ANNIE BESANT AND ARYAVARTA --- INVOKING THE ANCIENT INDIAN WISDOM

After 1893, and until her death, Annie Besant choose to direct her superabundant energy towards India. She almost ruled the country as a high priestess over a sect whose members were meticulously engaged in studying ancient Indian scriptures. Her objective was to seize the fulcrum of contemporary power and to use it to bring about an irreversible shift in India’s political direction. Her enterprise seemed to be planned. Firstly, she considered it necessary to revive the faith of the people in the old religion. Her next step was to combine traditional learning with the best of Western education and then finally to enter politics.1 Her aim was rather visionary. She wanted to bring about a universal and theocratic state where men lived fostered with the feeling of brotherhood and humanism. As Adyar was the headquarter of the Colonel Olcott’s Theosophy, she choose Benaras, the holy Kashi which was the Hindu Rome as the headquarter of an independent Indian section of Theosophy.