Vivekananda and Nivedita as Ardhanarisvara: Why an Indian Svami Chose an Irishwoman as His Lioness.

AuthorCampbell, Joseph
PositionSvami Vivekananda

Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow initiation which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series of transfigurations: she can never be greater than himself, though she can always promise more than he is yet capable of comprehending. She lures, she guides, she bids him burst his fetters. And if he can match her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released from every limitation.

-Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1)

In 1893, Svami Vivekananda (Narendranath Datta, 1863-1902) left India to broadcast the message of Vedanta (Hindu-Yogic) philosophy in the West. The svami, then a relatively unknown mendicant monk, hoped to restore the past glory of "Mother India" through the renewal of Indian spiritual consciousness, an enormous undertaking that he believed could release India from the shackles of British Imperialism. (2) By 1895, however, Vivekananda's health was declining, and his ambitious mission began to stall while lecturing in London. It was at this time that the svami met a young Irishwoman, Margaret Noble (1867-1911), with whom he forged a unique, and sometimes controversial working partnership. Over a period of two years after their meeting, Vivekananda became "convinced that [Noble had] a great future in the work for India" based on what he described as the five critical qualities she possessed, and he desperately needed. (3) These five qualities--centered on gender, sexuality, nationality, and social activism--directly impacted their combined efforts for social and political reform through a Hindu-based spiritual reawakening in India. This paper will argue that the Hindu concepts of Ardhanarisvara ("Lord Who is Half-Woman"), brahmacharya (celibacy), and Kali worship further shaped the parameters of their working partnership and, their personal guru-disciple relationship.

Near the end of his short life, Vivekananda's personal correspondences indicated a growing desire to find a suitable working partner, a disciple, to help conduct his primary mission of reinterpreting traditional spiritual concepts as tools for India's reformation. Socially constructed limitations based on his gender, and caste, as well as the external influences of negative colonial stereotypes, strongly shaped Vivekananda's concept for the necessity of a female partner-disciple. Thus, given the dictates of his plan together with the complexities of social and gender-based colonial issues of the day, the svami believed that the ideal partner would possess the five "qualities" of being a 1) Western female devotee 2) experienced in activism, 3) comfortable with celibacy, and 4) able to communicate with and understand a Western audience, yet 5) remain sympathetic to the Indian people and their cause. These five critical qualities, along with the fervent desire to serve in India, made Margaret Noble the ideal partner the svami had been looking for.

Research

Vivekananda remains a national hero in India; while much has been written of the enigmatic svami in the Bengali and Hindi languages, the contributions of both Vivekananda and Margaret Noble (Nivedita) occupy a comparatively small, highly specialized area of English language historical research. Western historians and biographers concentrate primarily on the extent of Vivekananda and Nivedita's sphere of influence in nineteenth-century America and England, or to the alternate, concurrent roles the svami and the sister played in reformist practices in India. Increasingly, researchers such as Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, Kumari Jayawardena, Indira Chowdhury, and Richard Hughes Seager have placed the influence of the svami's and the sister's work within the broader themes of the twentieth century Indian Independence Movement, the feminist movement, the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions, and the modern Indian renaissance. (4)

Overall, researchers tend to examine Vivekananda and Nivedita separately, with little to no critical analysis of the parameters of their relationship or of the factors contributing to their working partnership. Most of the research on their personal guru-disciple relationship is hagiographical in nature, being dominated by the writings of religious devotees and admirers, such as Sister Gargi (Marie Louise Burke), Svami Nikhilananda, and Lizelle Reymond. (5) Bengali-born scholar, Narasingha P. Sil, however, stands alone in his in-depth analysis of the svami's personal relationship with Nivedita and other female devotees. (6) Sil is also one of the only historians to consistently portray Vivekananda in a negative light as "an ambitious, idealistic, impulsive, and imaginative militant monk who envisioned, rather naively, a global spiritual conquest in the manner of Napoleonic Imperialism." (7)

Because of the current lack of in-depth analysis of Vivekananda and Nivedita's relationship, and partly due to certain assertions made by Sil, alternate related secondary sources must be employed to balance out the present body of scholarship. Noticeably absent from the discussion are the differences or similarities in cultural and religious sexual practices in Ireland, England, and India. To this end, the research of Joseph Alter on the practice of brahmacharya (celibacy) in Northern India, and that of Tom Inglis on "Irish Prudery," have been consulted. (8) Similarly, Joy Dixon's relevant work on England's chapter of the Theosophical Society--another contemporaneous Indian religious campaign--demonstrates the changing sexual, social, and political atmosphere in England when Vivekananda and Margaret Noble first met in London, 1895. (9)

Two other important aspects of this research topic are the role Ireland played in Indian nationalist development and the view of male-female roles in world religions and myths. Howard Brasted's research on the influence of Irish Home Rule on India's Swaraj (Home Rule) movement is invaluable, and helps to identify Vivekananda's pragmatic choice of an Irish female partner, as well as the political atmosphere in which Margaret Noble/Nivedita was raised. (10) The work of respected mythologist, Joseph Campbell, provides context that helps identify the familiar mythic symbolism of Vivekananda as the "hero" and Nivedita as the "goddess" through the lens of Ardhanarisvara (11)

Given the highly specialized nature of the topic, methods from post-colonial, gender, and religious studies have necessarily been employed. When appropriate, the personal meaning and interpretation of events and persons were examined, along with corresponding social and cultural structures of the late nineteenth century, such as colonialism, feminism, and caste systems. Additionally, strategies gleaned from cultural anthropology and cultural sociology were used to analyze and interpret the way Vivekananda and Nivedita thought, spoke, acted and reacted to one another and to their changing environment.

The Proposal

In July 1897, Vivekananda wrote the young Miss Noble and offered his assessment of her qualifications for his proposed mission in India. "What was needed," he wrote, "was not a man, but a woman--a real lioness;" one who was sympathetic to Indians, generally, and could work to uplift Indian women in particular. (12) In the svami's estimation, India needed not just any woman, but a "great" woman that his beloved country, he reluctantly admitted, could not so far produce and needed to "borrow... from other nations." (13) Above all other attributes, however, and above all of Miss Noble's obvious and abundant qualifications, Vivekananda believed that her "Celtic Blood [made Noble] just the woman wanted." (14) Again, for him it was not just any "great" Western woman that he needed, but an Irish woman familiar with the colonial oppression of the British Crown, because she would be especially sympathetic to Indians fighting for the shared cause of "Home Rule," the growing call for local self-governance of colonial states within the British Empire. (15) Naturally, the svami balanced all of these flattering remarks with dire warnings of the hostile conditions awaiting his potential companion in India: the inhospitable climate, the cultural and political turmoil, the lack of European luxury, and the country's staggering racism. (16) All these trials Noble would need to face and still be able "to stand on her own two feet." (17)

Yet, all these seemingly grim warnings appeared to be more a test of her "great" character--a baiting of the lioness to action--rather than a true deterrent. In this single letter, it can be seen how Vivekananda frankly outlined the five critical qualities Noble possessed that made her the ideal spiritual partner for his mission. After the svami respectfully asked her consent in the matter, as an equal, Noble accepted wholeheartedly. Nivedita's biographer, Lizelle Reymond, asserted that Vivekananda's letter "acted on Margaret like a whip;" that her decision to join the svami in India was immediate and final. (18) As for Noble herself, she claimed that she "had recognized the heroic fibre of the man and desired to make [herself] the servant of his love for his own people." (19)

Ardhanarisvara

The Hindu concept of Ardhanarisvara ("Lord Who is Half-Woman") seemed to have shaped Vivekananda's understanding and need for the five critical qualities necessary in a spiritual partner in a unique way. In orthodox Hinduism, self-realization or liberation (moksa) of the soul is the ultimate goal. Within this system, the concept of Ardhanarisvara represents the combination of Lord Siva--the divine male aspect--with the divine female aspect of Sakti. This balanced combination of energies ensures the complete formation of a fully self-realized being. Sakti embodies three distinct forms, or aspects: Durga (the protective mother), Parvati (the gentle, devoted wife), and Kali (the fierce goddess of death...

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