Gandhi: “The soul of religions is one, but it is encased in a multitude of forms. The latter will endure to the end of time. Wise men will ignore the outward crust and see the same soul living under a variety of crusts... Truth is the exclusive property of no single scripture.”
These ideas mirror the those of a "universal brotherhood," expressed by H. P. Blavatsky, an avowed Luciferian and the leading figure of the nineteenth century Occult Revival, and the "godmother" of the New Age movement, which aspires to create a one-world religion based on the teachings of Freemasonry, again the Foundation of the Bill of Human Rights.
Annie Besant with Gandhi 1
Sri Ramakrishna, (1836-1886) represents the very core of the spiritual realizations of the seers and sages of modern India.
In India, Blavatksy’s Theosophical Society evolved into a mixture of Western occultism and Hindu mysticism, and also spread western ideas in the east, aiding a modernization of eastern traditions, and contributing to a growing nationalism in the Asian colonies. The Theosophical Society had a major influence on Buddhist modernism and Hindu reform movements, and the spread of those modernized versions in the west. During the nineteenth century, Hinduism developed a large number of new religious movements, partly inspired by the European Romanticism, nationalism, scientific racism and Theosophy. With the rise of Hindu nationalism, several contemporary Indian movements, collectively termed Hindu reform movements, strove to introduce regeneration and reform to Hinduism.
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Founder of the Theosophical Society Elena Petrovna Gan (HP Blavatsky), born in Russia 1831 and died in England 1891
The Theosophical Society and the Arya Samaj were united from 1878 to 1882, as the Theosophical Society of the Arya Samaj. And, along with H. S. Olcott and Anagarika Dharmapala, Blavatsky was also instrumental in the Western transmission and revival of Theravada Buddhism.
Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) was a Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalist and writer. He was one of the founding contributors of non-violent Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism and Buddhism. He was also a pioneer in the revival of Buddhism in India after it had been virtually 3 extinct there for several centuries, and he was the first Buddhist in modern times to preach the Dharma in three continents: Asia, North America, and Europe. Along Helena Blavatsky, he was a major reformer and revivalist of Ceylonese Buddhism and an important figure in its western transmission. He also inspired a mass movement of South Indian Dalits including Tamils to embrace Buddhism.
Dharmapala (1864 – 1933) was a pioneer in the revival of Buddhism in India after it had been virtually extinct there for several centuries. Along with Olcott and Blavatsky, Dharmapala was also a major reformer and revivalist of Ceylonese Buddhism and very crucial figure in its Western transmission. Dharmapala also believed that Sinhalese of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) are a pure Aryan race, and advised that Sinhalese women should avoid miscegenation by refraining from mixing with minority races of the country.
Vivekananda in Chicago, September 1893. On the left, Vivekananda wrote: "one infinite pure and holy – beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee".
An important influence on western spirituality was Neo-Vedanta, also called neo-Hinduism, a modern religious movement inspired by the ecstatic visionary experiences of Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) and his beloved disciple Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902). It was Vivekananda who coined the term “Hinduism” to describe a faith of diverse and myriad beliefs of Indian tradition. Also a Freemason, Vivekananda was a key figure in the introduction of Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the western world. Vivekananda taught
4 the doctrine of the unity of all religions, and is perhaps best known for a speech at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893, the first attempt to create a global dialogue of faiths. Vivekananda quoted two passages from the Shiva mahimna stotram: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!” and “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me.”
In addition to Vivekananda, the Parliament of the World’s Religions was dominated by the Theosophists and their counterparts among the representatives of neo-Vedanta and Buddhist Modernism. According to K. Paul Johnson, the Parliament gave Theosophists “a breakthrough into public acceptance and awareness which had hardly seemed possible a few years before.” Colonel Olcott shared his sentiments in Old Diary Leaves, “How great a success it was for us and how powerfully it stimulated public interest in our views will be recollected by all our older members.” Several of the World Parliament’s speakers on behalf of international religions had been Theosophists, such as Dharmapala and Kinza Hirai, who represented Buddhism, Mohammed Webb for Islam, and Chakravarti for the Hindus. In his 1921 history of the Theosophical movement, René Guénon wrote that after the 1893 Parliament, “the Theosophists seemed very satisfied with the excellent occasion for propaganda afforded them in Chicago, and they even went so far as to proclaim that “the true Parliament of Religions had been, in fact, the Theosophical Congress.”
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Annie Besant: “Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class.” and “Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.”
At the Parliament, Vivekananda’s speech also made a profound impression on Annie Besant (1847-1933), who had assumed the leadership of the worldwide theosophical movement when Blavatsky had passed away in 1891. Born in London into a middle-class family of Irish origin, Besant was proud of her heritage, and became involved with Union organizers including the Bloody Sunday demonstration, which she was widely credited for inciting. During 1884, Besant had developed a very close friendship with Edward Aveling, who first translated the works of Marx into English. He eventually went to live with Marx’s daughter Eleanor Marx, whose network was being spied on by Theodor Reuss. Besant was a leading speaker for the Fabian Society. The Fabians were a group of socialists whose strategy differed from that of Karl Marx in that they sought world domination through what they called the “doctrine of inevitability of gradualism.” This meant their goals would be achieved “without breach of continuity or abrupt change of the entire social issue,” and by infiltrating educational institutions, government agencies, and political parties.
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Annie Besant in formal masonic clothing of the 33° Scottish Grandlodge „Le Droit Humain“.
After a dispute, the American section of the Theosophical Society split into an independent organization. The original Society, then led by Henry Steel Olcott and Besant, based in Chennai, India, came to be known as the Theosophical Society Adyar. Besant’s partner in running the Theosophical Society was Charles Leadbeater, a known pedophile. In 1909, Leadbeater claimed to have “discovered” the new Messiah in the person of the handsome young Indian boy named Jiddu Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti gained international acceptance among followers of Theosophy as the new Savior, but the boy’s father nearly ruined the scheme when he accused Leadbeater of corrupting his son. Krishnamurti also eventually repudiated his designated role, and spent the rest of his life travelling the world and becoming in the process widely known as an unaffiliated speaker.
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Besant in 1911 in England with Jiddu Krishnamurti to her left, and his brother Nitya, and George Arundale
As President of the Theosophical Society, Besant became involved in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress, and during World War I helped launch the Home Rule League, modeling demands for India on Irish nationalist practices. This led to her election as president of the India National Congress in late 1917. As editor of the New India newspaper, she attacked the colonial government of India and called for clear and decisive moves towards self-rule. In June 1917 Besant was arrested, but the National Congress and the Muslim League together threatened to launch protests if she was not set free. The government was forced to make significant concessions, and it was announced that the ultimate aim of British rule was Indian self-government.
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Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was a speaker and writer on matters that concerned humankind. In his early life he was groomed to be the new World Teacher but later rejected this. His subject matter included psychological revolution, the nature of mind, meditation, inquiry, human relationships, and bringing about radical change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.
After the war, a new leadership emerged around Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was inspired by the ideals of Vivekananda, and who was among those who had written to demand Besant’s release, and who had returned from leading Asians in a non-violent struggle against racism in South Africa. In 1888, he had travelled to London, England, to study law at University College London, when he met members of the Theosophical Society. They encouraged him to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita. As a result, despite not having shown any interest in religion before, Gandhi began his serious study of the text, which was to become his acknowledged guide throughout his life. According to Kathryn Tidrick, Gandhi’s approach to the Gita was theosophical. [5] Gandhi later credited Theosophy with instilling in him the principle of the equality among religions. As he explained to his biographer, Louis Fischer, “Theosophy… is Hinduism at its best. Theosophy is the brotherhood of man.” The organization’s motto inspired Gandhi to develop one of his central principles, that “all religions are true.”
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Annie Besant (1847-1933) and with Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)
Gandhi had met Blavatsky and Annie Besant in 1889. And when Gandhi set up his office in Johannesburg, among the pictures he hung on his walls were those of Tolstoy, Jesus Christ and Annie Besant, and in a letter he wrote to her in 1905 he expressed his "reverence" of her. Besant bestowed on him the title by which he became famous, "Mahatma,” a Hindu term for "Great Soul,” and the same name by which Theosophy called its own masters. Besant's distinctive influence on Gandhi was through her contribution to theory was the “Law of Sacrifice,” which was set out most fully in Esoteric Christianity. The Law of Sacrifice was derived from a Fabian reading of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna's selfless activity brought the world into existence and continues to sustain it. Action performed in this “sacrificial” spirit, says Krishna, is free from Karma. From this Besant developed the notion of the Law of Sacrifice, a form of “spiritual alchemy,” through disinterested action, “cast upon the altar of duty.” The man who acts in harmony with the divine selflessness animating the universe becomes a source, a channel for evolution, for progress.
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Despite his popular image as holy man, Joseph Lelyveld’s “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India,” according to his reviewer, reveals Gandhi was a “sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals.”
According to Lelyveld, Gandhi also encouraged his •seventeen-year-old great- niece to be naked during her "nightly cuddles,” and began sleeping with her and other young women. He also engaged in a long-term homosexual affair with German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi at one point left his wife in 1908.
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Gandhi (l), Sonia Schlesin, and Kallenbach (r)
Herman Kallenbach (1871-1945) was a Lithuanian born Jewish South African architect who was one of the foremost friends and associates of Mahatma Gandhi. Kallenbach was introduced to the young Mohandas Gandhi while they were both working in South Africa and, after a series of discussions they developed a long-lasting, inseparable friendship.
The house that Kallenbach designed for himself and Gandhi.
In 1904, Kallenbach met Gandhi, who was then working in South Africa. They had long discussions on religious and other issues. He was highly influenced by Gandhi's ideas of Satyagraha and equality among human beings and became his intimate friend and a dedicated devotee. In Gandhi's words, they became
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"soulmates" and, for a time, shared what is now called Satyagraha House. This was a house designed by Kallenbach for them both to live together.
Kallenbach, Gandhi (sitting, 4th & 5th f.r.) and Tolstoy Farm members, 1910
In 1910, Herman Kallenbach, then a rich man, donated to Gandhi a thousand acre (4 km²) farm belonging to him near Johannesburg. The farm was used to run Gandhi's famous "Tolstoy Farm" that housed the families of satyagrahis. Kallenbach himself named this farm after Leo Tolstoy as he was deeply influenced by Tolstoy's writings and philosophy. Abandoning the life of a wealthy, sport-loving bachelor, he adopted the simple lifestyle, vegetarian diet and equality politics of Gandhi on this farm. The British lawyer Henry Polak was another close friend and follower of Gandhi. Kallenbach was associated with Gandhi throughout the Satyagraha (non-violent resistance) struggle, which lasted in South Africa until 1914.
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Gandhi and friends at Tolstoy Farm which was donated by Kallenbach, 1912.
Kallenbach planned to accompany Gandhi to India in 1914, but with the outbreak of World War I, he was interned by British colonialists as an 'enemy alien' at detention camps and shifted to the Isle of Man as a Prisoner of war from 1915 until 1917. After the war he returned to South Africa, where he resumed his work as an architect and continued to correspond with Gandhi. The rise of Nazism and Hitler's anti-Semitic propaganda shocked Kallenbach into a rediscovery of his Jewish roots. He became a Zionist and served on the Executive board of the South African Zionist Federation and planned to settle in Palestine ("Ereẓ Israel" in Hebrew). He wanted society there to involve no state, military or industry, in order to avoid colonialism through Zionist settlements.
At the request of Moshe Shertok (Sharett), Kallenbach visited Gandhi in May 1937 to enlist his sympathy and support for Zionism. The architect once again became a simple man, participating in all the activities of Gandhi's ashram life. Kallenbach wrote, "I join the whole programme. ... It is 'almost' as the old joint life, as if the 23 years, with all the events that affected millions of people, had disappeared." Although disagreeing with Gandhi over Zionism and also in his 14
(Kallenbach's) conviction that Hitler had to be resisted by violence, Kallenbach's deep friendship with Gandhi continued, and he visited him again in 1939.
Kallenbach also accompanied Gandhi in his first penitential fast at Phoenix in 1913 over the 'moral lapse' of two inmates. Also, Kallenbach acted as a manager during Gandhi's 'The Epic March — Satyagraha' movement in South Africa. He also accompanied Gandhi and his wife on their final voyage from South Africa to London in 1914. Gandhi and Kallenbach used to call each other "Upper House" and "Lower House" respectively, the Lower House being a metaphor for preparing the budget, and the Upper House vetoing for…
Though Gandhi was concerned for the plight of the Indians of South Africa, he shared the beliefs of the Theosophists. Of white Afrikaaners and Indians, he wrote: “We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they do.” Gandhi lent his support to the Zulu War of 1906, volunteering for military service himself and raising a battalion of stretcher-bearers. Gandhi complained of Indians being marched off to prison where they were placed alongside Blacks: “We could understand not being classed with whites, but to be placed on the same level as the Natives seemed too much to put up with. Kaffirs [Blacks] are as a rule uncivilized—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.”
Gandhi and Mussolini became friendly when they met in December 1931, with Gandhi praising the Duce's "service to the poor, his opposition to super- urbanization, his efforts to bring about a coordination between Capital and Labor, his passionate love for his people." He also advised the Czechs and Jews to adopt nonviolence toward the Nazis, saying that "a single Jew standing up and refusing to bow to Hitler's decrees" might be counter-productive "to melt Hitler's heart."
Kallenbach died in 1945. He left a portion of his considerable estate for South African Indians, but the bulk was left for the benefit of Zionism. His large collection of books went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his cremated remains were buried at Kibbutz Degania in Israel.
Kallenbach was one of the foremost associates and friends of Gandhi, devoting a major part of his life to follow his principles and ideals. Gandhi has frequently mentioned him in his autobiography, where he explains how Kallenbach was
15 his 'soulmate' in the early days of the development of his personality and ideology.
A biography of Hermann Kallenbach, written by Isa Sarid, the daughter of his niece Hanna Lazar and Christian Bartolf, depicts Kallenbach's personality and his friendship with Gandhi very deeply. In his book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India, Joseph Lelyveld quotes Tridip Suhrud, a cultural historian, as claiming: "They were a couple." This statement has proven controversial. Nevertheless, Gandhi's correspondence with Kallenbach shows the deep mutual respect and love they had for each other, and how they had affected each other's ideas. The Indian Government purchased the Gandhi- Kallenbach Archives to prevent their auction by Sotheby's in July 2012. The Indian government' has stated that the purchase of the private correspondence of their cultural and socio-philosophical leader was to prevent it from being auctioned for profit, though there is a strong and not unfounded speculation that this purchase was made due to a concern that these letters would reveal that Gandhi may have been homosexual. Homosexuality (among men) is still a huge taboo and a source for disgrace and honor killing in Indian society.
The bond between Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach has been a subject of speculation and gossip for years owing to their closeness, with previously published correspondence suggesting they may have had a physical relationship.
One of the handwritten letters from Gandhi to Kallenbach that went on show on Wednesday, the 65th anniversary of Gandhi's assassination, is addressed to "My dear Lower House" and signed "Sinly yours, Upper House".
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Exhibition of (hand-written) letters by Gandhi. However, scholars looking for clear evidence on the full extent of the men's relationship were left disappointed, with curators acknowledging that they had only put a very selected sample of correspondence on display at the National Archives museum.
"These are original letters and we have provided a carefully selected sample of the correspondence between Gandhi and Kallenbach. There is a lot that is new and significant," Mushirul Hasan, chief of the National Archives, told news agency Agence France-Presse.
A recent book by the writer and photographer Shimon Lev, "Soulmates: The Story of Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach," (Orient BlakSwan, 2012) depicts the very close relationships between the two idealists, and Gandhi's attitude towards Zionism.
Indian stamp dedicated to Annie Besant
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Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience) is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the brutal Mexican–American War (1846–1848).
Thoreau's Civil Disobedience espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws. It criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American War.
Thoreau begins his essay by arguing that government rarely proves itself useful and that it derives its power from the majority because they are the strongest group, not because they hold the most legitimate viewpoint. He contends that people's first obligation is to do what they believe is right and not to follow the law dictated by the majority. When a government is unjust, people should refuse to follow the law and distance themselves from the government in general. A person is not obligated to devote his life to eliminating evils from the world, but he is obligated not to participate in such evils. This includes not being a member of an unjust institution (like the government). Thoreau further 18 argues that the United States fits his criteria for an unjust government, given its support of slavery and its practice of aggressive war.
Thoreau doubts the effectiveness of reform within the government, and he argues that voting and petitioning for change achieves little. He presents his own experiences as a model for how to relate to an unjust government: In protest of slavery, Thoreau refused to pay taxes and spent a night in jail. But, more generally, he ideologically dissociated himself from the government, "washing his hands" of it and refusing to participate in his institutions. According to Thoreau, this form of protest was preferable to advocating for reform from within government; he asserts that one cannot see government for what it is when one is working within it.
Mahatma Gandhi was very impressed by Thoreau's arguments. In 1907, about one year into his first satyagraha campaign in South Africa, he wrote a translated synopsis of Thoreau's argument for Indian Opinion, credited Thoreau's essay with being "the chief cause of the abolition of slavery in America", and wrote that "Both his example and writings are at present exactly applicable to the Indians in the Transvaal." He later concluded:
“Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. At the time of the abolition of slavery movement, he wrote his famous essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. He went to goal for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.” (quoted from "For Passive Resisters" (1907).
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Gandh’s life in a flow chart
1869 Gandhi born October 2, in Porbandar, India
1893 Gandhi arrives in South Africa to provide legal support for Abdulla & Sons in Durban
1894 The Natal Indian Congress is founded
1896 Gandhi is attacked by a mob after his ship, the SS Courtland, docks in Durban when he returns to South Africa with his family after a home visit
1899 Gandhi organizes the Indian Ambulance Corps to serve the British in the South African War
1900 The Indian Ambulance Corps assists at the Battle of Spioenkop
1903 Gandhi founds the weekly Indian Opinion
1904 The Phoenix Settlement is established
1906 A meeting at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg sows the seeds for the satyagraha movement
1908 Gandhi is imprisoned at the Old Fort in Johannesburg for the first time
1908 A crowd, led by Gandhi, burn their passes in a cauldron outside the Hamidia Mosque in Fordsburg
1909 Gandhi publishes the book Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule)
1910 Tolstoy Farm is established outside Johannesburg
1913 Gandhi leads a march of 2 000 Indian coal miners and sugar- plantation workers across the border to the Transvaal
1914 Gandhi and Jan Smuts reach an agreement to relax certain restrictions on Indians in return for ending the satyagraha campaign. Gandhi and Kasturba leave South Africa for good
1948 Gandhi assassinated on 30 January in New Delhi
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References: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/gandhis-master-biographer- uncovers-an-unlikely-friendship-with-an-english-couple-8899764.html#
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