25. The Mahatma Letters

Secret Doctrine

All restrictions against Indians joining lodges were finally lifted by the time Rudyard Kipling, who was attracted to the order’s emphasis on Universal Brotherhood, was made a Freemason by dispensation in 1885 in The Lodge of Hope and Perseverance 782 E.C, of which he later wrote, “I was entered by a member from Brahmo Somaj, a Hindu, passed by a Mohammedan, and raised by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an Indian Jew.”[1] Blavatsky referred to Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of Brahmo Samaj, as “one of the purest, most philanthropic, and enlightened men India ever produced.”[2] In February 1879, following the instructions of Blavatsky’s “Ascended Masters,” the leading members of Theosophical Society moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) in search for the “Aryan wisdom.”[3] In Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky wrote, “it has been discovered that the very same ideas [that occultists had traced back to ancient Egypt]… may be read in Buddhistic and Brahmanical literature.”[4] As indicated by Mark Bevir, this turn to India provided an important change of orientation for the Western-educated elite of India to channel their energies towards Indian independence.[5]

While in India, Blavatsky was to publish her Secret Doctrine in 1888, in which she often cited Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. Referring to what Saint-Yves would have purportedly learned from Haji Sharif—a.k.a. Jamal Afghani—Dr. Come Carpentier de Gourdon notes, in “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century: Saint Yves d’Alveydre and his ‘Mission de l’Inde’”:

 

It is reasonable to conclude that our author was made privy to the teachings of a particular lineage or sect in India which seems to have practised a universalistic synthesis of ‘reformed’ Brahmanism and Sufi Islam while quietly working to reform some of the abuses and distortions in the practice of Hinduism, (such as the iniquitous segregation between castes) and preparing for India’s independence.[6]

 

Recent scholarly works, such as Christopher Campbell’s The Maharaja’s Box (2002) and Jean Overton Fuller’s Blavatsky and her Teachers (1998), revealed an underground movement to overthrow British rule in India at the time. At times, Blavatsky seems to have acted as a Russian secret agent on behalf of her sponsor Mikhail Katkov, who supported a scheme to invade India with Russian forces. In her travels throughout India, Blavatsky contacted a number of Maharajas, including those of Kashmir, Indore and Gwalior in 1878, while preaching Theosophy and calling for an uprising against the British. She openly supported the claim of Duleep Singh (1838 – 1893), the exiled son of the late King Ranjit Singh, who became the last ruler of the Sikh Kingdom of the Punjab, when it was defeated in the Anglo-Sikh War, a military conflict between the Sikh Empire and the East India Company which took place from 1848 to 1849. Duleep was placed in power in September 1843, at the age of five, with his mother ruling on his behalf, and under a British Resident. Internecine struggles among his brothers and among the Sikh leaders led to his brief period of rule, before his deposition by the British Crown at Lahore in 1849, and thereafter exile in Britain at age 15, where he was befriended by Queen Victoria.[7] He eventually settled on an estate in Suffolk, having embraced Christianity and married the daughter of an Abyssinian woman and a German banker whom he met in a Presbyterian orphanage in Cairo. Duleep was a member of the Freemasons and was admitted Star in the East No. 67 in Calcutta in 1861.[8] In June of the same year, he was one of the first twenty-five Knights in the Order of the Star of India.[9]

In 1854, Blavatsky met her Master Morya in England, who was in her words, “in the company of a dethroned native prince,” presumed to refer to Duleep Singh.[10] In the mid-1880s, Duleep started demanding the India Office for the restoration of his throne. He attempted to go to India, was stopped at Aden, where he renounced Christianity for the Sikh religion, and came back to Paris. In 1887, supported by Mikhail Katkov, he travelled to Moscow announcing his plans for a Sikh uprising and the end to British rule in India. Afghani and Duleep collaborated in issuing manifestos dated from Moscow, signed “The Executive of the Indian Liberation Society,” and printed and distributed in Paris with help from Fenians, secret political organizations dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. With Katkov’s death in 1887, Duleep eventually returned to Paris, and then lived most of his final years in England.[11]

Ranbir Singh (1830 – 1885), the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, who was closely tied to Duleep’s family, was regarded by Theosophists as a high initiate, and personally acquainted with the Mahatmas of Agartha according to both Blavatsky and her partner colonel Olcott.[12] He was also rewarded with the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India in 1862. As summarized by Dr. Come Carpentier de Gourdon, “Whatever one may think of the identities of her Masters of the Himalayas of the ‘Great White lodge’, in their famous letters to various Theosophists, they explicitly supported the cause of India’s liberation from foreign rule.”[13]

Saint Yves offered in writing to introduce the world’s major heads of state to the ambassadors of Agartha and to bring them in contact with that hidden power. One of the letters was addressed to the reigning Alexander III, whom he called upon to act as a liberator by recognizing the hidden realm of Agartha and rejecting colonialism, and renouncing the Great Game by establishing cooperation with the British. In particular, Saint Yves warned the Tsar against invading Afghanistan which, could not be occupied successfully as it was critically linked with Agartha: “Sire be prudent if you touch Afghanistan. Do not step into the territory of those Amphyctions (i.e. ‘those who live around it’) without spelling out the hoary password of God’s kingdom.”[14] Whether or not the Tsar heeded Saint-Yves’s advice, his policies led to a détente in the Great Game, and to the formation of the Entente with France and Britain, contrary to his father’s pro-German anti-British policy.[15]

At about the time that he sought to influence Alexander III’s policies, Saint Yves also implored Victoria to relieve India of subjugation and allow it equality with European states. He insinuated that he was aware of the Queen’s desire to do so, in spite of the opposition of the bureaucracy and of colonialists in India.[16] In his letter, Saint-Yves voiced the Indian demand for “common universities, common courts of law and … economic mediations for reducing the frightening tax burden the people is loaded with.” Saint-Yves then adds, “This agreement (between India and Europe) is as indispensable to the Renaissance of India as it is to the full fruition of European civilization,” and he reiterates in a manner which seems to announce Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent campaign: “India does not want to rebel: its ancient wisdom better inspired, only seeks its own life and resurrection.”[17] Therefore, he urged Victoria to conclude an agreement with Russia.[18]

In 1887, the Earl of Lytton, who had been for four years Viceroy of India between 1876 and 1880, came to Paris as the Queen’s Ambassador. It was to him that Saint-Yves probably communicated his views and his message to Victoria, and subsequently Lytton, himself, under the nom de plume of Owen Meredith, translated a long poem by Saint Yves addressed to her.[19] During his tenure as Viceroy, Lytton had summoned and held the Great Durbar of 1877 in Delhi in which Victoria was proclaimed Empress, thereby laying claim to the symbolic succession of the Great Mughals. It was at this Durbar that Ganesh Vasudeo Joshi (1828 – 1880), popularly known as Sarwajanik Kaka,, wearing “homespun spotless white khadi,” rose to read a citation on behalf of the grass roots native political organization, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, which organization presaged the later rise of the Indian National Congress. The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha provided many of the prominent leaders of national stature to the Indian freedom struggle including Bal Gangadhar Tilak.[20]

 

Arya Samaj 

The Brahmo Sabha, Arya Samaj, and the Theosophical Society all reinterpreted Hinduism to bring it more into line with Western science and ethics. Almost all the Indians who joined the Theosophical Society were elites educated in the West. The resulting tension between the indigenous background of this Indian elite, and the worldview they were indoctrinated with, beset many of them with an identity crisis, consisting primarily of a perceived conflict between the Hinduism of their upbringing and the scientific rationalism of the West.[21] According Bevir, “It was this cultural crisis that provided the background to the neo-Hinduism of the Brahmo Sabha, the Arya Samaj, and also the Indian Section of the Theosophical Society.”[22] Dayananda Saraswati (1824 – 1883), founder of the Arya Samaj, who had been close to the Brahmo Samaj. Saraswati’s admirers included Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, and Sri Aurobindo who called him one of the “makers of Modern India,” as did Sri Aurobindo.[23] Saraswati was the first to give the call for Swaraj as “India for Indians” in 1876, a call later taken up by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.[24] According to Dayananda:

 

My purpose and aim is to help in putting an end to this mutual wrangling, to preach universal truth, to bring all men under one religion so that they may, by ceasing to hate each other and firmly loving each other, life in peace and work for their common welfare.[25]

 

The Theosophical Society and the Arya Samaj were united from 1878 to 1882, as the Theosophical Society of the Arya Samaj.[26] The Theosophist of February 1880 lauded Roy and Dayananda for their efforts to bring about an Aryan revival, the latter being eulogized next to Blavatsky in a pair of sonnets. Dayananda, in the eyes of Blavatsky, was one of the initiates of a Himalayan adept guarding ancient Aryan teachings. Even though the alliance was short-lived, Dayananda’s views exerted a strong influence in the early years of the Theosophical Society. As summarized by Strube:

 

Perhaps most notable was his insistence that modern discoveries of science and philosophy had already been made by Aryan sages millennia earlier and were only awaiting their restoration, leading to a reconciliation of science and religious truth.[27]

 

Like Roy and Dayananda, as noted Bevir, Blavatsky also upheld the validity of Hinduism in the face of criticism by some Christian missionaries. Dayananda too called for a return to the “pure” Vedic faith. He as well sought to reform not only religious practices, such as idol worship, but also social norms such as child marriage. However, Dayananda rejected Roy’s universalism in favor of a militant assertion of Hindu superiority, going so far upholding a doctrine of Vedic infallibility, according to which the ancient Rishis had long ago discovered all the truths of modern science, even the theory of evolution.[28] As well, again like Roy and Dayananda, Blavatsky went on to champion various reforms as necessary to purge Hinduism of its corrupt elements so as to return it to “pure” Vedanta.[29] However, whereas the Brahmo and the Arya Samaj drew followers only to their particular teachings, the Theosophical Society was sought to mobilize Indians of all religious traditions. Theosophical Society members came from all over the sub-continent, attracting Parsees, Christians, Sikhs, and even some Muslims, as well as Hindus. In addition, it brought some of the Western-educated of Indian elites into close contact with liberal members of the British colonial community.[30]

“The special contribution of theosophy to the intellectual commitments promoted by neo-Hinduism,” explains Bevir, “lay in the way it combined praise of India’s heritage with a syncretic openness.”[31] Brahmo Sabha, Arya Samaj, and Theosophical Society began to describe India as sharing a single common heritage, facing a together a common set of challenges, requiring an all-India solution. India, they argued, was the cradle of all the religions and civilizations of the world. However, the corruptions that had been introduced into the “pure” Vedic tradition had left India vulnerable to colonization, and purportedly, even in need of British rule to provide an opportunity for real reform. Thus, the Brahmo Sabha, Arya Samaj, and Theosophical Society all called for religious and social reforms to enable India to recover her lost greatness.[32] However, by insisting that the ancient wisdom was taught by all the religions of the world, the Theosophical Society provided a set of beliefs that encouraged Hindus to commit themselves to certain political values, while also providing them the opportunity to co-operate with Parsees, Muslims, and also liberal Britons with Christian backgrounds.[33]

After their arrival in India, Blavatsky and Olcott attracted supporters from within the Indian community, including prominent men such as S. Subramania Iyer (1842 – 1924), Behramji Malabari (1853 – 1912), R. Raghunatha Rao (1831 – 1912), Nurendranath Sen (1865 – 1945), and Kashinath Trimbak Telang (1850 – 1893).[34] In 1876, Surendranath Banerjee (1848 – 1925) and Anandamohan Bose (1847 – 1906) led a group of young Bengalis in the formation of the Indian National Association of Calcutta (INA), breaking with the established British Indian Association (BIA) of Bengal, founded in 1854 to work towards increasing the welfare of Indians, because they thought that it demonstrated an insufficient desire to end British rule.[35] Anandamohan was converted by Keshub Chandra Sen to his breakaway Brahmo Samaj group in 1869. The following year, he went to England with Keshub and studied mathematics at Cambridge.[36] On Anandmohan’s advice, Banerjee studied the writings of Mazzini during his stay in England between 1874 and 1875.[37] Nurendranath Sen, a cousin of Keshub, was a prominent member not just of the Theosophical Society, but also of the INA. In 1861, he was involved in the creation of the Indian Mirror, which became the first daily English-language newspaper produced by Indians, and functioned as a Brahmo mouthpiece. Nurendranath edited for the most part, with other intermittent editors including Keshub and Pratapchandra Majumdar (1840–1905), who would later be invited by Unitarians to become a member of the Advisory Council and Selection Committee for the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1893 and develop an extensive missionary activity in the United States.[38]

On March 19, 1882, Olcott finally paid his first visit to Calcutta, where he was invited to stay at the guest house of Jatindramohan Tagore (1831 – 1908), of the influential Tagore family. For several years, Tagore was Honorary Secretary of BIA. Tagore was elected as its president in 1879, and re-elected in 1881. Its first general secretary was Brahmo Samaj leader Debendranath Tagore. In 1879, Jatindramohan had been created a Companion of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, and appointed for a third time, a Member of the Viceroy’s Council in 1881. In in May 1882 he would be created Knight Commander of the Star of India.[39] At a reception held on April 1, Peary Chand Mitra (1814 – 1883), who had joined the Theosophical Society before Olcott’s arrival, read out a letter declaring Olcott “a Hindu” in “spiritual conception.”[40] On April 5, Olcott delivered a public lecture at the Calcutta Town Hall, presided over by Mitra, which he opened with an appraisal of prominent members of the Bengali intelligentsia who had “addressed open[ly] the most burning questions in religion and politics,” including Vivekananda’s mentor, Keshub Chandra Sen, Surendranath Banerjee, Pratapchandra Majumda and Sivanath Shastri (1848 – 1919), founder of the Sadharan (universal) Brahmo Samaj. Sarcastically, Olcott went on to describe the Western-educated Bengali “Babu,” who, after reading Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and donning Western clothes and habits, was turning into a B.A., a “Bad Aryan.” Instead, Olcott proposed that what “young India” should turn was the wisdom of the “Aryan Rishis.”[41]

Blavatsky arrived at Calcutta on the following day, April 6, and the Bengal Theosophical Society was formally inaugurated at the guest house of Jatindramohan Tagore. Peary Chand Mitra was appointed its president. Shyamashankar Ray (1837 – 1893), the influential zamindar who was a member of the executive council of the Indian Association, and Dvijendranath Tagore (1840 – 1926), son of Debendranath and eldest brother of Rabindranath, became vice presidents. Nurendranath Sen held the offices of secretary and treasurer before becoming president in 1883. “The best feature of Theosophy,” claimed Sen, “is that it inculcates the spirit of Universal Brotherhood among men, as forming part of the Universal Life.”[42] Meetings of the new branch were first held at the offices of the Indian Mirror, before relocating to its own building. From around 50 members at the end of 1882, membership in the Calcutta branch increased to 130, which made it the largest next to the Ceylon branch. An additional twenty-five branches were eventually established in the region.[43]

 

All-India Solution

Also among Blavatsky and Olcott’s supporters were Behramji Malabari (1853 – 1912) and Kashinath Trimbak Telang (1850 – 1893).[44] Telang was Indian judge at Bombay High Court. His translation of the Bhagavad Gita into English is available in Max Müller’s the Sacred Books of the East. While he was devoted to the sacred classics of the Hindus, Telang also translated of Illuminatus Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, which was modelled on his friend Moses Mendelssohn and Sabbatai Zevi’s patron, Nathan of Gaza.[45] Behramji Malabari was a son of Dhanjibhai Mehta, a Parsi clerk. His poetry attracted attention in England, notably from Alfred Tennyson, Max Müller, and Florence Nightingale.[46] Müller and Nightingale would also play a role in his campaign for social reform, and the latter would also write the preface to an 1888/1892 biography of Malabari.

In 1880, Malabari acquired the Indian Spectator, an English-language daily, which he edited for twenty years until it was merged into the Voice of India, which he had already been editing together with Dadabhai Naoroji (1825 – 1917), also known as the “Grand Old Man of India” and “Unofficial Ambassador of India,” and William Wedderburn (1838 – 1918), a member of Parliament, since 1883. In 1885, a girl named Rukhmabai was ordered by a Judge Pinhey to return to her husband or be jailed. Malabari’s editorials increased awareness of the case, and it “was largely by his efforts,”[47] and the agitation of William Thomas Stead—a close friend of Blavatsky and Annie Bestant—in the Pall Mall Gazette, that brought about the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, and the Age of Consent Act in 1891.[48]

From 1875 through to 1885, a number of young Indian nationalists had become increasingly critical of their leaders. Early in 1885, Nurendranath Sen drew up a proposal for an all-India nationalist association, and then, together with Banerjee and the rest of the INA, he began to organize a conference to form an all-India body. The inspiration for Sen’s proposal was likely from Madras, the venue for the 1884 annual convention of the Theosophical Society, where Raghunatha Rao argued that the Society should start to formally discuss not only more strictly religious matters, but the political situation in India as well.[49]

Although Rao’s proposal was not accepted, he did arrange a meeting of sympathetic theosophists at his home, which included Iyer, Panapakkam Anandacharlu (1843 – 1908), and M. Viraraghavachariar (1857 – 1906).[50] They formed the Madras Mahajana Sabha, based on the claim that the established Madras Native Association had ceased to adequately serve the nationalist cause. Sen had attended some of the meetings leading up to the formation of the Madras Mahajana Sabha, and he therefore would have been aware of its plan to establish an all-India organization. The Madras Mahajana Sabha planned to arrange a meeting to coincide with the next annual convention of the Theosophical Society, which would promote such an idea.[51]

Later in 1885, Malabari, Telang and other nationalists, such as Dadabhai Naoroji and Sir Pherozeshah Mehta (1845 – 1915), Parsi Zoroastrian and Freemason, organized the Bombay Presidency Association  (BPA) as a radical alternative to the older Bombay Association, an administrative province of India.[52] The BPA succeeded the Bombay Association, founded in 1852, which had petitioned the British Parliament for an Indian-led legislative council and criticized exclusion of Indians from high administrative positions. However, resistance to Indian support for the controversial Ilbert Bill of 1883, which stipulated that non-white judges could oversee cases that had white plaintiffs or defendants, and Lord Lytton’s regressive policies in the 1880s, fueled discontent, prompting the establishment of the BPA to represent Indian grievances and advocate for reforms.[53]

 

Indian National Congress

“Throughout India, therefore,” concludes Bevir, “theosophists were joining with other young nationalists to advance a more radical agenda, at the very heart of which lay the idea of an all-India organization.”[54] Early in 1885, Allan Octavian Hume (1829 – 1912)—a member of the Theosophical Society and founding spirit the Indian National Congress (INC), the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire—and which would became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement, helped to bring about the formation of the Bombay Presidency Association. and he immediately used the Bombay group as a springboard from which to advance his idea of an Indian National Union.[55] Hume was the son of Joseph Hume, a Radical social reformer who joined the East India Company in 1849 and rose to a high position in the Indian Civil Service.[56] Hume married Mary Anne Grindall in 1853, and their only daughter, Maria “Minnie” Jane Burnley (1854–1927), became a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and was married Ross Scott, founding secretary of the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society.[57] Hume’s early influences included his friend John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spence, and who originated the expression “survival of the fittest,” after reading Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species.[58] Spencer also became a member of the Athenaeum, an exclusive Gentleman’s Club in London, and the X Club, founded by Thomas H. Huxley, that included some of the most prominent thinkers of the time, three of whom would become presidents of the Royal Society.[59]

Hume’s interest in Theosophy brought him into contact with many independent Indian thinkers. Hume joined the Theosophical Society in 1880, became the President of the Simla Branch in 1881, and seems to have provided the financial backing that enabled Blavatsky to begin publishing The Theosophist.[60] Blavatsky and Olcott obtained their entry into the British community, for example, largely through the good offices of A.P. Sinnett (1840 – 1921), the editor of The Pioneer, the leading English daily of India.[61] Sinnett and Hume began to send letters to, and supposedly received from, the so-called “Mahatma Letters,” from two Ascended Masters, Koot Hoomi and Morya. Hume claimed that in 1878 he had received communications he had received supposedly from the Koot Hoomi and Morya that convinced him large sections of the Indian population were violently opposed British rule, and some even plotted rebellion. In one of the letters, the Mahatmas, the Ascended Masters, explained how the Great White Brotherhood successfully had controlled the Indian masses in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 so as to preserve British rule, which apparently was necessary to bring India to its allotted place in a new world order.[62]

Eventually, in 1883, Hume broke with Blavatsky and resigned his post in the Simla Branch of the Society. Hume, however, continued to believe in the existence of the Mahatmas and their mission. In that same year, Hume outlined his idea for a body representing Indian interests in an open letter to graduates of the University of Calcutta. The aim was to obtain a greater share in government for educated Indians and to create a platform for civic and political dialogue between them and the British Raj.[63] Hume worked alongside some of the people he had met at the annual conventions of the Theosophical Society, Behramji Malabari, Raganath Rao, and Sen, in order to arrange the founding conference of the INC.[64] Hume organized the first meeting in Bombay with the approval of the Viceroy Lord Dufferin. Hume assumed office as the General Secretary, while Umesh Chandra Banerjee was appointed as the first president of INC.[65]

In 1885, Telang was the secretary of the reception committee for the inaugural meeting of the INC, with Surendranath Banerjee being a founding member.[66] The INC dominated by Western-educated Indians and Theosophists, as well as Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Sri Aurobindo. Tilak, was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement, who the British colonial authorities derisively called “Father of the Indian unrest.”[67] Half the presidents of the India National Congress (INC) were Freemasons.[68] As explained by Deschamps, by the late 1800s, “More than ever before, the unifying idiom of Masonic brotherhood was feeding into imperial rhetoric and display to extol Empire and loyalty to the Crown.”[69] Evidence of this can be found in the so-called “imperial lodges,” which were first founded in London for the purpose of gathering Freemasons interested in Empire. These included Empire Lodge (1885) and Empress Lodge (1895). Out of the 37 founding members of Empire Lodge, more than half had served in India. Several Indians also attended lodge meetings, including Ajit Singh of Khetri (1861 – 1901) and the Nahar Singh of Shahpura (1855 – 1932).[70] Ajit Singh, the ruler of a small state in Rajasthan, was a very close friend and disciple of Vivekananda. Shahpura was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire(KCIE) in the 1903 Durbar Honours. There were several Indian members of the Empire Lodge, including Dadabhai Naoroji (1825 – 1917) and his fellow Parsi, Sir Mancherjee Bhownagree (1851 – 1933).[71] Bhownagree was made a Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in 1886, and was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) upon the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The Jubilee was also attended by Ajit Singh of Khetri.[72]

The first president the INC,  W.C. Bonnerjee, who was a friend to his father, belonged to the same lodge of Vivekananda, the Anchor and Hope Lodge No. 234, later the Grand Lodge of India.[73] The INC’s second president was Dadabhai Naoroji, of the Empire Lodge, the son of a  Parsi priest, also known as the “Grand Old Man of India” and “Unofficial Ambassador of India.” Naoroji founded the Rahnumai yasan Sabha (Guides on the Mazdayasne Path) in 1851 to restore the Zoroastrian religion. In 1861, he also founded The Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, a cultural and social organization for Zoroastrians residing in Europe, particularly Britain. In 1865, Naoroji directed and launched the London India Society with Bonnerjee. The London Indian Society was superseded by the East India Association, founded by Naoroji in 1866, noted as the precursor to the Indian National Congress. Naoroji was also a member of the Second International. Naoroji was a founding member of London’s Marquis of Dalhousie Lodge, No. 1159, its first Secretary (1867–71) and later its Master (1871-–72).[74] Among the lodge’s first joining members was Earl de Grey and Ripon (1827 – 1909), Deputy Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England from 1861 to 1869, and ultimately as Grand Master from 1870.[75] Ripon was Under Secretary of State for India (1861-63), Secretary of State for War (1863-66), under Lord Palmerston, and Secretary of State for India in 1866 under Earl Russell (1792 – 1878). Dadabhai was elected president of the lodge in 1886 and again in 1893 and 1906, and was a mentor to a younger generation of leading Indian nationalist, including Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mohandas Gandhi, and Muhammed Ali Jinnah. Dadabhai was elected to the British Parliament in 1892, the first non-white person to become an MP, from where he argued strongly in favor of reform in the governance of India.[76]

 

Gandhi 

According to Bevir, “The nationalist significance of these neo-Hindu doctrines is indicated by their later appearance as the core ideas of Gandhi’s classic work, Hind Swaraj (1938).”[77] Naoroji’s Poverty and Un-British Rule in India influenced Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948), under whose leadership of the INC would become the principal leader of the Indian independence movement.[78] Gandhi called for forms of political action against the British initiated by Tilak, whom he “The Maker of Modern India,”[79] such as the boycotting of goods and passive resistance, which he later adopted and called satyagraha.[80] Gandhi was a disciple of Blavatsky’s successor, Annie Besant (1847 – 1933), who was also “deeply impressed” by Tilak.[81] 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 (1854 –1934), a former priest of the Church of England and a known pedophile.[82] They traveled throughout India, speaking to large crowds, calling for a re-awakening of ancient Hindu culture which they considered superior to the materialism of Western civilization. “Their call for a spiritual Indian renaissance,” explains Isaac Lubelsky, “was motivated by their belief in a radical global spiritual revolution that would take place as its immediate result.”[83] Lubelsky adds:

 

With the Theosophists’ original interest in Hermetic philosophy, Kabbalah and Western occult sciences, they saw the Hindu texts as cryptic and laden with hidden significance, to be viewed in a Gnostic light and interpreted by means of Gnostic terms. Such was their interpretation of various Hindu scriptures, which they perceived as belonging to the same corpus of writings that included the Corpus Hermeticum, for example, or Giordano Bruno’s writings. In other words, the Theosophists were certain that the same esoteric doctrine underlay the Hindu, the Egyptian and Western esoteric traditions.[84]

 

In 1888, Ghandi had travelled to London, England, to study law at University College London, where he met members of the Theosophical Society. 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.”[85] The organization’s motto inspired Gandhi to develop one of his central principles, that “all religions are true.”[86] Gandhi had met Blavatsky and Besant in 1889.[87] 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. In a letter he wrote to Besant in 1905, he expressed his “reverence” of her.[88] Besant bestowed on Ghandi the title by which he became famous, “Mahatma,” a Hindu term for “Great Soul,” and the same name by which Theosophy called its own Ascended Masters.[89]

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.”[90] 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 (1871 – 1945), for whom Gandhi at one point left his wife in 1908.[91] To work with Gandhi, Kallenbach recommended Sonja Schlesin (1888 – 1956), Jewish family in Moscow, who became a lifelong friend to him.

In 1904, Ghandi met the Jewish Theosophist Henry Polak (1882 –1959), who worked in collaboration with him against racial discrimination in South Africa. Though Gandhi was concerned for the plight of the Indians of South Africa, of white Afrikaaners and Indians, he wrote: “We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they do.”[92] 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.”[93]

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 – 1964), who would later become the first Prime Minister of an independent India in 1947, joined the INC, rose to become the leader of a progressive faction during the 1920s, and eventually of the Congress, receiving the support of Gandhi, who was to designate him as his political heir. Nehru was educated in England at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and trained in the law at the Inner Temple. According to Catherine Lowman Wessinger, like many young Indians, Nehru received his first political experience as member of the All-India Home Rule League, founded by Annie Besant.[94] Nehru into the Theosophical Society at the age of just thirteen. “Mrs. Besant herself performed the ceremony of initiation,” Nehru wrote.[95] Two years earlier, Irish Theosophist Ferdinand Brooks became Nehru’s home teacher, who was recommended by Besant to his father. “Apart from studies,” Nehru wrote, “F. T. Brooks brought a new influence to bear upon me which affected me powerfully—this was theosophy.”[96] Nehru’s interest in Theosophy inspired him to study the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures, which, according to B.R. Nanda, were Nehru’s “first introduction to the religious and cultural heritage of [India].... [They] provided Nehru the initial impulse for [his] long intellectual quest which culminated… in The Discovery of India.”[97] In The Discovery of India, Nehru references the Upanishads, Vedas, and textbooks on ancient history to recount the development of India from the Indus Valley civilization, through the changes in socio-political changes introduced by every foreign invader, to the present day conditions. Nehru later admitted, “I have become a queer mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.”[98]

 

 


[1] Charles Allen. Kipling’s Kingdom (Michael Joseph, 1987), pp. 213–214.

[2] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 317

[3] Ibid., p. 307; Strube. Global Tantra, p. 38.

[4] Blavatsky. Isis Unveiled, Vol 1 (Wheaton, Ill: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), p. 626; cited in Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” pp. 103–104.

[5] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress.”

[6] Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century,”  p. 7.

[7] Alastair Lawson. “Eton, the Raj and modern India.” BBC (March 9, 2005). Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4309213.stm

[8] “Some Very Well Known Indian Freemasons.” Grand Freemasonry Lodge of India. Retrieved from https://www.masonindia.in/index.php/some-very-well-known-indian-freemasons/

[9] “No. 22523.” The London Gazette (June 25, 1861), p. 2622.

[10] Helena Blavatsky. Blavatsky Collected Writings Online. Retrieved from http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v1/outline_prior_public.htm

[11] Kedourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh, p. 57.

[12] Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century,”  p. 9.

[13] Ibid.,  p. 8.

[14] Mission de l’Inde (Dualpha Editions, 2006), p. 152-153; Cited in Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century,”  p. 14.

[15] Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century,”  p. 14.

[16] Ibid.,  p. 16.

[17] Mission de l’Inde (Dualpha Editions, 2006), p.15-157; cited in Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century,”  p. 16.

[18] Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century,”  p. 16.

[19] Ibid.,  p. 16.

[20] S. R. Mehrotra. The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha: The Early Phase, 1870-1880 (School of Economics, 1969).

[21] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 104.

[22] Ibid.

[23] S. Radhakrishnan. Living with a Purpose (Orient Paperbacks, 2005), p. 34.

[24] Aurobindo Ghosh. Bankim Tilak Dayanand (Calcutta 1947), p. 1.

[25] Cited in Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 320.

[26] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 103.

[27] Strube. Global Tantra, p. 83.

[28] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 104.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid., 106–107.

[31] Ibid., p. 108.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid., p. 109.

[34] Ibid., p. 103.

[35] Mahmood, ABM. “British Indian Association, The.” Banglapedia (June 18, 2021). Retrieved from https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php/British_Indian_Association,_The

[36] “Ananda Mohun Bose profile.” Making Britain. Retrieved from https://www5.open.ac.uk/research-projects/making-britain/content/ananda-mohun-bose

[37] Asoka Kr. Sen. The Educated Middle Class and Indian Nationalism (Progressive Publishers, 1988), p. 102. 

[38] Strube. Global Tantra, p. 83.

[39] Roper Lethbridge. The Golden Book of India (New York: Macmillan and Co, 1893), pp. 527–528.

[40] Strube. Global Tantra, p. 97.

[41] Ibid., p. 92.

[42] Ibid., p. 94.

[43] Ibid., p. 92.

[44] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 103.

[45] Hugh Chisholm, ed. “Telang, Kashinath Trimbak.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26, 11th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1911), p. 509.

[46] “Malabari, Behramji.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 17, 11th ed. (1911).

[47] Antoinette Burton. At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 161.

[48] Ibid., 160–161.

[49] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” 109–110.

[50] Ibid.,. 110.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.

[53] “Bombay Presidency Association, Background, Features, Founders.” Vajiram & Ravi (December 2, 2024). Retrieved from https://vajiramandravi.com/quest-upsc-notes/bombay-presidency-association/

[54] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 110.

[55] Ibid., p. 111.

[56] Mark Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress.” International Journal of Hindu Studies, 7: 1–3 (2003), p. 102.

[57] Ellic Howe. Fringe Masonry in England, 1870–1885 (Holmes Publishing Group); H.P. Blavatsky. Collected Writings. Volume 3 (Blavatsky Writings Publication Fund, 1968), p. xxvii.

[58] Edward C. Moulton. “Hume, Allan Octavian (1829–1912).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).

[59] Ruth Barton, “‘Huxley, Lubbock, and Half a Dozen Others’: Professionals and Gentlemen in the Formation of the X Club, 1851–1864,” Isis, Vol. 89, No. 3 (September, 1998), p. 412.

[60] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 102.

[61] “Preface and Introduction to the Combined Chronology.” The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett & The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett. Retrieved from https://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/mahatma/ml-ccpre.htm

[62] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 110.

[63] N.S. Gehlot. The Congress Party in India: Policies, Culture, Performance (Deep & Deep Publications. p. 35.

[64] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 111.

[65] Daniel Argov. “Indian National Movement with Special Reference to Surendranath Banerjea and Lajpat Rai.”  (PhD thesis: University of London, June 1964). Retrieved from https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/33772/1/11010545.pdf

[66] Chisholm, ed. “Telang, Kashinath Trimbak.”

[67] D. V. Lokamany. Tilak: Father of Indian Unrest and Maker of Modern India, 1st ed. (John Murray, 1956).

[68] “India” 1723 Constitutions (Quator Coronati).

[69] Deschamps. “Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond.”

[70] The Freemason, 9 (1897); cited in Deschamps. “Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond.”

[71] Deschamps. “Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond.”

[72] “Raja of Khetri 1897.” The Lafayette Negative Archive. Retrieved from http://lafayette.org.uk/khe1245b.html

[73] Fabio Venzi. “Swami Vivekananda: The Mysticc and Freemason Apostle of Universal Brotherhood.” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, 136 (2023), p. 223. Retrieved from http://www.glri.it/pdf/gm/Swami_Vivekananda.pdf

[74] “India” 1723 Constitutions (Quator Coronati).

[75] “Breaking the Spell of the Ages.” A Daily Advancement. (QC WRITES, FMT Spring 2019). Retrieved from https://www.1723constitutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Dadabhai-Naoroji.pdf

[76] “India” 1723 Constitutions (Quator Coronati).

[77] Bevir. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” p. 108.

[78] Nazmul S. Sultan. “Moral Empire and the Global Meaning of Gandhi’s Anti-imperialism.” The Review of Politics, 84: 4 (2022), pp. 545–569.

[79] Editors. “Bal Gangadhar Tilak.” Encyclopedia Britannica (Decemember 5, 2024). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bal-Gangadhar-Tilak

[80] Ibid.

[81] Ali Bhutto. “Dr Annie Besant: A theosophical beacon who transformed Karachi.” The Express Tribune (October 08, 2019). Retrieved from https://tribune.com.pk/story/2074461/dr-annie-besant-theosophical-beacon-transformed-karachi

[82] Carl Olson. The Many Colors of Hinduism: A Thematic-historical Introduction (Rutgers University Press, 2007), p. 330.

[83] Lubelsky. “The Star in the East,” p. 97.

[84] Ibid. p. 98.

[85] Mitch Horowitz. Occult America: White House Seances, Ouija Circles, Masons, and the Secret Mystic History of Our Nation (New York: Bantam Books, 2009), p. 189.

[86] Ibid.

[87] Charles Freer Andrews (Hrsg.): Mahatma Gandhi, Mein Leben. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1983.

[88] Kathryn Tidrick. Gamdhi: A Political and Spiritual Life, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006) p. 60-61.

[89] Ibid., p. 63.

[90] Andrew Roberts. “Among the Hagiographers.” Wall Street Journal (March 26, 2011). Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/SB10001424052748703529004576160371482469358

[91] Ibid.

[92] Ibid.

[93] Ibid.

[94] C.L. Wessinger. “Besant, Annie.” Theosophical Encyclopedia (Manila: Theosophical Publishing House, 10 March 2012). Retrieved http://theosophy.ph/encyclo/index.php?title=Besant,_Annie

[95] Jawaharlal Nehru. The First Sixty Years, Volume 2 (John Day Company, 1965), p. 6.

[96] P.S. Harris & B.N. Swarup. “Nehru, Jawaharlal.” Theosophical Encyclopedia (Manila: Theosophical Publishing House, April 2, 2012). Retrieved from http://theosophy.ph/encyclo/index.php?title=Nehru,_Jawaharlal

[97] B.R. Nanda. The Nehrus: Motilal and Jawaharlal (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 88.

[98] “Nehru, a ‘Queer Mixture of East and West,’ Led the Struggle for a, Modern India; DEVOTED HIS LIFE TO NATION’S CAUSE; Blended Skill in Politics With the Spiritualism of His Mentor, Gandhi.” New York Times (May 28, 1964). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/28/archives/nehru-a-queer-mixture-of-east-and-west-led-the-struggle-for-a.html

Divide & Conquer