Marjorie Sykes
Born
Marjorie Sykes

(1905-05-11)11 May 1905
Mexborough, Yorkshire, England
Died17 August 1995(1995-08-17) (aged 90)
United Kingdom
NationalityBritish/Indian
Alma materNewnham College, Cambridge
Occupations
  • Educator
  • Author
  • Independence worker

Marjorie Sykes (11 May 1905 – 17 August 1995) was a British educator who went to live in India in the 1920s and joined the Indian independence movement, spending most of the remainder of her life in India. She wrote many books and became acquainted with many of the leading figures in Indian politics and culture, including Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi.

Biography

The daughter of a village schoolmaster, Marjorie Sykes was born in Mexborough, Yorkshire, England on 11 May 1905.[1] Sykes was nine years old when the First World War broke out, forcing a beloved teacher, who happened to be German, to leave her position.[2]: 123  Benefiting from a scholarship, Sykes began college studies in 1923 at Newnham College, Cambridge. There she heard of Mahatma Gandhi from the many Indian students.[3] She graduated with first class honors in English in 1928.[4]

Sykes came to Madras (now called Chennai) in 1928 to serve as a teacher at the Bentinck School, Vepery,[5] remaining a resident of India for more than 60 years. She contributed enormous effort to advancing new forms of education advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.[3]

In late 1928, a talk by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari inspired Sykes' interest in participating in the independence movement.[3] Late in 1938, she met both Rabindranath Tagore (traveling to his school at Shantiniketan) and Mahatma Gandhi (traveling to his ashram at Sevagram).[3] Beginning in 1939 she joined Santiniketan, working closely with Tagore and becoming acquainted with C.F. Andrews, later in 1944-46 holding the C.F. Andrews Memorial Chair at Santiniketan while working on Andrews' biography.[3]

In 1945, Gandhi invited Sykes to join his team working on Nai Talim (New Education), and she later became Principal of Gandhi's Basic Education Programme at Sevagram. In the 1960s Sykes served in efforts to bring peace in Nagaland, as well as living and conducting nonviolence training in Kotagiri in the Nilgiris Hills, and becoming increasingly active among Quakers, at Rasulia (Madhya Pradesh) as well as outside India.[3]

After an illness, at age 85 years, Sykes moved in 1991 from India to Swarthmore, a Quaker residential home in Buckinghamshire, England, where she remained until her death on 17 August 1995.[3][6]

The Marjorie Sykes room at Friends House, London, UK is named after her.[7]

Works about Sykes

Sykes' life and work has been the focus of books, chapters, and newspaper articles. In 2005, a decade after her death, the centenary of Sykes' birth was observed in a lengthy biographical article published in The Hindu.[3] An earlier article in Gandhi Marg had also described her life.[8] Sykes was also the focus of an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,[9] and of a chapter in a doctoral dissertation in History by Sharon M. H. MacDonald (2010).[2] A book-length biography of Sykes was published two years before her death.[10][11]

Selected works

Books authored by Marjorie Sykes include:

Writings by others that were edited by Marjorie Sykes include:

References

  1. ^ Williams, J. S. (9 December 2014). "Marjorie Sykes". WANMEC (Washington Nuclear Museum and Educational Center). Retrieved 10 July 2015.
  2. ^ a b "Marjorie Sykes (1905-1995)" (Chapter 4, pp. 121-147) in MacDonald, Sharon M. H. (2010). Neither Memsahibs nor Missionaries: Western Women who Supported the Indian Independence Movement. New Brunswick, Canada: University of New Brunswick (Department of History). ISBN 9780494827642. OCLC 896786575.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Rengarajan, La. Su. (24 July 2006). "A Gandhian Life". The Hindu. Retrieved 9 July 2015.[dead link]
  4. ^ Hallam Tennyson (20 September 1995). "Marjorie Sykes: India's faithful Friend". The Guardian. p. 16.
  5. ^ Sridhar, Asha (21 January 2013). "From 21 students to 2,000". No. Chennai. The Hindu. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
  6. ^ Anonymous. "Famous Deaths for August 1995". HistoryOrb. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
  7. ^ "Meeting Rooms". Friends House. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  8. ^ Purushotham, Surendran (2003). "Marjorie Sykes: A Disciple of Christ and Gandhi". Gandhi Marg. 25 (1): 90–95.
  9. ^ Carnall, Geoffrey (2004). "Sykes, Marjorie (1905–1995)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/66993. Retrieved 9 July 2015. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) (1116 words)
  10. ^ Dart, Martha (1993). Marjorie Sykes: Quaker - Gandhian (Indian ed.). [York]: Sessions Book Trust in association with Woodbrooke College. ISBN 9781850721253. OCLC 29471229. (159 pages)
  11. ^ Mendlesohn, Frank (1994). "Marjorie Sykes: Quaker Gandhian (review)". Quaker History. 83 (2): 137–138. doi:10.1353/qkh.1994.0021. S2CID 162369060. ("the book provides an outline sketch of the events of Marjorie Sykes's life [but] was clearly intended as much more... [at which] the book is unsatisfactory", p. 137)
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