The Many Lives of Nilla: An Accidental Anti-Caste Crusader And Gandhi’s Most Disappointing Disciple

"I came to India to learn about God and found, instead, the struggle of man to see God in every man."Accidentally thrown into a social cause that still remains unsolved in India, even today. Casteism. This is the story of Nilla Cram Cook, who soon became to be known by the name of Nilla Nagini and Devi, "The Blue Serpent Lady," writes Time. At the age of 22, three yeas after she married a Greek nobleman, she converted to Hinduism, which earned her the name she was known by in India. She was the daughter of late George Cram Cook, Iowa poet. It was in the early 1932s when India media reported that she was fasting unto death to support the fight against casteism. This fight was to allow Dalits into Mysore's Chamundeshwari Temple. But in reality,

she was part of no such thing. She was just an American woman living in India.However, when the agitation grew, she did not shy away from actually taking the role she was thrusted upon. She delivered speeches on the subjects of "untouchability" at meetings, which were called by the students of Mysore University and by the groups like All-India Untouchability League. While she may have been an outsider, but she had insights of an insider, reports Scroll. All thanks to her conversion to Hinduism that she was well aware of the positives and the negatives. It was almost like she knew everything about casteism, inside out. She would also draw parallels between casteism in India and racism that the blacks faced in the United States. Something that she just stumbled upon, she soon became an active participant of it.

Gandhi's Disciple

She once wrote to Mahatma Gandhi describing how she had taken up cleaning the streets of Bangalore (present-day Bengaluru) alongside strangers from every corner of the country. Devakar Singh, who was a Rajput from Allahabad was so moved by her intentions that he fell at her feet, and promised to keep sweeping the streets as a penance for years of idle luxury. While Gandhi was in Yerawada Jail, he could recount the image of she and her ragtag group of volunteers who walked through the streets with broom, baskets and scrapers in their hands. For Nilla Cook, reaching out to Gandhi felt like writing to Truth itself. Yet when she finally met him in early 1932, he confronted her not about her ideals, but about the storm of gossip surrounding her alleged ties with the Maharaja of Mysore. Rumours seemed to chase her everywhere, through her months at Sabarmati and later at Sevagram in Wardha, until the atmosphere at the ashram grew so charged that she fled, wandering through Delhi, Mathura and Vrindavan before being expelled from India in 1934.

Her Journey To India

Born in Iowa in 1908, Cook grew up in a whirlwind of Theosophy, theatre and travel. After her family moved to Los Angeles, she was captivated by The Light of Asia, the dance-drama based on Edwin Arnold’s book, performed by Walter Hampden and choreographed by Ruth St Denis. That performance planted the seed of India in her imagination.Everything changed in 1931 when a Greek astrologer told her that she would one day be courted by an Indian prince riding an elephant at the head of a camel procession. With the mix of impulsiveness and conviction, she gathered her savings, took her young son Sirius, boarded the SS Himalaya, and set sail for India. Upon arrival, she converted to Hinduism and renamed herself Nilla Nagini Devi.Her book My Road to India chronicles the 450-page sweep of this journey, tea with Maharaja Hari Singh in Kashmir, poetic encounters with Sufism, awe at the Dilwara Temple in Mount Abu, hospitality from Ranjitsinhji in Kathiawar, and admiration for Sayajirao Gaekwad’s legacy in Baroda. By mid-1932, her path led her to Sabarmati ashram.For Americans, this was new, they would cast her as the first American woman to join India's freedom struggle, and being 'baptised' by Gandhi.

The Disciple On Run

The Time writes that Cook, "of all his strange disciples the one who has caused Mahatma Gandhi the sharpest pangs of dismay". "I don't care what others say," she said. “My heart is leaping for thrills. I want speed. I want to fly. I want to attend orchestra dances. . . . One day Gandhi stated that he had not put a fence around the cantonment and any girl could leave, so I took the hint. … I have written to Gandhi fully concerning my change of heart including the flutter caused in meeting a man with beautiful eyes and brows.”She had mismanaged her money and was hit by the Depression as she traveled barefoot and ticketless. She eventually attracted police attention in Delhi after she signed into a hotel under aliases. The Time reports that she said that she was to join the cinema, her name was Janet Gaynor. Authorities put her and Sirius on a ship to New York.Scandal continued to shadow her. She impulsively married a ship’s sailor days after landing; the marriage was annulled within weeks. Her next appearance in the headlines came during World War II. While reporting for Liberty magazine in Greece, she, Sirius, and several other American journalists were seized by the Gestapo. They escaped, hiding in the mountains of Parnassus, a landscape she’d known since her childhood years in Greece, before making their way to Turkey and then Tehran.Post-war, she became a cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Tehran, censoring films and helping form a regional ballet troupe inspired by local folklore. Newspapers mocked her attempts to translate the Quran, calling her the “Luther of Islam.”She died in Austria in 1982 and was buried near her father at Delphi's Temple of Apollo. A project closest to her heart finally materialised decades earlier, in 1958: The Way of the Swan, her anthology of Kashmiri poetry dedicated to Vijayalakshmi Pandit. Drawing its title from a verse by 14th-century mystic Lal Ded, the book brought together folk songs, medieval voices, and contemporary poets. Cook contributed translations of works by figures like Habba Khatun, Utpalacharya, and Habibullah, her own tribute to the land that had called her since childhood.