make the life a
possibility. It is important then, that these should
realise that the motto for the age is, " Mutual aid,
self-organisation, co-operation ! "

The Grihasta wants a little of the courage of the
martyr in vowing himself, not to a battle of the

196 SISTER NIVEDITA

spirit but to a determined worldly success. He wants
perhaps a little of the venom of the cobra in under-
taking and in financing national defence associa-
tions, farmers' aid organisations, co-operative credit
enterprises. But first and last and above all, he
needs to understand that it is by these movements,
these undertakings, these studies, that education will
actually be carried far and wide and that the move-
ment for Indian Nationality will gradually trans-
form itself into the Indian Nation. Mysore Review.

WHAT BOOKS TO READ

TO girls and boys alike, I would say : Revel in the
books that come from the childhood of the world.
Read your Mahabharata and Ramayanaif possible,
till you know pages of them by heart. Read trans-
lations of Homer and stories from him. Read the
Norse Heimskringla if you can get it, the German
Sagas, the Finnish Kalewala and even long-fellow's
Hiawatha. These are the foundation of literature for
humanity, and there is no law of psychology more
universally true, than that which tells us that the
individual in his development follows the race.

Three elements then there are in a completed cul-
ture of the modern kind, (a) an idea of the phases
through which the world has become what it is, that
is to say, the History of Humanity ; (6) an idea or
picture of the world itself as it actually is, that is to
say, Natural Science ; and (c) a clear notion of our
own part in the whole and this may be represented
at least for us who are gathered here as the
Study of India. The last represents our moral aim.
And we must remember that all the facts in the
world do not convey knowledge* We must remember

198 SISTER NIVEDITA

that the moral life is a man's fulcrum-point. We
must clearly understand that without a strong and
noble purpose in life learning or knowledge of books
is mere useless pedantrv, and not an ornament to a
man.

Now, when we have once got a clear hold of these
principles of reading, the question of what books to
'read becomes very easy indeed. By any means that
offer themselves, by hook or crook, arrive at some
mental picture of the Past of Humanity. Read any-
thing and everything that will help you to this end.
But do not cease to remember the end itself. Visit
museums. Find out all you can about pictures and
sculptures. Make a mind-picture of every country in
turn. Work hard till you know something about
ancient Egypt, about Assyria, about China, about
Greece. Read translations of Homer, that you may feel
the life of that old Mediterranean World, whose heart
he uttered, that world of which " Ethiopia," wherever
that was, Phoenicia, Egypt, Carthage, even ancient
Ireland, all formed part. Seek for new expressions of
these eras. If you lived in London, I would beg you
to go to the British Museum and read the Book of the
Dead and thus know more of the inwardness of
Egypt than all the books in the world about it could
tell you. But read the stories of the nations if you
will, in order to see what to read* Read all Scott's
novels. Read Dante but only when you have

WHAT BOOKS TO BEAD 199

grown curious regarding him. Read the old romances
of mediaeval Europe but read also Don Quixote and
think it out. Read the French chronicles of the
Crusades and historical novels and solid history.
Neglect none of these. But with all your reading,
do not forget to dream. Cultivate intellectual long-
ing ; refrain from intellectual surfeit. Only by re-
verence towards our own questions, only by listening
to our own hearts, can we arrive at any great thing
in the world of knowledge. There are few things
that bring greater delight to myself than the Index
to Gippon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
and always as I read it, I remember that day in 1764
when he sat dreaming amongst the Roman ruins,
listening to the chanting of vespers by Christian
monks in what had been a pagan temple, and when
there suddenly came before his mirxd's eye the vision
of the whole world's history for fifteen hundred
years, as centring in this spot where he sat and he
conceived the idea of writing the story of Rome
Rome no longer civic, but planetary in her signifi-
cance, the focus-point of Europe, Asia and Africa. It
is this of which the Index to the History gives one
the key this vastness of intellectual panorama, this
concentrated intensity of love. And then as one
turns here and there, to the pages of the -wjork itself,
as one fe'els the peculiar combination of insight and
blindness in this mind, one asks in wonder how was

200 SISTER NIVEDITA

such a feeling for a city born in a man's heart ? One
is tempted to account for Gibbon by the beautiful
Eeastern myth of reincarnation, and to fancy the
immortal work as the crown and blossom of many
lifetimes spent in loving and studying "Rome. Twenty-
five years it took Gibbon to complete that vision of
an evening in 1764, twenty-five years of incessant
labour and tireless reading. But how to form the
key to twenty-five years of work ? Have we any
such dreamers here this evening? Are there any
lives amongst us waiting like pent-up floods to pour
themselves out in sustained devotion, the instant
some word or some touch shall pierce the barricade
of rocks and let the light play in them air a single
point ?

But the idea of humanity, half geographic, half
historic forms only part of the longing of the
modern mind There is another longing, which is
quite as real. The longing to survey nature and
account for her the craving for science.

And hare there are, two impulses, the impulse of
synthesis and the impulse of specialism. By the
impulse of synthesis mankind at large is given a
clear idea of the broad outlines of the labours of
scientific workers. Certain immortal books of the
last 150 years sum up most of this necessary picture
for us. The " Origin of Species" for instance, is so
necessary to the ordinary educated man that with

WHAT BOOKS TO READ 201

all its details it has come very close to being a po-
pular book. Sir Charles Lyall on Geology: Hux-
ley and Tyndall in popularising Biology and Physics ;
La Place on Astronomy ; Herbert Spencer on Socio-
logy; Ruskin on Crystals, your own Bose on the
relation of organic and inorganic, all these are
amongst the historic writers on scientific subjects, who
present, through the toil of the specialist, something
that the whole world can understand. Perhaps all
but the very latest, however, will be gradually sup-
planted in the eyes and ears of generations not their
own, by articles "in encyclopaedias and by thorough
education in the principles of the sciences themselves.
Yet remember, these books of science stand for
critical moments in the history of culture. They
utter that passion for common things which is also
expressed in the novels of George Eliot, in the'poethy
of Wordsworth, in the utterances of Walt Whit-
man, and which is, as I believe, potential to an
extraordinary degree in the Indian people. With
books that deal with pre-historic man, the realm of
science merges into the realm of humanity. Lubbock,
Tylor, Cloud, Spencer and a hundred others, furnish
us here with the conceptions we seek. They are
conceptions which are specially necessary to the
Indian consciousness. For no true history of India
can ever be written by a man who does not under-
stand something of the common conceptions of

202 SISTER NIVEDITA

science regarding pre-historic races and societies.
That history will have to begin with chapters that
will enable us to rightly regard and take into our
nationality warmly, the little elder brothers of the
forests* and the hills, the Bhils and Santhals and
Uriyas. And it will have to go on to survey that
great early and contemporary history of Asia, to
which India actually belongs. And only lastly will
it be free to take up the question of the origin and
making of India herself. We come at last then to
what is perhaps the most essential element in all our
regarding, the Study of India. Here there are a
thousand directions in which we may specialise.
We may study India with a view to understanding
races, or minerals, or agriculture or industry, or
history, or literature or philosophy, or any one of an
infinite number of subjects, but from one thing we
have to emancipate ourselves and that is, from the
idea that very much is yet known on the subject.
We have to study the origin of the reports which
reach us rather than those reports themselves. Those
reports are, for the most part mere resumes turned
out with political intention and mechanical life-*
lessness, and no true history was ever written in that
way. The histories written by generals and residents
between 1750 and 1850 are, indeed, of value. Price,
Skrine, Chalrners, Cunningham, even Grant Diaff,
and Elphinstone wrote history of a very different

WHAT BOOKS TO BEAD 203

order from that which is common in the cram books
of the present day. But high above all others, even
of this period, ranks one book. Todd's Annals of
Rajasthan, which has been the source of national
ideas to Indian readers ever since literacy became
general, ought now to be known by heart by every
Indian boy and girl in the vernacular. Translation
of Persian memoirs, district reports and archgeo-
logical surveys, all these constitute sources of history
rather than history itself, and to the study of these
I would commend you. If there 'is one English
book which is more valuable than another for the
student or would-be writers of Indian history, it is
Fergusson's History of Indian Architecture. For
when we study cities and buildings you must re-
member that we are face to face with facts : when
we read books we may be absorbing ourselves in
speculations. About the age of a building we can
be sure from the testimony of our senses. And the
date of a battle is vastly less important.

I have left no time for speaking of books of the
personal life, favourite books of which everyone
must have some. For we HVB the life of literature
much in the fashion of a journey. We determine
our starting-point, our goal and our route, but of
what fellow-travellers we shall meet or overtake,
what decision we shall make, or what events or
scenes we shall specially note by the way of all this.

204 SISTER NIVEDITA

we know nothing. It is as God or Destiny shall
will. Amongst personal books then, all of you, I
trust, would place the Gita and some no doubt would
count the Bible or Koran. Many would place the
Imitation Christ and I, for my own part, include
Church's translation in the Golden Treasury Series
of The Trial and Death of Socrates, and Maeterlinck's
Life of the Bee. They are two books out of different
world the very worlds of humanity and Nature of
which we have been talking at some length, and
with a couple of extracts from these I propose to end
my talk. Maeterlinck's book is a study of Nature
and, at the same time, a prophecy for Humanity.
Listen then to a few sentences :

"Where is the fatality here, save in the love of
the race of to-day for the race of to-morrow ? This
fatality exists in the human species also, but its
extent and power seem infinitely less. Among men
it never gives rise to sacrifices as great, as unani-
mous, or as complete. What for seeing fatality
taking the place of this one do we ourselves obey?
We know not, as we know not the being, who
watches us, as we watch the bees." Extract from
a lecture delivered at Calcutta in opening the Chai-
tanya Library.

THE NATIONAL IDEA

THE dominating fact in human destiny is Place.
We are just what our share of Mother Earth has
made us. We see what she shows. We know
ultimately only what she tells. Mystic, sacra-
mental, all compelling is the bond that knits
together man and soil.

This influence of place on humanity works itself
in two directions at the same time those of labour
and of thought. That daily life and toil are the
products purely of the region in which a people
dwell is jnot indeed difficult to see. The task of
Sicilian vine-dressers is conditioned by the volcanic
soil of their island. The work of the Cossack herds-
man is a consequence of the vast treeless plains over
which he roams. These are facts that no one could
dispute. But it is less easy to see, and yet equally
true, that the moral and intellectual life of a com-
munity is also the outcome of the report which his
senses make to man regarding all that lies within
that circular horizon of which he is himself the
centre. Christianity, for instance, is what it is

206 SISTER NIVEDITA

to-day, because, three thousand years before Christ,
the Desert of the Sahara abutted on the valley of the
Nile. For, like the marriage of Humanity with
Earth is, in its turn, the union of spiritual and
material in the life of man. Thought is wedded
eternally to work. The ideal rises out of the deed,
and fresh deeds are born again of the new ideal.

Stick facts as these make of every country geogra-
phically distinct, the cradle of a nation. Neither race,
language, nor religion can divide essentially those who
are made one by the supreme organic condition of
Place. Even the human element of family and
society, comes second only in the list of evolutionary
influences. But all these, we must remember, are
like ourselves, or like the whole of the community to
which we belong, themselves the product of the
birthland. Their spiritual influence upon us is the
result of her spiritual influences upon them, even as
the food that they gave us in our babyhood is the
result of the toil that she made possible to them.

It is the nation, rather than the individual, that
derives from the land its characteristics, even as
others are sealed by other regions with another
impress. It is with the products of the national
energy, products of field and canal, of road and
town, that she is Jgarbed. To her calm wisdom, to
her serene maturity, the quarrels of sects and partiep
do not

THE NATIONAL IDEA 207

This law is fundamental and imperative, that the
enrichment of the land itself be the whole object of
the wealth that is drawn from it, and for him who
disobeys there waits the doom of the outraged soil.

The geographical area is thus the first and incom-
parably the most important condition of national
unity, and a common economic experience makes
that unity complete. When a common hunger is fed
by common harvests ; when common death is meted
out by common famines ; when a single wail is heard
in the terror of rains withheld ; when need is one,
and h,ope is one, when fear is one, and love is one,
how are men to dream long that there are barriers
dividing them? Those whom truth joins, how are
human hypnotisms to divide ?

Nations like individuals, find self-expression. The
characteristic arts and architecture of a people are at
bottom the direct outcome of their worship of place.
The work-life and the thought-life have united to
form the priceless mela of great cities, and these in
their turn reveal to the world the national ideal of
beauty, the national taste. Again the community
that will be fed must lay out its pastures, preserve
its forests, and carry out works of irrigation and
tillage ; and every clod of earth that is turned up,
every branch that is pruned, utters the peasant's love
|nd hope. Thus man inherits the earth and remakes
it. The map of a country ought to suggest to us the

208 SISTER NIVEDITA

untiring energy of that great corporate individuality
by which, it has been brought into being. The work
of communities lies in technical processes. By
coalescence of industrial communities, we obtain im-
provements and new applications of processes. Thus,
in s\nn, we arrive at geotechnics, the science of
earth-making. Half, mother of the folk she sustains
and feeds : half, offspring herself of the racial energy
the Home-land ! the Home-land ! The mystic com-
rade of man ! Indian World.

THE UNDERLYING UNITY OF INDIAN LIFE

India, encircled as she is by seas and mountains, is
indisputably a geographical unit, and, as such, is
rightly designated by one name. Her type of
civilization, too, has many features which differ-
entiate it from that of all other regions of the world,
while they are common to the whole country, or
rather continent, in a degree sufficient to justify its
treatment as a unit in the history of human, social,
and intellectual development Vincent A. Smith,
M. A., (Dubl.) M. R A, 8., F. R N. 8., I. 0. 8.,
(Retired) in his Early History of India, p. 5 (second
edition, 1908).

The diversity of social phenomena in India is a
fact visible on the surface. But the ground-work on
which that diversity is traced the underlying uni-
formity of life from the Himalayas to Cape Como-
rin is often lost sight of. The unity of Indian life,
however, is not confined to those points which it
shares in common with the rest of the world* All
its infinite variety hangs on a common thread of a
somewhat distinctive Indian colour. It is the failure
to grasp this elementary fact that leads to so much
heart-burning, jealousy, and antagonism among the
different sections of the Indian population. Where
they do co-operate, they find that there is much in
their ideas that is harmonious, if not identical But
the power of labels and shibboleths, is strong itt
eastern countries and can only be reihoved by a

14

210 SISTER NIVEDITA

careful study of the ideas that lie, in substance,
behind differing names and institutions. Nor has
the point escaped those Europeans who (like Mr.
Vincent Smith) have an intimate practical acquaint-
ance with life and thought in Modern India.
Abdulla Yusuf-AJi, M. A., L. L. M. f (Cantab.), L C. S. f
Bar-at-Law, in his Life and Labour of the People of
India, pages 305310 (1907).

BEHIND and within the unity of humanity, there
is a stratification of man which is to the full as
interesting as the tale of the formation of the sedi-
mentary rocks. To the full as interesting, but not,
hitherto, so clearly visualized. Race over race,
civilization over civilization, epoch upon epoch, the
molten tides of immigration have flowed, tended to
commingle, and finally superposed themselves. And
systems of thought and manners have grown, by the
Accreting of the burdens of one wave to those of
another, and their blending into a whole, under the
action of the genius of place. Behind ancient
Egypt, how long an historical spelling-out of ele-
ments there must have been ! What a protracted
process of adding race-syllable to race-syllable took
place, before that brilliant complexus first emerged
upon the human mind ! Yet there was such a being
as an Ancient-Egyptian, recognizable as a specific
human unit, in contradistinction to his contemporary,
the Phoenician, the Cretan, or the Babylonian. Or
the same possibility may be seen in our own day in

UNITY OF INDIAN LIFE 211

the fact that there is such a being as a Modern-
American, diverse in his origins beyond any type
that has ever heretofore appeared, and yet marked
by certain common characteristics which distinguish
him, in all his sub-divisions, from the English, the
Russian, the Italian, who contributed to form him.

These miracles 'of human unification are the work
of PLACE. Man only begins by making his home.
His home ends by remaking him. Amongst all the
circumstances that go to create that heritage which
is to be the opportunity of a people, there is none so
determining, so welding, so shaping in its influence,
as the factor of the land to which their children shall
be native. Spiritually, man is the son of God, but
materially, he is the nursling of Earth. Not without
reason do we call ourselves children of the soil. The
Nile was the mother of the Egyptian. The shores of
the Mediterranean made the Phoenician what he
was. The Babylonian was the product of river-plain
and delta. And the Bengalee is literally the sou of
Mother-Ganges.

In every case, however, this unity induced by
place is multiplied, as it were, by the potentialities
of confluent race-elements. Man learns from man.
It is only" with infinite difficulty, by striving to re-
apply our powers in terms of the higher ideals of
some new circle, to which we have been admitted,
that we raise the deeds of the future above

212 SISTER NTVEDITA

attainment of the past. Water rises easily enough
to the level once reached. How much force must be
expended to carry it above this ! The treaty success-
fully imposed on the world by some great statesman,
serves only to remind his school-fellows of his old-
time triumphs in playing-field or class-room. Many
a brilliant general has been known to study his battles
with the aid of tin soldiers. The future merely
repeats the past, in new combinations, and in relation
to changed problems.

Tlius we arrive at the fundamental laws of nation-
birth. Any country which is geographically distinct,
has the power to become the cradle of a nationality.
National unity is dependent upon place. The rank of
a nation in humanity is determined by tlie complexity
and potentiality of its component parts What any
one of its elements has achieved in the past the nation
may expect to attain as a whole, in the future.
Complexity of elements, when duly subordinated to the
nationalising influence of place, is a source of
strength, and not weakness to a nation.

India, at the present moment, in the throes of the
passage from Mediaeval to Modern, out of a theo-
cratic into the National formation, affords an
excellent field for the study of these laws, Many
observers aware that the Indian people to-day
are proposing to themselves this transition see
nothing before them but disappointment and defeat.

UNITY OF INDIAN LIFE

" What," say they of this school, " Honeycombed as
India is by diversity of languages ; ridden by the
weight of customs that are alike in no two pro-
vinces ; with a population drawn from races black,
yellow, and white, and clinging with ]ealous persis-
tence to the distinctive individuality of each element ;
filled with types as different from one another as
the Punjabee and the Bengalee ; divided at best
into two, by the cleavage between Mahommedan
and Hindu, to talk of unity, in this seething variety,
is the merest folly ! The idea of an Indian National-
ity is simple moonshine ! " Such opinions are, in fact,
held by most Europeans who have t visited or resided
in India: they are combined, moreover, with a
genuine contempt for all who differ from them. Yet
they may not be the only conclusions possible upon
the facts, and it is generally granted that sentence
is not well pronounced till both sides of a case have
been heard.

The question arises then, is there any unity of life
and type perceptible amongst the Indian people,
which might sooner or later serve as the foundation
for a realised Indian Nationality ? It is perhaps true
that the Bengalee is the Irishman of India ; the
Mahratta, the Scot, the Panjabee, Welshman or
Highlander, as we choose to name him ; but is there
anything common to all these, and to others, that
relates them to one another, as the central fact of

214 SISTER NIVEDITA

Britonhood relates their Western counterparts ? On
the existence or non-existence of such community of
life and type must depend the ultimate reasonable-
ness of Indian National aspirations.

The first treasure of a nation, geographical dis-
tinctness, India undeniably possesses, in an extra-
ordinary degree. Around her feet the sapphire seas,
with snow-clad mountain-heights behind her head,
she sits enthroned. And the races that inhabit the
area thus shut it, stand out, as sharply defined as
herself, against the Mongolians of the North-East,
and the Semites of the North-West. Within this
land, Aryan ideals and concepts dominate those of
all other elements. There is a self -organization of
thought that precedes external organization, and the
accumulation of characteristics in a single line, which
this brings about, is what we mean by racial types.
In India, the distinctive stock of ideas rises out of
her early pre-occupation with great truths. Neither
Jain nor Mahommedan admits the authority of the
Vedas or the Upanishads, but both are affected by
the culture derived from them. Both are marked,
as strongly as the Hindu, by a high development of
domestic affection, by a delicate range of social
observation and criticism and by the conscious admis-
sion that the whole of life is to be subordinated to
the ethical struggle between inclination and con-
science. In other words all the people of India show

UNITY OF INDIAN LIFE 215

the result of education, under theocratic systems, for
the concern of churches is ever primarily with the
heart. When Egypt was building her Pyramids,
India was putting a parallel energy into the memo-
rising of the Vedas, and the patient elaboration of
the philosophy of the Upanishads. The culture be-
gun so early, has proceeded to the present day
without a break, holding its own on its own ground
and saturating Indian society with standards of
thought and feeling, far in advance of those common
in other countries. A profound emotional development
and refinement is the most marked trait of Indian
personality, and it is common to all the races and
creeds of that vast sub-continent, from those of the
highest civilization to those of the lowest and most
primitive.

Again, the key-stone of the arch' of family
devotion, alike for Hindu and Mahommedan, lies in
the feeling of the son for his mother. Whatever
may change or fluctuate, here our feet are on a rock*
There can be no variation in the tenderness nd
intensity of this relationship. In it, personal affecv
tion rises to the height of religious passion, Itis
this fact at Eastern life that gives its depth to cut
symbol of Madonnahood the child as the refuge
and glory of woman, the mother giving ' sanctity
and security to life. Very closely connected, bwt
not identical with this, is the organic *part played

216 SISTER NIVEDITA

in the life of the Eastern household by the aged. A
gentle raillery, a tender gaiety, is the link between
them and members in the prime of life. This is one
of the most beautiful features of communal civiliza-
tion, that the old are an essential factor in the
family. There is here none of the dislocation of
life that so often results, with us, Europeans, from
the loneliness and informity of elderly persons.
Their wisdom forms one of the most valued of the
common assets, even while their playfulness ranks
them with the children, and the burden of attendance
is easily shared amongst the many younger women.
India, with her memory of great leisure, is not
easily vulgarised by the strenuous ideals that make
a man feel himself useless, amongst us when his
working days are over. She knows that only with
the ending of activity can the most precious fruits
of experience come to ripeness. Cooks and black-
smiths may need the strength of youth, but states-
men and bishops are best made at sixty.

We have few classes in Calcutta who seem to us
so rough and worthless as our ghari-wallahs or cab-
drivers. They are Mahommedans for the most part,
who have left their families in the country, and
they are not noticeable, as a type, for self-restraint
or steadiness of conduct. Yet it was one of these
whom I met one day at the corner of my own lane,
carefully, with an expression of ineffable gentleness,

UNITY OF INDIAN LIFE 217

guiding an old Hindu woman through a dangerous
crush of vehicles ! He had ]umped from his box, at
sight of the blind and stumbling feebleness, and left
his ghari in charge of its small footman, or syce. It
was the Prophet of Arabia who said, " He who
kisses the feet of his mother attains to Paradise."
In devotion to the mother, and in chivalry for old
age, Mahommedan and Hindu, high and low, in
India, are absolutely at one. It is a mistake to
suppose that even the religious demarcation between
Hinduism and Islam has the bitterness that divides,
for instance, Geneva from Rome. Sufi-ism, with its
roll of saints and martyrs, contributes to Mahom-
medanism a phase of development which matches
Hinduism in its highest forms. The apostles of
either faith are recognizable by the other. The real
divergence between the two religions lies rather
in the body of associated customs, than in doctrines,
which are not philosophically incomprehensible.

The Mahommedan derives his customs from
Arabia, and from a period in which the merging
of many tribes in a national unity was the great
need : the Hindu bases his habits on his own past,
and on the necessity of preserving a higher civiliza-
tion from modification by lower. In other words,
the difference between the two deals rather with
matters of household and oratory, woman and the
priesthood, than with thos'e interests out of which

218 SISTER NIVEDITA

the lives of men, and activities, civic and national,
are built. This fact is immediately seen wherever
either faith is sovereign. Many of the highest and
most trusted officers of a Hindu ruler will be
Mahommedans, and, to take a special instance, I
may say that I have nowhere heard such loyalty
expressed for the Nizam of Hyderabad, as by Hindu
members of his Government. In the region north
of Benares, again, where Mahommedanism has been
tranquil and undisturbed for hundreds of years,
there is something very near to social fusion between
the two. A significant indication of this lies in the
names given to boys, which are often like Ram
Baksh, for example compounded of roots Sanskritic
and Arabic !

With the exception of the word magnetism, there
is probably no single term so vaguely used as Caste.
Taking this, however, as referring to a series of
social groups, .each thoroughly marked off from all
others, and united within itself by equality of rank,
custom, and occupation, we shall quickly see that
this institution is capable of proving rather favour-
able than the reverse to solidarity of the public life.
All over India to-day, as of old in Babylon or
Thebes,* or Periclean Athens, the communal inter-
course of streets and river-sides stands out in bold
contrast against the cloister-like privacy of the home.
This is partly due to climate, and partly to the

UNITY OF INDIAN LIFE 219

persistence, in this one country, of conceptions and
associations which appear to us as classical. In
this communal unity, there is no demand for social
uniformity. Such matters, concerning only the
intimate personal life, are relegated to the sphere
of the family and the care of woman and priests.
Caste is no concern of the school, the bathing-ghat,
or the town. On this side, indeed, the word con-
notes little more than a rigid form of good-breeding.
It defines the ground on which no outsider may
intrude. To 'regard it as a barrier toco-operation
would be about as relevant as to view in a similar
light the fact th&t we may not ask a European
woman her age. How absurd would be the state-
ment that this rule of etiquette was any obstacle to
united action ! Granted that in eating and wiving a
man consorts with his own, he may do what he
chooses, and , go where he will, in all other concerns
of his life. Each caste is, in effect, to its own
members, as a school of self -government ; and
the whole institution provides an excellent frame-
work for labour-organizations, and other forms of
socio-political activity. These facts, indeed, are so
obvious to the eye that views them with the neces-
sary breadth, that it is difficult to see how any other
impression ever gained currency.

Many persons use the word unity in a way that
would seem to imply that the unity of a

SISTER NIVEDITA

with its monotonous repetition of segments and
limbs, was more perfect than that of the human
body, which is not even alike on its right and left
sides. For my own part, I cannot help thinking
that the scientific advance of the nineteenth century
has enabled us to think with more complexity than
this. I cannot forget a French working man, calling
himself a Positivist, who came up to me some years
ago, in a university-settlement in the West, and
said, " Have the people of India any further proof to
offer of the oneness of Humanity, beyond the fact
that if I hurt you I hurt myself, and the other fact
that no two of us are exactly alike ? " And then, see-
ing perhaps a look of surprise, he added thought-
fully, " for the fact that we are all different is, in its
way, a proof of our unity ! " The conception thus
indicated, I have come to think an exalted one. My
friend spoke of the organic, as (distinguished from a
merely mechanical unity, and for myself I find an
overwhelming aspect of Indian unity in the fact
that no single member or province repeats the func-
tion of any other.

Against the great common background of highly
developed feeling, the Bengalee stands out with his
suavity and humour; the Mahratta exhibits his
grimness and tenacity. The one may glory in his
imagination, the other in his strength of will. The
Panjabee has the faultless courage, and also something

UNITY OF INDIAN LIFE 221

of the child-likeness, of a military race. The
Dravidian has the gravity and decorum of one
whose dwelling is in the shadow of a church. The
Mahommedan, wherever we meet him, stands un-
matched for his courtesy and grandeur of bearing.
And everyone of these, we must remember, responds
to the same main elemental motives. With all
alike, love of home, pride of race, idealism of
woman, is a passion. With every one, devotion to
India as India finds some characteristic expression.
To the Hindu of all provinces, his Motherland is the
seat of holiness, the chosen home of righteousness,
the land of seven sacred rivers, " the place to which
sooner or later must come all souls in the quest of
God.'* To the son of Islam, her earth is the dust of
his saints. She is the seal upon his greatest
memories. Her villages are his home. In her future
lies his hope. In both, the nationalising conscious-
ness is fresh and unexhausted. That which Asoka
was, seated, two hundred and fifty years before
Christ, on the great throne of Pataliputra what
Akbar was, at Delhi, eighf een centuries later that,
in the sense of national responsibility, every Indian
man must become to-morrow* For this is the age,
not of thrones, but of democracies ; not of empires,
but of nationalities; and the India that faces the
sunrise of nations, is young and strong. Thfc
Hindustan Review,

THE FUTURE EDUCATION OF THE
INDIAN WOMAN

HEBE in India, the woman of the future haunts us*
Her beauty rises on our vision perpetually. Her
voice cries out on us. Until we have made ready a
place for her, until we throw wide the portals of our
life, and go out, and take her by the hand to bring
her in, the Mother-land Herself stands veiled and
ineffective, with eyes lost, in set patience, on the
Earth. It is essential, for the joyous revealing of
1;hat great Mother, that she be first surrounded by the
mighty circle of these, Her daughters, the Indian
women of the days to come. It is they who must
consecrate themselves before Her, touching Her feet
with their proud heads, and vowing, to her their
own, their Husbands', and their children's lives.
Then and then only will she stand crowned before
the world. Her sanctuary to-day is full of shadows.
But when the womanhood of India can perform the
great arati of nationality, that temple shall be all
light, nay, the dawn verily shall be near at hand.
From end to end of India, all who understand are
agreed that the education of our women must needs,

FUTUKE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN 223

at this crisis, undergo some revision. Without their
aid and co-operation none of the tasks of the present
can be finally accomplished. The problems of the
day are woman's as well as man's. And how idle
were it to boast that our hearts are given to the
Mother, unless we seek to enshrine Her in every one
of our lives.

Indian hesitation, however, about a new type of
feminine education, has always been due to a mis-
giving as to its actual aims, and in this the people
have surely been wise. Have the Hindu women of
the past ben a source of shame to us, that we should
hasten to discard their old-time grace and sweetness,
their gentleness and piety, their tolerance and child-
like depth , of love and pity, in favour of the first
crude product of Western information and social
aggressiveness ? On this point India speaks with no
uncertain voice. " Granted," she says in effect,
*' that a more arduous range of mental equipment is
now required by women, it is nevertheless better to
fail in the acquisition of this, than to fail in the more
essential demand, made by the old type of training^
on character. An education of the brain that up-
rooted humility and took away tenderness, would be
mo true education at alL These virtues may find
different forms of expression in mediaeval and modern
civilisations, but they are necessary in both. All
education worth having must first devote itself to the

224 SISTfiE NIVEDITA

developing and consolidating of character, and only
secondarily concern itself with intellectual accom-
plishment."

The question that has to be solved for Indian-
women, therefore is a form of education that might
attain this end, of developing the faculties of soul
and mind in harmony with one another. Once such
a form shall be successfully thought out and its
adequacy demonstrated, we shall, without further
ado, have an era amongst us of Woman's Education,
Each successful experiment will be the signal for a
circle of new attempts. Already there, is longing
enough abroad to serve the cause of woman. All
that we ask is to be shown the way.

Important to education as is the question of method,
it is still only subordinate to -that of purpose. It is
our fundamental motive that tells in the development
we attempt to give our children- It is therefore the
more urgently necessary that in the training of girls
we should have a clearly-understood ideal towards
which to work. And in this particular respect, there
is perhaps no other country in the world so fortunate-
ly placed as India. She is, above all others, the land
of great women. Wherever we turn, whether to
history or literature, we are met on every hand by
those figures whose strength she mothered and re-
cognised, while she ke^ps their memory eternally
sacred-

FUTURE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN 225

What is the type of woman we most admire ? Is she
strong, resourceful, inspired, fit for moment of crisis ?
Have we not Padmini of Cheetore, Chand Bibi,
Mansi Rani ? Is she saintly, a poet, and a mystic ?
Is there not Meera Bai ? Is she the queen, great
in administration? Where is Ram Bhowani, where
Ahalya Bai, where Sanhabi of Pipperah? Is it
wifehood m which we deem that woman shines
brightest? What of Sati, of Savitri, of the ever-
glorious Sita ? Is it in maidenhood ? There is Uma.
And where in all the womanhood of the world, shall
be found another as grand as Gandhari ?

These ideals moreover are constructive. That is
to say, it is not their fame and glory that the Indian
child is trained to contemplate. It is their holiness,
simplicity, sincerity, in a word, their character.
This, indeed, is always a difference between one's
own and, an alien ideal. Impressed by the first, it
is an effort that we seek to imitate : admiring the
second, we endeavour to arrive at its results. There
can never be any sound education of the Indian
^woman, which does not begin and end in exaltation
of the, national ideals of womanhood, as embodied,
in her own* history arxd heroic literature.

But woman must undoubtedly be made efficient.

Sita and Savitri were great in wifehood, only as the

fruit of that antecedent fact, that they were great

women. There was no place in life that they did

IB

SISTER NIVEDITA

not fill graciously and dutifully. Both satisfied
every demand of the social ideal. At once queen
and housewife, saint and citizen, - submissive
wife and solitary nun, as heroic combatant, both
were equal to all the parts permitted them, in the
drama* of their time. Perfect wives as they were, if
they had never been married at all, they must have
been perfect just the same, as daughters, sisters, and
disciples. This efficiency to all the circumstances of
life, this womanhood before wifehood, and humanity
before womanhood, is something at which the edu-
cation of the girl must aim in every age.

But the moral ideal of the India of to-day has
taken on new dimensions the national and civic.
Here also woman must be trained to play her part.
And again, by struggling towards these she will be
educated. Every age has its own intellectual syn-
thesis, which must be apprehended, before the ideal
of that age can be attained. The numberless path-
ways of definite mental concept, by which the
orthodox Hindu woman must go to self -fulfilment,
form, to the western mind a veritable labyrinth. So
far from being really uneducated, or non-educated,
indeed, as is so commonly assumed, the conser-
vative Hindu * woman has received an education
which in its own way is highly specialised, only
it is not a type recognised as of value by modern
peoples.

FUTURE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN

Similarly, in order to achieve the ideal of efficiency
for the exigencies of the twentieth century, a charac-
teristic synthesis has to be acquired. It is no longer
merely the spiritual or emotional content of a state-
ment that has to be conveyed to the learner, as in the
mythologico-social culture of the past. The student
must now seek to understand the limitations of the
statement, its relation to cognate ideas and the steps
by which the race has come to this particular
formulation. The modern synthesis, in other words,
is scientific, geographical, and historical, and these
three modes of knowing must needs since there is
no sex in truth be achieved by woman as by man.

Science, history and geography, are thus as three
dimensions in which the mind of the present age
moves, and from which it seeks to envisage all ideas.
Thus the conception of nationality on which Indian
efforts to-day converge must be realised by us, in
the first place, as a result of the study of the history
of our own nation, with all its divergent elements of
custom, race, language, and the rest. The civic
sense, in the same way, must be reached by a study
of our oWn cities, their positions, and the history of
their changes from age to age.

Again, the nation must be seen, not only in rela-
tion ,to its own past, and its own place, tut also,
in relation to other nations. Here we come upon
the necessity for geographical knowledge. Agaito,

228 SISTER NIVEDITA

history must be viewed geographically and geography
historically. A great part of the glory and dignity
of the ideally modern woman lies in her knowledge
that her house is but a tent pitched for a night on
the star-lit world-plane, that each hour, as it passes,
is but a drop from an infinite stream, flowing through
her hand, to be used as she will, for benediction or
for sorrow, and then to flow on irresistibly again.
And behind such an attitude of mind, lies a severe
intellectual discipline. But even the proportion
which the personal moment bears to space and time,
is not formula enough for the modern spirit. This
demands, in addition, that we learn what is to it the
meaning of the truth, or science, the fact in itself.
This particular conception of truth is perhaps no
more absolute than others current in other ages, but
it is characteristic of the r times, and by those who
have to pass the world's test, it has to be understood.
Yet even this marked truth, thus thirsted after, has
to be held as only a fragment of an infinitely
extended idea, in which Evolution and Classification
of the sciences play the parts of history and
'geography.

Nature, the Earth, and Time, are thus the three
symbols by whose means the modern mind attains to
possession of itself. No perfect means of using them
educationally has ever been discovered or devised by
man* The spirit of each individual is the scene of^a

'FUTUBE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN 229

struggle for their better realisation. Every school-
room embodies an attempt to communalise the same
endeavour* Those who would transmit the modern
idea to the Indian woman, must begin where they can,
and learn, from their own struggles, how better to
achieve. In the end, the idea once caught, the Indian
^oman herself will educate Indian women mean-
while every means that offers ought to be taken.
The wandering Bhagabats or Kothuk, with the magic
lantern, may popularise geography, by showing
slides illustrative of the various pilgrimages. History
outside the Mahabharata and Ramayana might be
familiarised in the same way. And there is no
reason wh;y simple lectures on hygiene, samitation,
and the plants and animals of the environment
should not also be given by the wandering teachers
to the assembled community, with its women behind
the screens. Pictures, pictures, pictures, these are
the first of instruments in trying to concretise ideas,
pictures^and the Mother-tongue. If we would impart
a love of country, we must give a country to love.
How shall women be enthusiastic about something
they cannot imagine ?

Schools large and small, schools in the home and
out of it, schools elementary and advanced, all these
are an essential part of any working out of the
great problem. But these schools must be within
Indian life, not antagonistic to it. The mind set

230 SISTER NIVEDITA

between two opposing worlds of schools and home,
is inevitably destroyed. The highest ambitipn of
the school must be to give moral support to the
ideals taught in the home, and the home to those
imparted in the school the densest ignorance would
be better for our women than any departure from
this particular canon.

In making the school as much an essential of the
girl's life, as it has always been of the boys, we
are establishing something which is never to be
undone. Every generation as it comes will have to
carry out the great task of the next generation's
schooling. This is one of the constant and normal
functions of human society. But much in the pro-
blem of Woftian's Education as we to-day see it, is a
difficulty of the time only. We have to carry our
country through an arduous transition. Once the
main content of the modern consciousness finds its
way into the Indian vernaculars, the problem will
have disappeared, for we learn more ffom our
Mother -tongue itself, than from all our schools and
schoolmasters. In order to bring about that great,
day, however, the Mother Herself calls for vows and
service of a vast spiritual knighthood* Hundreds of
youngmen are necessary, to league themselves
.together for the deepening of education in the best
ways amongst women. Most students, perhaps^
might be able to vow twelve lessons in a year to, be

FUTURE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN ,231

given, either in home or village, during the holidays
this should hardly prove an exhausting under-
taking yet how much might be done by it.

Others might be willing to give themselves to the
task of building up the vernacular literatures. The
book and the magazine penetrate into recesses where
the teacher's foot never yet trod. The library, or the
book-shelf, is a mute university. How are women to
understand Indian history, if, in order to read about
Buddha or Asoka, about Chandragupta or Akbar, they
have first to learn a foreign language? Great will
be the glory of those hereafter who hide their ambi-
tion for the present, in the task of conveying modern
knowledge in the tongues of women and the people !

Seeing ihat this first generation of pioneer work
must, needs be done mainly by men, on behalf of
women, there are some who would scoff at the pos-
sibility of such generosity and devotion. But those
who know the Indian people deeply cannot consent
to this sneer. Life in India is socially sound. Civi-
lization is organic, spiritual, altruistic. When the
practice of sutee was to be abolished, it was done on
the initiative s of an Indian man, Ram Mohun Rojk
When monogamy was to be emphasised as ihe one
ideal of marriage, it was again from a man, Vidya-
sagar of Bengal, that the impulse came. In the
East, it is not by selfish agitation, from within, that
great reforms and extensions of privilege are brought

232 SISTER NIVEDITA

about. It is by spontaneous effort, by gracious con-
ferring of right from the other side. Or if indeed
woman feel the pinch of some sharp necessity, some
ill to be righted, is she not mother of man as well as
of woman ? Can she not whisper to her son, in his
childhood, of the task to which she assigns him ?
And shall she not thus forge a weapon more power-
ful than any her own weak hands could weild?
Such a woman was the mother of Pandit Iswar
Chandra Vidyasagar and such was the inspiration
that made him the woman's champion.

But one word there is to be said, of warning and
direction to that young priesthood of learning, to
whom this generation entrusts the problem we
have been considering. Education can never be
carried out by criticism or discouragement. Only he
who sees the noblest thing in the taught can be an
effective teacher. Only by the greatness of Indian
life can we give a sense of the greatness of the
world outside India. Only by the love o'f our own
people can we learn the love of humanity and only
by a profound belief in the future of the Indian
woman, can any man be made worthy to help in
bringing that future about. Let the preacher of the
New Learning be consecrated to the vision of one
who resumes into herself the greatness of the whole
Indian past. Let him hope and most earnestly pray
that in this our time, in all our villages, we are to

FUTUBE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN 233

see women great even as G-andhari, faithful and
brave as Savitri, holy and full of tenderness as Sita.
Let the past be as wings unto the feet of the future.
Let all that has been be as steps leading us up the
mountain of what is yet to be. Let every Indian
woman incarnate for us the whole spirit of the
Mother and the culture and protection of the Home-
land. Bhwna Devi \ Goddess of the Homestead !
Bande Mataram ! Ceylon National Review.

APPENDIX
APPRECIATIONS OF SISTER NIVEDITA

BY MBS. J. C. BOSE

IT is just thirteen years that a young English woman
a picture of health and vigourwith a face beam-
ing with enthusiasm, called on me. She explained
that her object was to serve our women not as one
from outside but as one from within, and that she
must therefore live their life, and be one of them. I
could not help telling her of my misgivings know-
ing full well the almost insurmountable barrier that
stood in her way.
It was not till a much later date, when I had been

blessed with her friendship, that I came to know the

n *

strength that lay behind the life of Margaret
E. Noble. How manifold were the blessings she
conferred on all who came in contact with her and
in how many directions she has effectively served
our motherland, it is too early yet to speak- I can

SISTER NIVEDITA 235

only give a few glimpses of that beautiful life which
has so deeply impressed me.

It was no accident that had shaped her life. Her
father, an eloquent English clergyman of great
promise, had ungrudgingly sacrificed his young life
in the service of the poor in Manchester. A, great
love existed between the father and the child. A
friend of his, a preacher in India, had come on a
visit. Being 'struck with the spiritual earnestness of
the child's face, he had given her his blessings and
said that one day the claim of India would touch
her. This seemed prophetic of what was to come.
Her father, too, before his death had told her young
mother that he knew that one day a great call would
come for the child and that the mother should then
stand by her. Thus it was that she was consecrated,
so that when the call did come, though the mother's
heart was full of anguish at the thought of parting,
the memory of her dead husband strengthened her.
Henceforth India, the object of her daughter's
devotion, became hers too ; and Indians always
found a touch of home in her house at Wimbledon.

The child gradually developed rare intellectual
power. Even Huxley had been struck *by her
Intellect. In time, she became the centre of a great
educational movement, an outcome of which was the
famous J3esaine Club. At the very time when there
were' opened before her great possibilities in London

236 SISTER NIVEDITA

for her splendid intellectual gifts, the call of India
reached her. Swami Vivekananda was at that time
preaching in London, and in response to this message
of the East, she offered her lifelong services and
immediately left for India.

A few months after the interview in which I could
hold out very little hopes for her success in her educa-
tional efforts among our orthodox sisters, I was
invited to her little house in Bosepara Lane. I was
astonished. She had accomplished the impossible.
Having secured a house in the midst of orthodox
surroundings, at first no Hindu servant would serve
her; but she went without any help rather than
wound the feelings of her neighbours. Many a day
passed when there could be no cooking, and she lived
on fruits and on what some kindly neighbour would
send her. After a time however the people about
came to regard her as their own in so far that even
the most orthodox and saintly women felt happy to
live in the house as her guest.

It is a wonderful story how little by little she
completely won the heart of the * people by her
p&tient love. At first the children of the neighbour-
hood came. This led to the establishment of a
kindergarten school. Their mothers were not to be
left behind ; they too were drawn in and*a separate
class for grown-up women came to be started.
Orphans and widows found in her a sympathetic heart

SISTER NTVEDITA 237

always ready to succour, arid they were taken in to
be trained by her as teachers. In this way " The
House of the Sisters " was established in the heart
of the orthodox community. Her work in India
became so widely recognized that some of the greatest
men both of Europe and America came to see her and
went back inspired with a great love for the country
which she had adopted as her own.

It was through her own writings, and the help of
one in the West who came to regard her as her own
daughter, that she maintained the house and the
school. Those living in the neighbourhood know
how by far the large portion of her income was used
by her to help the needy and feed the starving, even
depriving herself 6f many necessities.

Her civic training soon found scope in keeping the
Lane and its neighbourhood a picture of cleanliness.
This was not easy, but she showed the way by sweep-
ing the Lane with her own hand. It was about this
time the plague broke out for the first time in
Calcutta, Many will remember the wild panic that
seized the people. Trains and steamers were crowded
with fleeing people. When the terror was at jte
climax, Margaret Noble was active in her errands of
mercy. She organized a band of young men, with
whose help she cleaned the most insanitary spots in
the northern part of the town. She personally under-
took the task of nursing plague patients, coritact with.

238 SISTER NIVEDITA

whom was almost certain death. One little plague-
stricken child, of humble parentage lay in her lap
dying and clasped its little hands round her, taking
her for its mother.

It was this protecting motherhood that was so
characteristic of her life. I remember how on one
occasion, she gave her own warm cloak to her
servant while she herself shivered with cold thinking
that the poor servant's need was greater than hers.
This is but a single instance of her depriving herself
for others. She could never get accustomed to the
privations and suffering of the people around her,
and this was an abiding sorrow with her.

During her first voyage to India, there was on
board the steamer a young Englishman whom his
parents must have found a difficult problem at home
and so had packed him off to India. He was intem-
perate and had made himself very obnoxious at
table. While everyone else was annoyed at him
and avoided him, her heart was touched with great
sorrow and she trembled at the terrible fate that
awaited him, cut off as he was from the influences
aqd the restraints of home. She found occasion to
see him, w and to give him the only valuable thing she
possessed a gold watch, the birthday gift from her
mother. She told him that he was on no account to
pawn it but to keep it as a memento of those who
belieyed In his being able to build up his life* A year

SISTER NIVED1TA 239

ago a most touching letter came from the mother of
this boy, telling her how her son had been helped
through her to choose a new life and had remem-
bered her even when he lay dying in South Africa.

All the strength of that mother heart that would
protect was now centred in India. The hardships
she had to face, however, soon broke down her health
and she lay a long time hovering between life and
death. After her recovery she was specially warned
by her doctor never again to endanger her health by
overwork.

The news of the famine in East Bengal now
reached her. For her there could be no quiet or
peaceful life when there was suffering in the land.
She would go. And for may days she visited village
after village in Barisal wading through flooded and
sub-merged lands. The terrible picture she saw she
delineated afterwards in her " Famine and Flood in
East Bengal." But that was long afterwards. The
swamps she had passed through, the strain she had
undergone, resulted in her being attacked by a severe
type of malaria. The sufferings of the fever
ever were as nothing compared with the living
again of that anguish she had witnessed. It was
,fter a long time that she recovered sufficiently to
resume her work, but she was never fulljpFree from
its effects. Her dear friend in the West and medical
friends here urged the absolute necessity of moviag

240 SISTER NIVEDITA

to a healthier part of the town, but she would be
true to that spot which had first given her shelter.
" The Lane has adopted me and I must stay here
and nowhere else." The little ones she had seen
toddling about in the lane had grown up about her
and they were her children. Many a struggling one
had come to her here whose lives she had ennobled.
It was not for her to choose but be true to that trust
that had come to her.

I am writing about her only as a woman, as I knew
her in everyday life, full of austerity, and possessed
with a longing for righteousness which shone round
her like a pure flame. Others will know her as the
great moral and intellectual force which had come to
us in a time of great national need. Never have I
known such complete self-effacement. I have seen the
greatest thinkers in England, France, America, re-
ligious leaders, social workers, politicians and
scholars filled with admiration and reverence for her
clear vision and keen intellect and noble personality.
All the rare gifts that opened out a great career for
her in the West, she laid at the service of our
motherland. Not that she loved England less but
she believed that England could only remain great
through righteousness. She had so completely
identifiedftaerself with us that I never heard her use
phrases like " Indian need " or ** Indian Women,"
It was always Our need, Our Women. She was

SISTER NIVEDITA 241

never as an outsider who came to help, but one of
us who was striving and groping about to find ways
of salvation.

Little more remains to be said. She had been en-
gaged in completing two great works of India which
she had been commissioned to do by two eminent
publishers in London and New York. Along with
it she had been carrying out the exacting duties of
her school. All these told on her health and it was
thought that a change to the bracing climate of
Darjiling might restore her.

Years ago in a foreign land she had nursed me
back to health ; my opportunity had now come. We
were full of hope but she knew that it was ordained
otherwise. There was to be no sadness. Every
morning bright smile and brave words greeted us*
She spoke only about the beloved work of her lif fe
education of " our " women and how it was to be
continued. All she had, all that might come from
her books, everything was for the service of the
motherland.

All her life she had selflessly devoted herself to
work, but in these last days it seemed to her that
she had not effaced herself enough- Some one had
onee spoken of her dominant personality. This
must have come to her mind and she prayed that
she might now be taken away so that there would
be rQom for others to grow.

16

242 SISTER NIVEDITA

A few days before she came to Darjiling she'had
printed to send to her friends a daily prayer for the
world which she had rendered into English from
ancient Buddhism. Perhaps she knew that it was a
word of final farewell from one whose life had been
a constant prayer for freedom. She asked that this
might be recited to her :

Let all things that breathe, without enemies, with-
out obstacles, overcoming sorrow, and attaining cheer-
fulness move forward freely, each in his own path 1

In the East and in the West, in the North, and in
the South, let all beings that are without enemies,
without obstacles, overcoming sorrow, and attaining
cheerfulness, move forward freely, each in his own
path 1

To her the worst bondage was ignorance and her
face shone with radiance as she recited

From the Unreal lead us to the Real !

From Darkness lead us unto Light !

From Death lead us to Immortality!

Reach us through and through ourselves.

And evermore protect us, O Thou Terrible ! from

ignorance
By Thy sweet compassionate Face.

The days had been full of cloud and mist, but
tfiere was a little parting of the clouds on the morn-
ing of he 13th October. She spoke of the frail boat
that was sinking, but also that she was yet to ^ee
the sunrise. The sun had just risen over the snows
when a shaft of light came streaming in and the

SISTER NIVEDITA 243

great striving soul went forth to wake up in another
Dawn.

As I sat by her bedside the story that she herself
had told of Uma Haimavati came vividly before me.
This was the very season when she came to her
Father's Home. Here, too, was another Uma, the
fair daughter of the snows, who had after' a long
parting come back once more to her Indian home.
Had she to wait for this incarnation to know and be
with her own ? Or is it that in our Father's Mansion
there is no such thing as North or South, East or
West ? Modern Review.

II

BY MB. J. F. ALEXANDER
In Memoriam

The elements of nation-building that makes the
new epoch or reinstil the national consciousness
embody themselves in personalities; and tliese, in
their time, can only be partly known or the meaning
of their lives understood. Only in the distance do
they loom upon the national horizon and then'pnly
can we see them in their true relations* Their

244 SISTER FIVEDITA

characters personify the national spirit in its effort
to express itself and the ideals and ideas that parti-
cularise it from other nations.

In closely studying a national character we see, as
it were, a composite of innumerable photographs of
the personality of the nation, reflecting and
experiencing in one soul the struggle of the myriads
that make it. The national character is, of itself, as
its life shows and its message reveals, impersonal,
because of the multiple personality it synthesises
within itself, and because of the uplifting it purposes
to bring about for the masses whose cause and
thought it represents.

In a national character is witnessed the tempest
of the nation for self-expression. At the time, it
may be that even the nation does not understand
but it eventually comes to know, as history attests,
and with that knowledge is born, with irresistible
vigour, the national consciousness.

The India of To-day is a New-India, because with

us have been national characters whose effort and

*

whose realisation have made a great national self-
ponsciousness which has spread over and been par-
taken gf by the Indian world, as a whole.

There have been several such characters within our
midst of commanding influence. With the heart throb-
bings of their purpose the pulse of the nation itself
was quickened ; aye, and into the passing from

SISTER NIVEDITA 245

mortal view of such souls, it stops, for the time, the
spirit of the land plunging into that grief and sense
of loss, out of the anguish of which heroes are born.

In such a condition of thought and feeling, India
finds itself with the passing away of the Sister
Nivedita of Rk.-V., who expired at Darjiling on
October the thirteenth.

She stands out in bold relief against the back-
ground of the national mind, a great personality
carved by the unconscious desire of the people into
their own image and likeness and into the living
representation of their life and ideals. She con-
sciously voiced the silent want and the voiceless need
of millions and she uttered unto them that message
which all the powers of her soul, even at the sacrifice
of her own self, formulated as the national conscious-
ness.

There has not been in the making of the modern
Indian mind a personality with such a capacity for
understanding its problems and with such inexhaust-
ible energy in the direction of work. Day in and
day out for more than fourteen years, she had made
her spirit one with that of the land, penetrating into
every nook and crevice of the Indian experience for
evidences of its greatness as fewest have ever done,
searching for the powers and the self -recreating spirit
of India. The result and the realisation is the idea and
the coinage of the term, the national consciousness.

246 SISTER NIVEDITA

Strange beyond measure is her life and place in
India, because, coming from a distant land, she had
been able, through a process which probably she
herself did not fully understand, to reshape every-
thing she previously was in spite of the fact that
her personality was intense and take rebirth into
the Indian consciousness, becoming a patriot among
patriots and a messenger among messengers to the
Indian peoples.

Studying the mission of the Sister Nivedita, one
becomes aware of her life, not so much as of a single
personality, as of the development, struggle and
expression of a complex and representative mind,
whose occupation was the moulding of the highest f
intellectual illumination into channels of important
usefulness.

Before coming to India, she had cherished dreams
of a new method in education, and of a work which
should enlarge the scope of learning from mere in-
struction to a real awakening of mind. She had
hoped much, and, it was her aspiration that woman-
kind would enter new paths of life and develop the
highest individualism of which it was capable. The
newest moods of thought that occupied the leading
minds of Europe were hers, and with a clear con-
ception of a purpose of life, she turned the currents
of her personal energy into founding and upholding
the standard and the principles of a higher education

SISTER NIVEDITA 247

and also of a new and expansive individualism for
woman.

With this she was busily engaged when destiny
put her into the path of Hinduism. In the fall of
1895 the Swami Vivekananda, coming from his great
success in preaching the Gospel of Hinduism in
America, sojourned for sometime in London. The
Sister Nivedita or as she was then known, Miss
Margaet E. Noble was of that circle upon whom
the Swami made a living and lasting impression.

The full import of that impression, however, she
herself did not become aware of, as she admits, until
her coming to India. She had accepted the philo-
sophy of the Hindus, as defined by the Swami, and
even in those early days of her discipleship of
Hinduism was foreshadowed that particular under-
standing she later became fully possessed of and
revealed, namely, that in India religion and society
are one, that the national righteousness is equal to
the righteousness that religion proposes the Highest
Expression and the Highest Individualism of
Man.

She saw that behind all human struggle and ex-
pression and underlying all forms of human aspira-
tion, whether in the sciences, or in religion, as a
special form, was the Indomitable Determination of
Man to reveal Himself and to find and express that
Freedom of His Own Nature from the bondages and

248 SISTER NIVEDITA

blunders to which his undeveloped consciousness
is heir.

" All this is One, she once remarked in this rela-
tion in one of her unusual moments of insight and this
which with some is only a self -satisfactory doctrine
of metaphysics grew with every hour of her career
as a motto and an inspiration for work in the con-
crete. She drew the bars of an iron determination
to understand and serve across the personal con-
tentment and peace she might have gained had she
sought solitude and like a " sannyasini," lived her
life in contemplation on purely religious matters.

That settled happiness she intentionally renounced.
" .Emotion should only serve to colour thought," she
insisted and so we find her speaking little of her
personal feeling about the religion and land of her
adoption, while on the other hand we s'ee her pour-
ing her understanding of the needs and of the spirit
of India, which she had gathered after much in-
tellectual toil and pain, as molten gold into the
forms and materials of a living nationalism.

Patriotism with her was religion, and " jnana " to
her was that understanding of the land which
would inflame the individual to self-sacrifice and
spirited endeavour for the masses. She had realised
the urgent need of maintaining, in their purity and
vigour, those characteristic ideals which make up
the body of Indian society, as well as its religion*

SISTER NIYEDITA 249

Therefore, she maintained that only in so far as
India had perfect freedom of national expression
could she keep in her vision, as a constant presence^
the company of ideals which specialise her among
the nations of the world.

Therefore, she insistently demanded that freedom
at every turn and for that reason she formulated,
announced and lived and died for the religion of the
national righteousness.

A survey of her life and work in India is likewise a
survey of all the growth which the spirit of India has
made during its present epoch-making period. Her
thought had concerned itself with every form of the
national awakening, Of ma$y forms she was, in-
deed, the fountain-head and inspiration. It was she
who took up the cause of the future of Indian
Womanhood. Translating all her thought for the
education, of womanhood in the land of her birth to
the service of woman in this land, she opened and
maintained a school for girls in the very heart of
orthodox Calcutta.

This was the most cherished of all her purposes. It
was a passionate desire on her part and it inspire^
her to go through many hardships and live the.ascetic
life of the Hindu Brahmacharini. The school was the
temple of her work and of her hopes. It was the
sanctuary of the truth she perceived and uttered
concerning India. Here her life was spent among

250 SISTER NIVEDITA

the women and the people, identified with their
interests and their life.

Wonderful, by itself, was that life she lived, even
as a person a life of such constant renunciation that
it would have told severely and in a short time upon
one less gifted with the capacity for living in a world
of deepest thought and unflinching purpose, Her
life was a flame of intellectual and personal austerity.

"Utterly oblivious of physical surroundings she lived
as she was, a giant force of mind concerned with itself
and accustomed to find companionship and peace, in
its own activity, unawares, as it were, of the body.
With her, life was a constant meditation upon the
problems of India, broken only by the demands made
upon her time and thought and service.

Those whose fortune it was to know her, founcl
themselves, when she spoke on those subjects she had
nearest her will, transported into a world where
ideals are realities and thought, a living power,
Her's was an illuminated intellect. Her penetration
into the world of ideas and intentions was such that
what was previously in the mind only an intellectual
Consciousness of some truth became, under the radi-
ance pf her thought, an illumination and actual
insight.

Her conversation itself was literature, but both the
literature of her speech and the literature of her
thought were the outcome of years and years of

SISTER NIYEDITA 251

effort. " Work ! Work ! Work ! " was her motto.
She had no time for theorists or sentimentalists. She
dealt with living forms and detested idle speculations.
Her ideal of perfection was in work that required
effort without regard to time or personal sacrifice.
"The man who built the Taj Mahal", she said,
" knew, also, how to build a hut perfectly. Every
perfect thing is a form of 'samadhi', or spiritual
illumination." Such a perception of work she
brought to the task of nation-making in this land.

Like a blast of a trumpet to action was her
message to the pioneers of Indian art, literature and
civic life. Through her severe criticism of following
foreign ideas in art and literature or life she turned
the tide of tendency in these respects and awakened
an original and national purpose that has since
become instinct. Everywhere she found new mean-
ings in old customs and great learning in old
traditions and saw that running as a string through
a necklace of pearls was the synthesis of the Indian
consciousness amid a seemingly hopeless variety of
history and culture. She saw that every event,
circumstance and condition that has served to moujd
the Indian mind in its historical experience is in-
separably blended with every other and therefore
she proclaimed on all occasions the historic and
social oneness of the Mother-Heart, the Mother-
Mind, the Mother-Church.

252 SISTER NIVEDITA

In quest of learning and understanding for the
larger quest to serve, she traversed the length and
breadth of India, here and there to secure a connect-
ing link in Indian art or history or to tap the deeper
levels of Indian life or come into relation with the
spiritual purport of the people. Everywhere she left
the impression of a soul whose life was an onrush of
sincerity, overwhelming power and vigorous effort
in the redeeming of a national self-respect and of a
national oneness. She preached these things through
her literature and through her personality. Mascu-
line-minded and masculine in will she brooked no
meddling with or distorting of her convictions.
Whatever convictions she had and they were many
were the outcome of an earnest search and of a
sincere intellect. She had nothing to gain and
much to lose from some of the positions she took,
but once her will was set it was immoveable.

With her passes one of those few who have made
Hinduism masculine and aggressive. She believed
in a Hindu self-consciousness that should make
active the potential powers of the people. She hoped
tor an India united in civic purposes, with the
aspiration to solve its own problems according to the
understanding of an enlightened people, and to
march boldly in the vanguard of the nations, justly
realising the inestimable contribution it has made to
the expeiience and civilisation of man.

SISTER NIVEDITA 253

Her life affords the vision of a great soul, struggl-
ing amidst adverse conditions to express the truth
it had so clearly seen and to reflect in the thought
of the nation the illumination it has seen concerning
it. She was the apostle of a gospel which will at no
distant time be the dharma of a new national life ;
for a life such as hers cannot be lived in vain.

Somewhere sometime it will burst as an effulg-
ence upon the blindness that covers our eyes and we
shall see what now we cannot see, but what she
saw, and we shall hear to what now we are deaf but
which she heard and we shall have entered a condi-
, tion of realisation for which we hope but which now
passes our understanding. Even now before the
dawn of that day we are sensing the message of
which she has been the seer and prophet, and when
that day dawns it will be on an India over which
the Sister Nivedita lingered in thought and in love.
Modern Review.

Ill
BY MR. A. J. F. BLAIR

How can one begin to describe her ? As a woman,
a friend or an enthusiast ? As a passionate votaress
of beauty in art, in literature or in .life? As a

254 SISTER NIVEDITA

religious mystic, or a political missionary of the fiery
cross ? As an orator whose voice was like a trumpet
with a silver sound, or a writer able to charm new
and noble cadences from the English tongue ? As an
interpreter between the West and the East, or a
vehement champion of the East in all its aspects
against the West ? As the earnest advocate of all
that is best in the modern women's movement, or
herself the proud and spotless sum of womanhood ?

It will perhaps be best to deal simply with a sub-
ject so vast as this transcendent personality. I go
back then, to the Christmas afternoon in Calcutta
nearly ten years ago, when I came face to face with
Sister Nivedita for the first time. Long previously
I had known her by reputation as a gifted " crank "
a well-born English woman who preferred an as-
cetic life in a lane of Northern Calcutta to the com-
forts and luxuries of her Western home. That was
how most English people thought of her that and
nothing more. True I knew a little more about her.
I had read some of the things she had written. I
knew that she had stirred up the lethargic north of
Calcutta to cleanse itself and so diminish its sus-
ceptibility to plague. I was prepared therefore to
find her something out of the common.

I saw a tall, robust woman in the very prime of
life* Her face in repose was almost plain. The
cheeck bones were high and the jaws were square*

SISTER NIVEDITA 255

The face at the first glance expressed energy and
determination, but you would hardly have looked at
it again but for the forehead and the eyes. The
eyes were a calm, deep blue, and literally lit up the
whole countenance. The forehead was broad rather
than high, and was surmounted by a semi-Indian
sari, fastened to the abundant brown hair. In ani-
mation the face and its expression were transfigured,
in sympathy with the rich, musical voice.

I was surprised at her appearance, and analysing
the reasons for this afterwards discovered that I had
expected her to be dark. Enthusiasts are often dark.

We met at a friendly tea table, and as I was the
only other guest Sister Nivedita addressed herself
directly to me. Our hosts knew what was coming,
and chuckled quietly in their sleeves. I did not, and
proceeded to indulge unsuspectingly in the amiable
banalities which do duty for conversation at nine
hundred and ninety -nine tea tables out of a
thousand. The host and hostess, I am sorry to say,
maliciously led me on.

The tranquil enjoyment of the situation ended
with startling abruptness. Sister Nivedita suddenly^
whipped out a metaphorical rapier, and was under
my guard before I could utter a gasp. I* felt it
to be a cowardly .attack, and looked appealingly
at mine host for protection. But his unfeeling*
griri conveyed the coldly comforting assurance that

256 SISTER NIVEDJTA

I was about to be carved up into small sections, and
that he and his wife were preparing to survey the
operation with the keenest enjoyment.

Faint, and bleeding internally from my cruel and
unexpected wound, I next appealed " ad misericor-
diam " to my assailant. But she was inexorable,
and followed up her first advantage so remorselessly
bhat in five minutes I gave up the ghost. It was a
rude awakening, if the metaphor is not too mixed. I
thought her, an angel until she slew me. But I saw
that she could be an angel without mercy.

As for me the encounter roused the devil within
me, I forgot that she was a woman, and thirsted for
revenge. Rendered careless by her easy victory she
presently gave me an opening of which I took
advantage in her own pitiless fashion. She admitted
that I was only paying her back in her own coin,
and we became friends from that moment. That as
a matter of fact, was the motive of her sudden
onslaught.

Friendship with Nivedita was not a slow growth.
It sprang to maturity at the first meeting, or not at
all; and I do not know that any one -was ever
privileged to know the depths of her womanly kind-
ness without first being subjected to that mortal test-
To be admitted to her friendship was to establish
a claim upon an inexhaustible gold mine. She gave
herself without reserve. She lived for her friends

SISTER NIVEDITA 257

and her work. For them she would pour out all her
wondrous eloquence, and her vast and curious know-
ledge, she would travel any distance and would
incur any labour and anxiety. Whatever she did,
she did with all her might and she never did any-
thing for herself.

To her friends she would open her heart without
the smallest reserve. She talked even more freely
than she wrote and her conversation, rich spontane-
ous, clear cut as a judicial utterance, threw new
light upon art, literature and even science, and
revealed her bold and fiery aspirations after Indian
nationality.

If this was not her religion it was certainly a large
part of it. She threw herself into the politics of
Bengal at a critical time, and it would be difficult to
exaggerate her influence upon the national move-
ment. That influence was, of course, vehemently, nay
fanatically anti-British. She had both Scottish and
Irish blood, and she hated the English with all the
sentimental fervour which was commoner than it is
both in Ireland and Scotland. With true feminine
obstinacy, she refused to look upon the bright side of
British rule in India. She modified her views a year
or two ago, but at the critical period I am speaking
of she was firmly convinced that the British Eaj was
purely parasitic, ajid that India could not hope to
recover herself until the noxious growth bad been

17

258 SISTER NIVEDITA

torn, more or less violently, away. Nor did she
shrink from the consequences of her theories. She
looked on bloodshed with the mind of Krishna in the
" Bhagavad-Gita." That is a mild way of indicating
how she could talk although no kinder hearted
woman ever breathed.

She came to see afterwards, I think, that violence
is no remedy for the state of India or for anything
else. But ten years ago she was full of the revolu-
tionary ideas which have since obtained so lurid an
advertisement all over Asia. And as she was far too
honest, to keep them to herself and as her influence
over young Bengal was greater than most people
have ever suspected, she probably did more to create
an atmosphere of unrest than all the newspapers in
the world.

I myself heard her deliver a lecture in the Town
Hall of Calcutta six or seven years ago, for which
she would assuredly have been deported a few years
later, its very title was seditious. And yet the plat-
form from which she spoke was crowded with
Europeans, while the body of the hall was a dense
mass of young Bengalis, who listened to her as
though she were inspired, , The address itself was in
oratoriar " tour de force/' Dynamic Religion " was
the theme in other words ** patriotism " and for an
hour and a half Nivedita held the vast audience spell
bound* >he spoke without notes in her strong

SISTER NIVEDITA 259

melodious voice, and the upshot of it all was u No
more words words words. Let us have deeds
deeds deeds." The seed then sown fructified earlier,
perhaps than she herself expected.

Her best friends twitted her with being unpracti-
cal. Of course she was. They say her " Web of
Indian Life " presents us with a pictui'e idealized dut
of all relation to the facts. So much the worse for
the facts ! And so much the more wonderful that a
Western genius should have pierced beyond the
" flashy screen " to the exquisite ideals which lay
behind. She is also charged with seeing India
through a roseate haze. Indians themselves, we are
told .fail to recognize their country as it is reflected
in her magic glass. With all respect I submit that
I this proves nothing. The sympathetic stranger may
often see things to which familiarity has blinded
the children of the land. It is true that she was
a reactionary as well as a revolutionary. The
inconsistency of the two positions did not trouble
her in the slightest. As time went on the revolution-
ary element grew weaker and the reactionary
element ^grew stronger a not uncommon process f
development.

Of all the eccentricities for which she stood blame-
able in European e^es the most outstanding was the
perverseuess with which she eschewed European
society, and lived " aP Indienne " in Bqsepara Lane,

260 SISTER NIVEDITA

Bagh Bazaar. The reason was simply that she had
undertaken an educational work for which that was
the most convenient centre. Herein she was practi-
cal enough. For the rest her spiritual nature found
sustenance in the elaborate symbolism of the Hindus
which was denied to less eager and less refined
aspirants. 'Of her inner life it would not become us
to speak. All that we can say is that it sustained
and glorified her, leading her on with ever living
zeal to fresh discoveries of beauty and harmony at
every turn in her pilgrimage. It clothed her with
the armour, of the Happy Warrior.

" Whose high endeavours are in inward light That
makes the path before him always bright."

To those who loved her it is difficult to realize that
this vivid, brave and gifted personality has vanished
from our sphere. But one feels that there must have
been something triumphant even about her death.
That is all we can hope to know at present !

BY Novalies IN THE 'TRIBUNE,' LAHORE

Out of the silence of months I emerge to pay a
tribute of memory to one who has just crossed the
borderland and passed on to the beyond from whence
comes neither whisper ftor message to the land of

SISTER NIVEDITA 261

the living. Margaret Noble Sister Nivedita is
dead and her work has been accomplished. When it
comes to be put together that work may not amount
to much because the time vouchsafed unto her was so
short and she had perhaps no premonition of the angel-
wings that had been beating about hei: summoning her

silently to where her Master had gone before her.
# * # *

The qualities that she brought to bear on the work
she did, deserve to be remembered for seldom did a
truer or more generous nature throw in its lot with
a cause so hopeless as that pf India and with so
much enthusiasm and hopefulness. One Anglo-
Indian paper has called her love for India * a cr&ze '
and that is how other people will call it, for how
many of them can fathom the depth of her nature
or the passion that burned in her as a holy flame ? To
the shallow critic and the causal observer she was

only a crank gifted beyond doubt but only a crank.

# # * *

It is not for me however t6 attempt an appre-
ciation of her work in this place. Mine as I have
said is a tribute of memory, recalling her as I knew
her in life. I saw her many times and talked with
her for hours at a stretch and I shall here relate only
incidents of actual happening, things and words as
they may recur to the memory.

262 SISTER NIVEDITA

It was at Srinagar, Kashmir, that I first met her.
I was living in a house-boat close to a donga occupied
by Swarm Vivekananda and we used to pass much
of our time together. Our boats were moored close
to the guest-house of the Maharaja. Some way up
the river beyond the Residency was a boat in which
there were three lady disciples of Swami Viveka-
nanda, Nivedita being one of them. One morning
as I came back from a stroll I stepped into Viveka-
nanda's boat and found the three ladies there and
introductions followed. Nivedita looked quite young
and handsome. She had a full figure and a, high
colour and though her eyes were very bright and
vivacious she did not appear like a bluestocking or a
very intellectual woman. But first appeai*ances are

frequently deceptive.

* # * , #-

The Jhelum was flowing rippling below the keel of
the boat. A cool, fresh morning breeze stirred the
water into little wavelets flecked with fleeting foam.
Over away in the distance towered Takht Sulernan
with the pillar on the top. On the bank were poplars
amd chinars and apple and pear trees laden with
fruit. And so, half observant and half obvious of
the glorious nature outside, we fell into animated
conversation. Sister Nivedita had a musical voice
and spoke with the earnestness of an enthusiast. She
wanted information on a hundred subjects. Swami

SISTER NIVEDITA 263

Vivekananda pointed his finger towards me and
smiled, "Yes, yes, peck his brains. He will give
you all the information you want." When leaving,
one of the elderly ladies asked me to come and have

tea with them the following afternoon.

#- * # #

After they had gone Swami Vivekananda told me
a great deal about Sister Nivedita her great accom-
plishments and range of knowledge, her passionate
devotion to -India. Then he told a little story. They
had just returned from Amarnath, the famous shrine
among the snows. Vivekananda had walked with the
other pilgrims. As a young ascetic he had tramped
over the greater part of India. Sister Nivedita had a
dandy. When they had proceeded only a few stages she
noticed an old woman among the pilgrims and saw
that she was walking painfully and laboriously with
the help of a stick. Nivedita promptly got out of her
dandy ; put the old woman in it and walked all the
way out and back from the shrine. When I asked her
afterwards about it she said, she had two blankets,

slept on the ground andhad never felt better in her lif e*
* & * ,#

But I never saw her in Srinagar again, t received
A letter which necessitated my immediate return to
Lahore and I left the next morning asking Swami
Vivekananda to make my excuses at the te^ party.

264 SISTER NIVEDITA

A few days later I met her at Lahore. She was
staying with the other two ladies at Nedou's hotel
and we met almost every day. Sometimes we would
keep on talking till late at night, one of the oth<er
ladies quietly sitting by and listening to the be-
wildering range of our conversation. There was
hardly a thing relating to India that we did not
discuss. She frequently praised the judicial balance
of the cultured Indian mind and the passionlessness
of its outlook. Everything about her was sincere,
frank and pure while her unaffected modesty was as
charming as it was admirable. And I saw that she
was a woman with an extraordinary intellect, of
extensive and accurate reading. She was intensely
impulsive, but every impulse was generous and her

earnestness of purpose was consuming.

* * * #

She wanted me to show her the city. Would she
like to drive through the city ? No, she preferred to
walk. A little slumming, I suggested, and she
smilingly assented. So one fine morning we entered
the city by the Lohari Gate and tramped for over
two hours, passing through every street and lane in
the city* She was greatly interested in everything
she saw the children who started at her open-
mouthed, the women veiled and unveiled, the men
who lounged at street corners, the Brahminy bulls
lapping the rock salt exposed for their use on the

SISTER NJVEDITA 265

market stalls, the crowded houses. She took in
everything and asked questions about everything,
On coming out of the city we took a carriage and I

drove her to the hotel.

# # # *

There were other experiences. The Ram Lila was
going on. We drove out to see it. The other ladies
stayed in the carriage but Sister Nivedita got down
and wanted to go into the crowd. As I accompanied
her a policeman on duty seeing an English woman
began hustling the people and thrusting them aside
to making a passage for her. In an instant Sister
Nivedita's smiling demeanour changed. The blood
rushed to her face, her eyes flashed indignant fire ;
going up to the policeman she exclaimed, "What
right have you to push these people? You ought
to be run in for assault. She spoke in English
because she did not know the language of the
country. The policeman did not understand her
words but there was no mistaking her gesture and
look. The man turned to me helplessly for an
explanation and when he got it he slunk away
looking sheepish and crestfallen. When we cati^
out of the crowd I burst out laughing.. Sister/
Nivedita turned to me saying, u Why are you laugh-
ing at me? " I explained to her that the sight of a
policeman pushing people or even assaulting them
was not a rare thftig in India* She would not

266 SISTER NIVEDITA

believe it at first and became very indignant when

I told her a few facts.

* # * *

I met her next in Calcutta and was startled by the
change that had taken place in her appearance. All
the high colour of her complexion had disappeared.
She had grown pale and thin and her face looked
both intellectual and spiritual. She wore round her
neck a slender chain of rudraksha. She looked quite
the Brahmacharini she was. For several weeks she
had been living on a plantain and a slice of bread.
She had taken a small house in the heart of northern
Calcutta and was teaching a few Bengali girls on the
Kindergarten system. Would not some Indian women
dedicate themselves to the service of India as she had
dedicated herself? That was why she had undertaken
the instruction of Indian girls. She looked on every-
thing Indian with the eyes of sympathy and love*

* # # #

Her interests were as varied as they were wide. She
was deeply interested in Dr. J. C. Bose's scientific
researches- I met her at the house of the American
Qpnsul General in Calcutta in earnest conversation
with a e well known Japanese thinker and writer. I
heard her speaking in public. She was a most
eloquent and fascinating speaker but her thoughts
and language were far too high pitched for the com-
mon audience. As a writer tfte charm of her style

SISTER NIVEDITA 267

abides in her books. But I am thinking of the
individual and not the writer the clear, strenuous
purpose, the fervour of faith, the human sympathy,
the transparent sincerity, MA selfless devotion to

work.

# * % *

On one occasion accompanied by a friend I went to
see her in her house in Calcutta We were told by
another lady staying in the house that Sister Nivedita
was seriously ill, suffering from meningitis. She was
being treated by Dr. Nil Ratan Sircar, the famous
Calcutta Physician* After several anxious days the
crisis passed and the patient was pronounced out of
danger- Her time had not yet come. On recovery

she went to England to recruit her health.

* # * #

I saw her once again at Benares for a few minutes
while the Indian National Congress was sitting in

%a

that city. We were bfith pressed for time and there
was not much conversation. And now she has gone
to her rest, to peace everlasting, but those who had
the privilege of knowing her will never forget her
her sweet yet forceful personality, her wonderfully
pure; life, white and fragrant as a lily.

268 SISTER NIVEDITA

V

By S. K. RATCLIFFE

IT is fitting perhaps that one who was especially
favoured in having relations of close friendship with
Sister Mvedita, both in India and in England,
should at this time add a few words to the countless
tributes paid to her memory by her Indian friends.
All those who knew her will hope that some ade-
quate record of her life and work may be prepared
for publication. In -the meantime, it may be well
to set down a few facts and personal memories.

Margaret Noble was the daughter of the Rev. S R.
Noble, and was born at Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, on
October 28th, 1867, Her father was trained for the
Congregational ministry at the Lancashire In-
dependent College, and he' died at 34, leaving a
widow and three young children, of whom Margaret
was the eldest. She was trained as a teacher, being
fortunate enough in her girlhood to become ac-
quainted with some of the most enthusiastic apostles

o the New Education then at work in London.

t

Her owji training ip child-study was, I understand,
extremely thorough. She was a close student of
Frobel, and among her teachers was at least one of
the mpst original English followers of Pestalozzi.
Her practical experience was gained as 'teacher in

SISTER NIVEDITA 269

various girls' schools, and in the beginning of the
nineties she opened, at Wimbledon, a school of lier
own in which she strove to give expression to her
broad and vivid conceptions of education for girls.
At Wimbledon she was the life and soul of an
exceptionally interesting company of modern
young men and women, eager enquirers into every-
thing, discussing literature, society, and ethics with
a furious and confident energy, and beginning in
many directions work which has yielded fruit in the
intervening years. Always, one gathers, it was the
enthusiasm for new and free forms of education
which was strongest with Margaret Noble, and she
was one of the most active of the group which,
nearly twenty years ago, established the Sesame
Club, the first of those social centres for men and
women in London which have since multiplied at so
remarkable a pace.

It was, as she has recorded in " The Master as I
Saw Him," at a drawing-room meeting in November
1895 that there befell the first meeting with Swami
Vivekauanda, from which came the fundamental
change in her life and aims. Tjhe Swami had
appeared at the Parliament of Religions organised
in counection with the Chicago Exhibition of 1893,
He was the first missionary of Indian religion to the
West *or, as Sister Nivedita expressed it, the first in
the long period which separates > our own ago

270 SISTER NIVEDITA

from the end of the Buddhist Missions inaugurat-
ed by the Emperor Asoka. At Chicago the
Swami's subject was " The Religious Ideas of the
Hindus, 51 and his address came as a revelation to the
American public and was the beginning of a singular-
ly successful tour as lecturer and teacher. Leav-
ing America for Europe in 1895, Vivekananda
arrived in England during the following month and
a few weeks later he was teaching in London, Miss
Noble had only a few opportunities of hearing him
before his return to America during the winter, but
in April, 1896 he was back again in London, addres-
sing meetings in the house of an English friend in
St. George's Road, near Victoria Station. Miss
Noble, who had become the Swami's devoted dis-
ciple, accepted his suggestion that she should go to
India and help him in carrying out hia plans for the
education of Indian girls and women. He left Eng-
land at the end of 1896, and a year later Margaret
Noble .followed him. She arrived at Calcutta m
January 1898, and took up her quarters with some
American friends in a small house at Belur, on the
river a few miles above the city, "syhere soon after-
wards was established the Calcutta headquarters of
the Ramakrishna Mission. From May to October of
that year (1898) the Swarm, Miss Noble and three
other Westerti women (one of whom* was the late
Mrs. Ole Bull, widow of -the eminent Norwegian

SISTER NIVEDITA 271

musician and Nationalist), travelled together in the
North-West, in Kumaon and Kashmir. At the end
of the tour Sister Nivedita, as she had now become,
endeavoured to put into effect her scheme of an
Indian school in Northern Calcutta. The experi-
ment was attended with much difficulty, and some
months later it was abandoned in order that new
means and opportunities might be found. In June
1899, accompanied by her Guru, she left Calcutta
for Europe, arriving in England at the end of July.
Shortly afterwards Vivekananda left England for
America, and during the autumn he and his disciple
were fellow-guests of some intimate American
friends in a house on th& Hudson River. Later
he wa's a visitor to her family at Wimbledon,
and he returned to India at the end of 1900, Sister
Nivedita remaining in England until the beginning
<>f 1902, when she resumed her work in Calcutta

tinder conditions far more favourable to success than

/

which had attended its beginnings. Swami
ivekananda died on July 4, 1902. A few months
afterwards Sister Nivedita was joined by an American
colleague, Miss Greenstidel (Sister Christine), and,
they entered upon the work of the school in
Para Lane, Bagh Ba#ar which in the years
grew into a vital and momentous enter-
prise , 4- dangerous illness in the early months of
succeeded in 1906, by a severe protracted

272 SISTEE NIVEDITA

spell of malarial fever, the result of a visit of en-
quiry and service paid during the rains of that
year to Eastern Bengal, where the people were
suffering miserably from famine and flood. The
terrible strain of these two illnesses broke down
her magnificent physique. Sister Nivedita was
never the Sdtne again. The last few months of her
life were divided between England and America,
and she returned finally in the spring of the present
year, to die at Darjeeling on October, 13th a fort-
night before the close of her 44th year.

I recall with a curious feeling the first occasion on
which I met her. It was at the house of a European
lady in London Street, in July 1902, a few days only
after the death of Vivekananda. A number of
English people, and Indians, the latter mostly mem-
bers of the Brahmo Saxnaj, had been invited to meet
Sister Nivedita, who seemed to me singularly out of
her -element. She was asked to speak, and I recall
her address as a deeply earnest tribute to the customs
and ideals of Indian womanhood, such as her friends
constantly heard from her, combined with a tren-
chant attack upon the ruling race for its complete
failur to understand the essentials of the society
which its institutions were destroying- No one
who knows the circumstances will be surprised to
hear that the address was anything but a success as
an adjunct to an Indo-European tea-party in 'the

SISTER NIVEDITA 273

fashionable quarter of Calcutta ; but upon one
auditor at least the personality and the message
made a deep impression. I was then a new-comer,
having joined the staff of The Statesman hardly two
months before. The whole affair was strange the
afternoon gathering, the meeting of West -and East,
and this Western voice speaking to Europeanised
Indians of the greatness and enduring beauty of the
customs and ideals from which they had cut them-
selves adrift.

It seemed, as I look back upon it now, a far from
promising beginning; but it led to a friendship
which to me, as to my wife, must always 1 be the
most valuable and revealing of all personal experi-
ences. Sister Nivedita was living then, as always
during the remainder of her Calcutta life, in the
little house at Bagh Bazaar, with its two tiny court-
yards and the exquisite simplicity of its ordering.
Although entirely devoted to the school and its
attendant activities, there were no rules of exclusion
in the House of the Sisters, provided only that the
privileged male visitor did not intrude during the
hours given up to the orthodox Hindu ladies wjbto
came for tuition in needle-work or English. And
nearly always the Sundays were available, from the
early breakfast, servSU with the extreme of simpli-
city and with constant merriment on the little
verandah, through long hours of earnest talk or

18

274 SISTER NIVEDITA.

eager discussion. Her house was a wonderful
rendezvous. Not often did one meet a Western
visitor, save at those times when an English or
American friend would be making a stay in Calcutta ;
but nowhere else, so far as our experience went, was
there an opportunity of making acquaintance with
so many and varied types of Indian character. Here
would come Members of Council and leaders in the
civic affairs of Calcutta and Bengal, men whose
names and doings were daily canvassed m the news-
papers ; Indian artists and men of letters ; teachers,
speakers, journalists, students ; frequently a travelled
member of the Order of Ramakrishna, occasionally a
wandering scholar, not seldom a religious leader or
public man from a far province. At one time, as I
remember with peculiar pleasure, the most frequent
visitor was an inimitable Bengali editor, full of keen
sayings and sardonic laughter and wit that stimg
like fine cords. And above all other occasions t^here
stands out a morning of the cold weather, I think in
1906/ when we had the pleasure of conducting
Mr, William Jennings Bryan and his wife, then
taking India on their way round the world, to a
particularly joyous breakfast in Bagh Bazaar.

At the time of which I speak, Sister Nivedita was
writing hard, the daily labour of the school being
left largely to her very efficient colleague. The
publication in 1904, of " The Web of Indian Life "

SISTER NIVEDITA 275

had made her work widely known in England and
America, and she followed this up with constant
contributions to the Indian monthlies in which she
dealt, in the style that gained a hearing for evely-
thing she wrote, with the ideals of Indian education
and art, the new claims of the civic consciousness,
the position of woman, and, as the basis of every
theme * with the re-statement and interpretation of
Indian ideas of conduct, character and society.

I cannot speak here of her remarkable, and as
some of us feel, qurte unique relation to and influence
upon the student community. It will, I think, be
agreed that within the last ten years a great change
has come about in the character and demeanour of
the Bengali student, a change which many regard
with misgiving. Naturally I do not i*efer to those
aspects of the subject which have caused disquietude
among the authorities: they have nothing to do
with the influence which went out, in ever-widening
circles as the years passed; from Bose Para Lane* I
refer to those developments in which whatever the
shade of our political opinion, we cannot but rejoice.
Many things have been operating to give the young
Indian a new view of life and education aijd possi-
bility ; but no one, I think, who knew Sister Nivedita
and the things for which she stood can doubt that
the growth in young Bengal of a stronger and finer
sense of social and civic duty is due in an incalculable

276 SISTER NIVEDITA

degree to her personal influence and to the force
and eloquence of her written appeals.

In the years which followed the return from the
first of her long visits to the West (1902) Sister
Nivedita seemed likely to develop into a regular and
constant speaker. She lectured often, and not in
Calcutta alone. I remember several notable lectur-
ing tours especially one in the Madras Presidency
in the cold weather of 1902-03, and one in Western
India shortly afterwards. Latterly, however, for
reasons obvious enough to her friends, she showed a
disposition to confine her activities to writing and to
direct personal contact with those who were making
towards the New India of which she dreamed. And
yet it has always seemed to me that public speech
gave her the opportunity most adapted to the deli-
very of her message. She varied greatly on the
platform. Always rather at the mercy of a too
difficult thesis, given to the use of socio-philosophic
terms and a far too compressed method of exposition,
she sometimes soared, far above the comprehension of
her audience, and I have known her give an address
wjiich to those who did not know the speaker and
the utter sincerity from which the words came, must
Jiave seemed, not only unintelligible but ruined by
something for which I can find no better word than
pretentiousness. And yet how far removed was
anything of display frorrt that 'fine and nobly

SISTER NIVEDITA 277

veracious mind. One thinks of her best (and nearly
always she was so), addressing some crowded gather-
ing in the years before her strength was broken and
before there come upon her that sense of " the little
done, the undone vast," in which latterly she seemed
to abide. I recall, in especial, two occasions in Cal-
cutta. The first was in the autumn of 1902, when
she cut short as Sunday evening call by saying that
she was due at a lecture. She allowed me to
accompany her, and we went, if my memory is
not at fault, to a Bengali school in Cornwalis Street.
The quadrangle was densely crowded, with youths
and men, and on the platform was seated, by the
symbolic tulsi plant, a Kathak who as we entered
began a recital from the Ramayana. For an hour
or so he continued, declaiming and intoning, while
his hearers listened enrapt. A friendly interpreter
explained the episode to me I have forgotten which
it was. When the recital was finished Sister
Nivedita rose to speak, without any preliminary (she
always disliked the instrusion of a chairman). She
spoke, as always, from the feeling of the moment a*
regards the form ; from long reflection as regards th
substance. "She was I think, announced to speak on
the Ideals of the Indian Student, and she began with
the recital to which they had just listened pointing
her moral swiftly and with most striking effect-
Did they* think it was enough to learn and admire

278 SISTER NIVEDITA

and repeat the Ramayana, to know the ancient
stories and to glory in the ideals which had inspired
the men and women of early India ? u Believe me,
that is nothing. The Ramayana is not something
that has come once for all frotn a society that is
dead and gone ; it is something springing ever from
the living heart of a people. Our word to the young
Indian to-day is : Make your own Ramayana, not in
written stories, but in service and achievement for
the motherland."

The other occasion, some two years later, was one
in which, at the outset, she seemed extraordinarily
'* out of the picture." The Dalhousie Institute was
filled with a mixed audience. Mostly Indian, for as
odd a purpose as could well be imagined in that
country to hear a debate on Marriage versus
Celibacy, The meeting was arranged, as an anni-
versary -treat, by the committee of a well-known
Bengali Library. The last of the Military Members
of Council (Sir Edmond Elles) was in the chair The
case for celibacy was stated by the late Sir Edward
Law, the Viceroy's Finance Minister ; the case for
marriage by an elderly Parsee member of the Civil
Service ;then head of the provincial department of
Excise. Both openers gave play to the easy facetio-
usness which is commonly dee'med proper to the
discussion of this and kindred subjects, and the affair
was barely saved from disaster by the seriousness

SISTER NIVEDITA 279

with which a prominent Indian judicial officer ex-
pounded the traditional Indian view of marriage.
Towards the end of the meeting Sir Edmond Elles
called on Sister Nivedita, who was seated on the
platform with an English woman friend. She began
slowly, with a courteous half -humorous rebuke to
the Chairman, and then in a few pointed and search-
ing sentences outlined the, conception of wifehood
as revealed in Eastern tradition. Developing this
and incidentally answering some criticism by a
previous speaker of the Western woman who makes
a career for herself outside marriage she gave a
brilliant little exposition of the contrasted and com-
plementing views of the place of woman as mother
and as individual. It was extraordinarily skilful,
complete, convincing, and the whole thing occupied
a short ten minutes. But what interested me even
more than the perfection of the speech was the way
in which the tone of the meeting was transformed by
the touchstone of her dominating sincerity.

Many times before and after that I heard her
peak to groups of students, or in the Calcutta
Town Hall, before a great audience, on her
one ^absorbing theme the religion of Nationalism ;
before English gatherings in hall ,or church or
drawing-room. And I have thought, and still
tliink, that her gift of speech was something which
when fully exercised I have never known surpassed*

280 SISTER NIVEDITA

so sure and faultless in form, so deeply impassioned,
of such flashing and undaunted sincerity.

I do not think that even the best of her books
represents the strength and range of her intellect,
notwithstanding the brilliant literary gift which was
undoubtedly hers. "Kali the mother 1 ' (1900), the
little volume into which she put the first-fruits of
her Indian studies under Vivekananda, revealed
something of her interpretative faculty, although its
title and sentiment were startling to those English^
readers who knew only the ordinary European
view of the " bloody goddess." Into "The Web
of Indian Life " (1904) she put, as her friends knew,
all the force of her mind and all the intensity
of her faith. The result, fine and powerful as it
is, has always seemed to me far below what might
have been expected from her had she lived to write
the interpretation of Indian domestic life and of the
social structure of Hinduism to which she would un-
doubtedly have devoted herself. She came, I feel
sure, to realise this, and her two later books showed
a great advance in mastery of style. It may be that
"The Master, as I Saw Him" (1909) will never find
a public much beyond the ranks of those, in India
and the West, who have been captured by the mes-
sage of Vivekananda, but one finds it hard to believe
that the " Cradle Tales of Hinduism " will not reach
an increasing circle with the passage of the years.

SISTER NIVEDITA 281

Among the many comments on the life of Sister
Nivedita evoked by her death, I have seen, up to the
time of writing, only one in which there was a note
of disparagement. An editorial article in a leading
Calcutta daily (English of course) contained these
words :

" One can only surmise that a woman of her keen
intellect and wide - reading must have felt herself
stifled after a time in the narrow little world in
which she strove to play at Hinduism. For it was-
Play."

No one who knew that splendid and dauntless
spirit could ever think it worth while to defend the
actions of the aims of Sister Nivedita against a
criticism such as this, even though it followed hard
upon her death and appeared in a journal to which
she contributed some of the ablest examples of her
journalistic writing. But it is permissible, I think,
to take up the challenge contained in the word
" play " upon which the writer of the passage lays
emphasis. We think of her life of sustained and
intense endeavour, her open-eyed and impassioned
search for truth ; the courage that never quailed, tte
noble compassionate heart. We think of her tending-
the. victims of plague and famine, putting heart into
the helpless and defeated, royally spending all the
powers of a rich intelligence and an over-flowing
humanity in the service of those with whom she had

282 SISTEE NIVEDITA

cast her lot. And we sa&^If this was play, then
may grace be given/^ f ^P?$b^play, the game.
Modern Review.

Printed "by J, R" Aria, at the Vasanta Presa, Adyar/ Madras.