Annie Besant

To see India free, to see her hold up her head among the nations, to see her sons and daughters respected everywhere, to see her worthy of her mighty past, engaged in building a yet mightier future—is not this worth working for, worth suffering for, worth living and worth dying for?

—Annie Besant

She became more Indian than many Indians. The Englishwoman who wore a sari and sat comfortably cross-legged on the floor, using a low table to write on. She read Hindu religious books, translated them from Sanskrit into English and knew more about Hindu philosophy than many of her Indian friends. She believed in reincarnation and thought she had been an Indian in her last birth. For Annie Besant it was India not England that was her true motherland.

Annie Besant was born on 1 October 1847 to an English father—a doctor—and an Irish mother. She lost her father William Wood when she was just five and her mother Emily had to run a boarding house to bring up her children. Strapped for money, Emily asked a friend to bring up Annie. At twenty Annie married Reverend Frank Besant, but it was not a happy marriage. Annie was an ambitious, free-spirited woman who chafed at the genteel and predictable life of a Victorian clergyman’s wife and within five years she had separated from her husband. It was a very hard step to take as her two children were separated too, with the son staying with her husband and the daughter remaining with Annie.

Free at last to follow her dreams, Besant began to write and do social work. She joined a number of liberal organizations like the atheistic Free Thinkers and the socialist Fabian Society. At this time she honed her fine oratorical skills as she spoke at meetings across the country about the philosophy of the Free Thinkers. Her work with the socialist Fabians made her a friend of many leading intellectuals like the British playwright George Bernard Shaw, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, early members of the Society. The Fabians worked to improve the condition of the poor in Britain and its colonies and were often prominent critics of the government. One of Besant’s earliest successes was organizing Britain’s first trade union for women and leading a strike by the women workers of a match factory, demanding safer working conditions.

Then to the surprise of her socialist friends, the atheist-activist Besant suddenly joined the Theosophical Society. This Society had been started by Madame Helena Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Olcott and was deeply into spiritualism, eastern philosophies like Hinduism and Buddhism, and also the occult. What attracted Besant to theosophy was the Society’s aim of building a ‘universal brotherhood of humanity’ that ignored race and religion and preached equality for all.

In 1893 Besant arrived in the country that had fascinated her since her childhood—India. She felt immediately at home at the Theosophical Society campus in Adyar on the outskirts of Madras and was soon seeking ‘the ways of wisdom from the Indian people’. At a time when most educated Indians were somewhat apologetic about their own culture, a European woman so enamoured of India must have been quite a startling experience. Besant soon realized that years of colonial rule and a westernized education system had created a deep inferiority complex among the intelligentsia and with typical energy she immediately began work to correct it.

Annie Besant’s greatest contribution to India was her relentless campaign to revive India’s pride in her culture, religions and history. She toured and lectured constantly, and soon her lectures on theosophy and various aspects of Indian philosophy were packing the auditoriums. Then the Society started schools where the curriculum was a mix of western and Indian subjects. She wanted the education of Indians to be in their own hands and not of the government or the missionaries. In 1898 she founded the Central Hindu College at Benaras in two rooms of a house and a school for girls followed soon after. The college was later handed over to the educationist Madan Mohan Malaviya and became the core of the Benaras Hindu University.

In 1907 Annie Besant was elected the president of the Theosophical Society and remained in the post for the rest of her life. She immediately started the Theosophical Education Trust, and many more schools and colleges were opened in south India. She also started the Scouts and Guides movement in India and the Women’s Indian Association that worked for the education and emancipation of women. It was only in 1914, at the age of sixty-six, that Besant entered political life by starting a journal Commonweal and then a newspaper New India. In both she published a stream of articles critical of the government.

When the First World War started in 1914, Britain needed the support of its colonies and dominions and promised that after the war there would be greater freedom for them. However, India was deeply disappointed to find a big difference between the self-government allowed to the white English-speaking dominions like Canada and Australia and the treatment meted out to Asian and African colonies. This was the time when two Home Rule Leagues, one started by Tilak and the other by Besant, became very active, demanding self-government for India within the British Empire.

Besant’s fiery speeches made the government nervous and her writings often led to fines and penalties but she continued undaunted. She was arrested on a charge of sedition and defended herself in court by showing how the Asian and African colonies were being discriminated against. The government soon regretted its actions as reports of the court proceedings were carried in every newspaper in the country and led to a big rise in the membership of the Home Rule Leagues. Then in June 1917, when the Governor of Madras passed an internment order against the ‘high priestess of Home Rule’ and put her under house arrest, the country rose in protest. Besant had designed a red-and-green striped flag for the Home Rule Leagues and she flew it defiantly from her garden. There was criticism even in Europe and US President Woodrow Wilson spoke out in support of Home Rule. Besant was released three months later.

Riding on a wave of popularity, Besant was elected the first women president of the Indian National Congress at its session in Calcutta. She was fêted as the ‘living symbol of Mother India’ and in her address made a typical emotional appeal: ‘Western-born but in spirit Eastern, cradled in England but Indian by choice and adoption, let me stand as the symbol of the union between Great Britain and India—a union of hearts and free choice, not of compulsion, and therefore of a tie which cannot be broken.’

Matters within the party took a new turn after the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre of 1919. The mood of the people had changed as they had finally lost their faith in the justice and fair play of the Sahibs. One man who sensed it quickly was Mahatma Gandhi who knew the time was now right for a mass non-cooperation agitation. Besant was still convinced that progress should be made through constitutional reforms and that any campaign by the people would only degenerate into violence and anarchy. She accused Gandhi of leading ‘a revolution, a rebellion’ and Gandhi, accepting the charge, explained, ‘A revolution I do want and I think it absolutely necessary.’

At one time Besant had been the heroine of the young, including Jawharlal Nehru, but now she failed to gauge the mind of the people. It was Gandhi’s path that won the support of the party and Besant gradually faded from the political scene, though her work with the Theosophical Society continued. In 1925 she tried to get a Commonwealth of India Bill—seeking a constitution for India as a full-fledged dominion—passed in the British parliament but failed. Annie Besant continued to be the president of the Theosophical Society until her death at Adyar on 20 September 1933.

At a time when there were very few women in public life in India, Annie Besant inspired and enriched our freedom movement with her passionate and energetic support for the cause. She not only made India her home but also taught Indians to once again be proud of their heritage. Jawaharlal Nehru said Annie Besant enabled India ‘to find her own soul’. An eloquent speaker, experienced campaigner and formidable organizer, she brought her unique intensity and vigour to the national movement and proved that India was truly her real motherland.