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Annie Besant: the Brilliant Outsider 1847-1933

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Annie Besant: the Brilliant Outsider 1847-1933 15 Annie Besant: The Brilliant Outsider 1847-1933 Monica Leonards Britons must give up the idea that India is a possession to be exploited for their own benefit, and must see her as a friend, an equal, a Self-Governing Dominion within the Empire, a Nation like themselves, a willing partner in the Empire, but not a dependent.tt (Congress Presidential Address given December 26, 1917.)1 Annie Besant was not the first Briton to hold a prominent position in Indian nationalist politics, but she was the last to rise to its leadership. Her unique assets of personality, position and race made her the ideal person to transform the Indian National Congress from a complacent organization to an energetic one during the years of the first World War. But her essentially conservative position, belied by her strident rhetoric, made it impossible for her to retain a leadership role for long. Annie Wood was born October 1, 1847 in London; she was privately educated and early on expressed a deep interest in religion and spirituality. She was married in 1866 to the reverend Frank Besant, and she soon bore two children. In 1871 the serious illness of her daughter provoked a crisis of faith, and by 1875 she was separated from her husband and lecturing on atheism. This was the beginning of nearly twenty years’ involvement in the major social issues of the day. As George Lansbury, the Labour MP who would later introduce her Commonwealth of India Bill into Parliament, said of her: To write fully about her activities in the social and political life of Britain would be to write almost in full the story of social and political change from 1874 to the time she left for India. There was no movement in which she did not take an active and prominent part...2 During the period 1874-1893 Besant worked for family planning, women’s suffrage, trade unionism, Irish Home Rule, etc.; she wrote England, India and Afghanistan, an early attack on British imperialism, in 1879. In 1885 she joined the evolutionary socialist Fabian Society of George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs and began to develop the incomparable speaking style for which she was greatly admired. Shaw later observed that “at this time Mrs. Besant was the greatest orator in England, and possibly in Europe...I have never heard her excelled.”3 In 1889 Annie Besant discovered theosophy and found a spiritual home. Theosophy had been established in 1875 by two Americans, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, 1 In Annie Besant, Speeches and Writings (Madras: G.A. Natesan & Co., 3rd. ed. 1921), 316. 2 Quoted in C. P. Rarnaswarni Aiyar, Annie Besant (Delhi: Government of India Ministry of Information and Bmadcasüng, 1963), 33-34. George Bernard Shaw, “Mrs. Besant as a Fabian Socialist”, Theosophist 39 No. 1 (October 1917): 12. 16 .to found a nucleus of universal brotherhood, (2)to promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literature, religion and sciences, and (3)to investigate the unfamiliar laws of nature and the latent faculties of man.4 Steeped though it was in metaphysics, occultism, clairvoyance and the belief in reincarnation, theosophy also claimed the primacy of Eastern spiritual understanding. The headquarters of the World Theosophical Society was moved to Adyar, a suburb of Madras, in 1891. Besant moved to India and took up residence in Benares in 1893, with a mission to show “the insufficiency of materialism as an answer to the problems of life, and the immense superiority of Hinduism as a philosophy...”5 In its emphasis on India’s spiritual heritage, theosophy paralleled the growth of Hindu nationalism during the nineteenth century, particularly the Brahmo Samaj and Arva $amaj movements. But whereas those organizations were strongest among Hindus alienated by the British Raj, or in areas where Hindus were a minority (Bengal and Punjab),6 theosophy attracted the new Anglophile class of Indians from all over the country. The crowds of the so-called English-educated class were . ..contemptuous of the past and hence hopeless for the future.. .De-spiritualism had brought about national degeneracy. There was no activity of national life, no pulsing of the national heart... So [Theosophists] began with the revival of religion; they pointed out the value of Hindu teachings,... proclaimed the value of Indian thought and the priceless heritage of the Indian people.. For the next twenty years Besant immersed herself in the religious life of the nation, becoming, in her words, “Hindu in all save the outer ceremonies for which my white skin disqualifies me.”6 In 1894 she translated the Bhagavad Gita9 into English; in 1898 she founded the Central Hindu College at Benares, an “institution in which Hinduism [was] an integral part of 4 Aiyar,51. 5 Annie Besant, India, Bond or Free? (London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Ltd., 1926), 27. 6 The Brahmp $amaj, founded in the 1820s, sought to reconcile Hindu traditions to western modernity. Its stronghold was in Bengal, where many Hindus had converted to Christianity. The Arva Samaj was a more ‘reactionary’ organization, was founded in 1875 to revive Vedic theology and rituals. From its base in Punjab it attacked both Christianity and Islam, as well as orthodox Hinduism, which it accused of adopting non-Vedic customs. 7 Annie Besant, “The Work of the Theosophical Society in India” (1909), in K.P. Karunakaran, Religion and Political Awakening in India (Meerat: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1965), 240. 8 Annie Besant, India: A Nation, A Pleafor Indian Self-Government (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1915), x. 9 The “Song of the Blessed One”, a Sanskrit poem containing all the important themes of Hindu philosophy, and considered on of its major texts. It is interesting to note that while Annie Besant read Sanskrit, she spoke no modem Indian languages. Gandhi, on the other hand, did not know Sanskrit, and first read the Gita in (another) English translation. 17 the education given.”0 She was made president of the Theosophical Society in 1908 , a position she held until her death in 1933, and relocated to Adyar. for the remainder of her life, Besant would fuse her political and religious interests. This was often to cause problems, as when her adamantly pro-Allied stance during World War I aiienated many German theosophists. Tn 1922 she stated: if I am to forecast the ‘Future of Indian Politics’, I must make it clear that I believe that the destinies of Nations are planned by the Occult Hierarchy which rules the world, and are not merely the struggles, defeats and victories, directed by Rulers, Generals, Admirals, Statesmen and Parliaments.11 Similarly, in 1917, when she was offered early release from internment “to resume religious work...”, the offer was denied. Mrs. Besant said in her letter that she could not discriminate between her “religious and political activities.”12 Prior to World War I, Besant generally confined her activities to social and educational reform, proselytizing for Theosophy, and lecturing in Europe and America. Nonetheless, her growing attacks on the Government, particularly for its failures in education, brought her notoriety and warnings from the authorities. Annie Besant’s critique of British imperialism was extensive, including the economic, educational, religious and political aspects of the regime. She naturally excoriated the work of Christian missionaries, who were subsidized by the Government. The educational system was miserable, particularly when compared with that of rapidly industrializing Japan; in 1915 Britain was educating only five percent of the Indian population. Moreover, “the education given...is planned on foreign models, and its object is to serve foreign rather than native ends, to make docile Government servants rather than patriotic citizens...”13 Besant’s analysis of the economic effects of colonization was widely shared. Although Indian nationalists tended to focus on the loss of indigenous industries, she put equal weight on the enormous cost borne by Indians for a bureaucracy designed to oppress them. Crushing taxation was used to pay for the repressive machinery of government. The British land registration system converted traditional communal landholding into landlord-tenant relationships, and forced the peasantry into debt-peonage. Tariff policy had destroyed Indian handicrafts and prevented the development of industry, reducing India to an open market for British manufacturing surplus. The Raj had failed to maintain and expand the 10 Besarn, India: A Nation, 61. Annie Besant, The Future ofIndian Politics (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1922), 47. 12 Times (London), 22 September 1917, 5. 13 Besant, The Future, 188. 18 infrastructure, allowing the deterioration of irrigation and sanitation systems, and the resultant increases in famine and disease. Even that greatest triumph of the British in India, the Indian Railway system, was, she claimed, designed and built to facilitate the movement of troops, not to modernize India’s economy.’4 In short, British economic policy in India was an abject failure. “The word ‘drain’ is sometimes objected to, as connoting that the burden of the white man on India tends to exhaust her resources. That is exactly what it is intended to connote.”5 A great deal of the fault, in Besant’s opinion, lay in the fact that the Raj tended to pass over skilled Indians in favor of European ‘experts’. The racist attitude of the Government--in education, in public accommodations, in official appointments--enraged her. To rebut official pronouncements that India was not prepared for self-government, Besant was fond of pointing to India’s five thousand years of continuous civilization: The argument that Democracy is foreign to India cannot be alleged by any well-informed person.. .Historians recognize the fact that Democratic Institutions are essentially Aryan, and spread from India to Europe with the immigration of Aryan peoples.’6 She believed that the cure for India’s problems was the revival of the nation’s traditional forms of governance, under Indian supervision, but within the protective cloak of the British Commonwealth system.
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