Shraddhanjali to Sister Ursula

SHRADDHANJALI TO SISTER URSULA

by Alexander M. Kadakin,
Ambassador of Russia

Any visitor to the Roerich Gallery in Naggar situated on a Himalayan helmet in the sky of the Kullu Valley would remember this grey-haired, amiable old lady, so much remindful of our grannies, the babushkas, in whose wooden village houses we would use to spend summer holidays as children. Her name was Ursula Eichstaedt, or Sister Ursula, as everybody lovingly and warmly addressed her there. It is hard and painful to realize that she – our very dear friend and companion is no more.

Sister Ursula lived a unique life replete with tragedies and happiness, pain and joy – entirely devoted to serving other people. Despite the harsh fate that befallen this German woman, throughout her whole life she had retained and carried the baton of an amazing zest for life, love and compassion, sincere strive to make our world more just and bright, where one could live in peace and harmony with oneself and the world around.

As a teenager she had gone through all the travails and atrocities of war that bereaved her of the family. Ever since, charitable work became her sole mission and passion of life. After the war, associated with the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration she was involved in rehabilitating children of her own country – Germany, later working for the International Voluntary Service for Peace behind the Polar Circle in Finland’s Lapland and still later - Italy. Under UNISEF programme she spent a year as a medical nurse among mountain tribes of the Pashtuns and Balujas in the North-West Province of Pakistan.

But, it was not until 1954 that her adolescent dream cherished since she read “Altai-Himalayas” by Nicholas Roerich was fulfilled. Sister Ursula arrived in India on a charity mission under the aegis of an international organization. Like the Roerichs, she made India her second home and lived here till her last breath. It was here that she found a new family by adopting two Indian baby-brothers from an Orissan jungle tribe where she spent 18 years, working among local lepers. Almost twenty years more were devoted to bringing up orphans in children’s charities set up under the Pestalozzi Children’s Village and SOS Children’s Village trusts in various parts of India, mainly in hard-to-reach mountainous regions of the country – Ladakh, Lahul and Spiti. In 1989, at the request of Svyatoslav Roerich and Devika Rani-Roerich, whom Sister Ursula had met in 1954, she became the custodian of their beautiful estate in Kullu.

Since 1992, when the Russian-Indian Roerich Memorial Trust was established and the estate opened to the public, Ursula was the permanent manager and guardian angel of the house. It was due to her day and night personal involvement, self-denial and inner generosity that the priceless collections were preserved, transforming the Gallery into one of the most frequently visited heritage sites in Western Himalayas, with more than one lakh tourists annually.

For over fifteen years Ursula was working with ever present enthusiasm, devoting all her spiritual and physical energies to the museum supervision. In the heydays of the Roerichs’ estate decline she was spending her meager personal savings and modest pension for saving the common Russian-Indian heritage. But for this, the Roerichs’ legacy, a symbol of Russian-Indian cultural and spiritual affinity and interaction, would have perished forever. Today, it proudly stands as a cultural centre par excellence.

Sister Ursula also found time for charity even here by helping the school for Tibetan children in Pathlikul, off Naggar. Much, much else could be said about Ursula by her close friends and thousands of common people in various corners of the world. Several films were made about her remarkable life; in 1962 her selfless efforts won her a highly coveted award from the City Council of Rome, which, along with Indira Gandhi, she received personally from the Supreme Pontiff.

Despite all the tribulations of her life and three years as a POW in a Soviet camp, Sister Ursula always had special warmth and affection for Russia, too happy to visit it at invitations of her numerous Russian friends. She had fervent interest in anything Russian or Indian. It is but natural that everyone in India used to call her “Russian” Sister Ursula.

She passed away as quietly and modestly as she had lived - a particle of kindness, affection and compassion in today’s atrocities-torn world. Blessed is the memory of this indefatigable toiler and a great missionary. Shraddhanjali to the departed soul.
In our grief let us evoke St. Francis’ of Assisi prayer:

“O, Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.”

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