Sri
Bhagavan Das was an erudite Hindu and the Former General Secretary of the
Indian Section of the Theosophical Society, and here he reveals the manipulations Besant did with the Central
Hindu College students.
(As published in pamphlet form by
“The Divine Life Press” from a discourse sent to the Editor of “The Christian
Commonwealth”, London, England in 1913.)
SIR,
Will you kindly extend to the undersigned
the fairness and courtesy of your columns to enable him to place before your
readers the following, with reference to Mrs. Besant’s remarks on the “Central
Hindu College,” which appeared in the Christian Commonwealth of 4th June, 1913?
The nature of these makes it unavoidable
to publish a full statement of facts.
To understand the situation clearly
we have to bear in mind that, like every other human being, Mrs. Besant has two
natures, a higher and a lower. Because of her extraordinary gifts and powers,
the manifestation of these two in her are also extraordinary. Because of the
high level of her intellectual development, they work in a correspondingly
subtile and sublimated form. In her case, these two time-old natures, altruism
and egoism, have taken on the particular forms of (1) the wish “to save”
mankind, and (2) the wish “to be regarded as a Saviour” of the same. The two
aspects are very subtly and very closely connected as the poles of a magnet;
and yet are as wide apart and opposed.
While the former wish prevailed on
the whole over the latter, from 1894 to 1907, with the help of good advice and
influence, she did magnificent work: carried the torch of the Ancient Science
of the Spirit from land to land in continuation of the labours of Madame
Blavatsky and under the Presidency of Col. Olcott; enhanced the good influence
of the Theosophical Society; won respect for true Theosophy from erstwhile
scoffers; and helped India in particular by her eloquent and admirable lectures
on the higher Hinduism which is the very core of Theosophy, and by helping to
found and rear the Central Hindu College at Benares.
By this last piece of work
especially, (in which she was naturally given the lead because of her wonderful
gifts of speech and writing combined with her profession of being a Hindu by
faith and her Hindu ways of living in India,) she proved to the
“tangible”-seeking portion of the public also that Theosophy is not mere
day-dreaming but has a very useful practical application; and she thereby built
up her own reputation, for sound and reliable public work, with the people as
well as the Government of the land.
Now that the second nature in her
has been unhappily dominating the first, more and more, since the passing away
of Col. Olcott in 1907 under other guidance and influence, she has been
unconsciously but grievously undermining and bringing confusion upon her own
good work, in a manner which is a source of the greatest possible sorrow to her
old friends and colleagues. These, she now says, 'hate' her and 'persecute'
her, simply because they have been compelled to express dissent publicly from
her recent policy and conduct of affairs in the T.S. and the Central Hindu
College.
Her remarks on the Central Hindu
College in your paper are illustrations of this sad change in her. This
Institution, for which she has done more than any one else perhaps, she now
openly and obviously tries to injure most deeply in the minds of the public by
wild suggestions that it and the Hindu University, into which it is proposed to
be expanded, are mixed up with political seditionists and extremists under the
influence of an alliance of orthodoxy and free thinkers and so on.
That the Hindu University movement -
of which the Honorable the Maharaja of Durbhanga, K.C.I.E., (Members of the
Executive Council of H.K., the Lieutenant Governor of Behar and Orissa) and the
Honorable Dr. Sundar Lal, R.B., C.I.E., Member of the Legislative Council of
H.K., the Lieutenant Governor of the U.P. of Agra and Oudh, and Vice-Chancellor
of the Allahabad University), and the Honorable Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya
(Member of the Imperial Legislative Council of H.E. the Viceroy and
Governor-General of India), are the prominent and officially recognized workers
and office-bearers, (the first and second being respectively President and
Secretary of the Hindu University Society) and Ruling Chiefs like their
Highnesses, the Maharajas of Bikaner, Kashmir, Jodhpur, Gwalior, Indore,
Benares, Udarpore, Alwar, etc., and many Hindu leaders, ex-Justices of High
Courts, Legislative Councillors and others, honoured by the Government and the
public alike, are supporters and donors - that such an educational movement is
in any way mixed up with seditionism and extremism is an idea as fatuously
ludicrous as that the Duke of Sutherland and Lord Haldane and the Rev.
J.J.Campbell, the eloquent exponent of the New Theology, are plotting together
with other Lords and Commoners to blow up the House of Parliament with
dynamite.
The reckless, incoherent,
self-contradictory, incorrect and misleading statements that Mrs. Besant has
been freely making latterly in the public press, have only injured her own
reputation in India with the Government officers as well as all classes of the
public. A plain chronicle of events, condensed as much as possible; will enable
your readers to judge for themselves.
The C.H.C. was founded in July 1898,
in order to do for the numerous sects and sub-divisions of Hinduism what the
T.S. was endeavoring to do for all views and religions. viz., to harmonize, to
rationatize, to liberalize and thereby to preserve essentials and promote
organizing co-operations, as against disruptive blind struggle. Princes and
people helped, both theosophist and non-theosophist, with lands, buildings,
donations, and unremunerated work; and the Government with sympathy and
good-will and the necessary sanctions and permissions, and the College grew and
prospered year by year, under the Presidentship of Mrs. Besant, and won the
confidence, nay, the enthusiasm, of Hindus of almost all shades of opinion,
‘ancient’ as well as ‘modern.’
But with the transfer of Mrs. Besant
from Benares to Adyar in 1907, as President of the T.S., elected under very
peculiar circumstances foreshadowing the coming policies, a change began to
come over the spirit of all her work and surroundings. Despite the suggestions,
advice, entreaties, expostulations and warnings of her old colleagues and
counsellors who had made her work in India possible, she developed more and
more and beyond all due bounds, the germ of person-worship so long held in
restraint.
Entirely proofless claims to
super-physical powers and experiences, to being an Initiate, an Arhat a Mukta
and what not; claims to read Mars and Mercury and the whole Solar System, past,
present and future, (but with careful avoidance of even the most easy test,
such as reading a given page of a closed book); claims to be the sole
authorized agent of ‘the Great White Brotherhood which guides Evolution on
earth’ and to be in communication with ‘the Supreme Director of the world’ and
with ‘the World-Teacher’ etc.; in short, all the elements of sensationalism and
emotionalism - which were sub-dominant and private (confined mostly to the
‘inner’ E.S.T. organization within the T.S.), now began to be predominant and
public.
Differences with colleagues
gradually grew in strength and intensity, in the T.S. as well as the Central
Hindu College . Some of the oldest and best workers of the T.S., Messrs.
Sinnett, Mead and others in the West; Messrs. Keightley, Bhawani Shanker, Miss
Edgar and others in India, either resigned outright or retired practically.
In the spring of 1909, a ‘brother
Initiate’ of Mrs. Besant's, ‘discovered’ the boy, now nicknamed Alcyone, as the
future vehicle of the Coming Christ. In the winter of 1909-1910, what is now
currently and variously known as the ‘J. K. cult,’ ‘Alcyone worship,’
Maitreya-Christ-Advent, etc., all comprehended (together with later
developments) ‘neo-theosophy’, in the convenient word, was started more or less
definitely.
In the winter of 1910-1911, or
earlier, a small private ‘Group’ was formed, consisting mostly of C.H.C.
staff-members and students ‘pledged’ to devotion and loyalty and obedience and
service to Mrs. Besant. The exact terms of the pledge have not been publicly
disclosed, but the purport is undisputed. What should students have to do with ‘private
groups’ and ‘secret Societies’ and ‘confidential pledges’, etc.?
Fortunately a psychological law
ordains that such students’ groups’ affairs should not long remain secret.
Shortly after, in January, 1911, was started publicly by the then Principal of
the C.H.C., as the chief member of the ‘Group,’ an ‘Order’ called The Order of
the Rising Sun with the idea of ‘preparing for a Coming World-Teacher’ as its
publicly avowed central idea, and the creed that the boy J.K., (Alcyone) would
be the ‘vehicle’ of the ‘Coming Christ-Maitreya-Bodhisattva’ etc., as it’s
privately understood creed, to spread which amongst the students was the duty
of the inner ‘pledged group’. Some 170 members of the C.H.C. (staff and
students) were enrolled. The ‘Order’ began to be pushed within the C.H.C. with
usual sectarian zeal. Friction began between the members of the O.R.S. and the
‘Group’ on the one hand, and on the other, those of the staff and students who
stood out despite of pressure.
In April, 1911, on remonstrance by
the older members of the managing Committee, Mrs. Besant arranged that the
Order of the Rising Sun should be disbanded. But this was mere show. When the
disbandment was announced to the managers, it had already been arranged to
replace the O.R.S. on a larger scale by ‘The Order of the Star in the East’,
with the Principal, Head Master, and various Professors of the C.H.C. as the
Private and other Secretaries of the boy J.K. as Head of the Order, and Mrs.
Besant as Protectress of the whole.
This rejuvenated Order began to be
pushed and ‘the Coming Christ’ to be advertised like a stage-play, in the most
perverted and gushing language, on the principle of selling the skin before
killing the bear, amongst the general public as well as in the T.S., and
scarcely more quietly within the C.H.C. In the summer of 1911, side by side
with this public activity, there was started by Mrs. Besant within the E.S.T. (Eastern
School, or Esoteric Section, of Theosophy, an ‘inner’ organization recruited
from the members of the T.S.), a written pledge of absolute obedience to
herself without cavil or delay. This fact, ‘private and confidential’ at the
time, is now public property since the Madras law-suits.
As was naturally unavoidable where
person-worship began to be so acutely emphasized, very serious differences
began in all circles and departments of work with which Mrs. Besant was
connected.
In the same summer of 1911, the
Hindu University movement, began in 1904, but dormant in the interim, was taken
up strongly by its promoters; a scheme of Mrs. Besant’s, first discussed
amongst friends in 1907, for a ‘University of India’, on all-including
Theosophical lines, having been made impracticable by the wish of Musalman
leaders for a separate University. It was tacitly understood by all concerned,
from the very beginning of the Hindu University movement that the C.H.C. would
serve as nucleus.
This was obvious - on grounds of
aims, ideals, public sentiments, as also of finance. There could be no sense at
all in keeping the C.H.C. out of that movement. The Hindu public could not give
monetary support to the C.H.C. separately from the Hindu University, and the
Hindu University could only be glad to have a ready-made first-class college to
begin with. Some of the foremost supporters and workers of the Hindu University
had already been long connected with the C.H.C., as Patrons, Vice-Patrons or
Trustees. So the C.H.C. management and the Hindu University movement were only
too anxious all along to inter-work and amalgamate.
But a very great difficulty was
caused by the simultaneous overzealous propagandism of Mrs. Besant and her
followers in respect to the O.S.E. and ‘neo-theosophy’. The confidence of the
Hindu public in the catholicity of spirit of the C.H.C. management was greatly
disturbed.
In August, 1911, the trustees of the
C.H.C., to allay the apprehension in the public mind that the C.H.C. was being
diverted from its constitutional broad and liberal Hinduism into a bizarre and
unhealthy personal-cult and bigoted Second-Adventism, passed formal resolutions
to the effect that the Institution had nothing to do with any such Orders as
those of the ‘Rising Sun’ or the ‘Star in the East’. But such resolutions
clearly could not abolish the emotionally delicious sectarianism into which
Mrs. Besant and her pledged ‘Groups’ had now converted their former less-immediately-sweet
humanitarianism.
However, after much difficulty and
discussion in the public press, caused by the vagaries going on within the
C.H.C. and elsewhere, certain conditions were agreed upon in writing, as below,
between the promoters of the Hindu University on the one hand and Mrs. Besant
on the other, on 22nd October, 1911. The conditions were:
1. That the name of the University
shall be the Hindu University.
2. That the first governing body shall
consist of representatives of the Hindu Community and Mrs. Annie Besant and
representative Trustees of the Central Hindu College.
3. That the Theological faculty shall
be entirely in the hands of the Hindus.
4. That the petition for a charter now
before the Secretary of State for India shall be withdrawn.
Shortly after, on 24th, December,
1911, resolutions were passed by the Trustees, agreeing that the C.H.C. should
become part of the Hindu University. Neither the promoters of the University
nor the C.H.C. trustees have deviated from the conditions and the policy agreed
to by them and Mrs. Besant; only she has changed her attitude. The neo-theosophic
propagandism within (as without) the C.H.C. continued, even after the above
agreements and resolutions, in a score of evasive and elusive forms. Inner
‘Groups’ and ‘Esoteric Section Groups’ of persons formally pledged to obedience
of Mrs. Besant, ‘Leagues of Service’ of various kinds, ‘Orders of S.E.’ and
‘S.I.’ and ‘D.I.’, ‘Co-Masonry Lodges’, ‘Temple of the R. C.’, and
corresponding badges, bands, ‘regalia’, ‘jewels’ and ‘pink’ and ‘blue’ and
‘yellow’ scarfs, and ‘magnetized ribbons’, and ‘stars’ in pin-brooch and button
forms, etc., multiplied and replaced one another in interest like mushrooms in
the raintime, a very fever of restless sound and movement hiding back of
substance and of wise purpose.
Fuss of the most absurd and
mischievous kind became rampant. Lectures, meetings, night-classes, outside the
college rooms and buildings, took place perpetually in the neighboring T.S.
premises and private residences, for expounding the doctrines of neo-theosophy
and especially the book called ‘At the Feet of the Master’ alleged to have been
written down by Alcyone [J. Krishnamurti,] as the embryonic scriptures and
revelation of ‘the Embryo of a New Religion’ as Mrs. Besant declares the O.S.E.
to be. Resident students were advised, and a number of them began, to keep
photos of Alcyone, as the ‘vehicle’ of the ‘Coming Christ’ and himself an
‘Initiate of the Great White Brotherhood’ (and Mrs. Besant and one or two other
living persons,) ‘on the threshold of divinity’, and to worship them with
flowers, incense, etc.
Old and young believers prostrating,
and genuflected literally, at the feet of the living original when within
reach. Efforts were made to so allot the seats in the boarding-houses of the
College that a member of the pledged ‘Group’ should have charge of and
influence three or four Juniors and gradually lead them in the direction of the
‘Group’, and ‘its only true faith’. The then Principal of the College, [who had
founded the O.R.S.] proclaimed in his lectures in the neighboring T.S. Hall and
elsewhere, that he was a ‘High Disciple of the Master’; and that the C.H.C. was
‘founded only to prepare for the Advent of the World-Teacher’.
The legitimate work of the College
was neglected and suffered, and lack of discipline and insubordination towards
those teachers, professors and other office-bearers who did not approve of
these doings, began. Yet for the sake of old friendship and past
collaborations, these insubordinations and breaches of discipline were
~persistently overlooked~ and smothered over, by the older Trustees and
Managers, instead of being ‘fanned into flame,’ as ‘Mrs. Besant most
incorrectly alleges’. Even to the neglect of their plain duty, they continued
to avoid taking formal steps to call to account the pledged votaries of Mrs.
Besant on the C.H.C. staff who were disregarding and breaking, in the letter as
well as in the spirit, the wishes and resolutions of the Trustees.
No official action was ever taken
with regard to any of these doings, except twice: once as already mentioned,
when resolutions were passed by the Trustees, publically disassociating the
College from the new and strange Orders, in August, 1911, and again in May,
1912, when the Managing Committee requested Mrs. Besant as Editor of the C.H.C.
Magazine not to introduce her pet World-Teacher into the pages of that Magazine
as had then recently been done.
It seems that within or without the
O.S.E., there is yet another core-Order called the ‘O.S.L.’, about which Mrs.
Besant and other friends evaded giving information when asked, but which, it
seems, was formed in 1911, and consists of the ‘crème de la crème’ from amongst
the [then] C.H.C. students and others who are being specially trained for
acting the part of Apostles when Alcyone receives the afflatus and takes up the
role of the ‘Coming Christ’!
In 1912, a public discussion was
carried on in the pages of the ‘Theosophy in India’, as to whether the pushing
of the O.S.E. with its very specific and dogmatic creed within the T.S., in the
manner in which such pushing was being obviously carried on, was or was not in
accordance with the Constitutional Rules and objects of the T.S. For the
inception of these “discussions regarding the T.S. Policy,” the undersigned was
undoubtedly responsible; and hence, perhaps the special anger against him. At
that time he was the General Secretary of the Indian Section of the T.S., as
well as Secretary of the C.H.C. As such he felt it his duty to invite, in the
pages of the Sectional Gazette, the attention of the members of the T.S., to
the immanent danger of the broad and all inclusive objects of the T.S. being
swamped by the clear-cut, narrow, exclusive and zealously propagated credo of
the O.S.E.
As the result of these discussions,
Mrs. Besant admitted publicly that the O.S.E. was “the Embryo of a New
Religion” which must not be identified with the T.S. “the representative of
Universal Religion,” but claimed that she had the right to push it within the
T.S. as much as anybody else had the right to push any other opinion. Other
members differed entirely from this extreme theory and profession (which will
appear in a moment, worked out very peculiarly in the hands of Mrs. Besant),
and while unable to question the obviously uncontrollable right of every one
‘to think and believe’ as he pleased, thought that the right to ‘preach and
proselytise’ was limited within the T.S. by the Constitution of the T.S.
In any case, the Discussions failed
to change Mrs. Besant’s practice in the T.S., as the Trustees’ Resolution had
failed to check the O.S.E. propagandism by the ‘Group’ within the C.H.C. She
went on nourishing and developing this parent-bursting ‘Embryo of a New
Religion’ within the womb of the T.S. in such a fashion that the father of its
juvenile [figure] Head found himself compelled to go to the Civil Court to
recover from Mrs. Besant the custody of his minor sons, viz., the Head of the
O.S.E. and his younger brother, who were being exploited and transformed into
‘shows’ for no fault of their own.
Mrs. Besant, on her part found it
desirable, as a tactical counterblast to go, together with another member of
the Esoteric Section, to the Criminal Courts, with charges of defamation
against various people; charges based on a newspaper article referring
specifically to another person and published nearly two years before. She wrote
at that time in one of her many journals, of her “Captains fretting under the
embargo laid upon them by their General [herself], and springing out upon the
enemy as soon as the prohibition was withdrawn” by her, etc.
These cases began with the winter of
1912-1913. In April and in May, 1913, both the Civil and Criminal Courts
decided against Mrs. Besant. The two judgments at least ought to be perused in
full by every one who would learn facts accurately. Messrs. Goodwin & Co.,
[Malypore, Madras] have published the proceedings of the Civil Court case, in a
separate volume, entitled “Mrs. Besant and the Alcyone Case.” The contents
speaks for itself. Appeals and applications to higher Courts by her are now
pending. Other regrettable occurrences took place in this last winter so eventful
for the T.S. and the C.H.C.
...
Because the German Section, under
the General Secretary-ship of Dr. Steiner, opposed the pushing of the O.S.E.
within the T.S. in Germany. Mrs. Besant, as President of the T.S., in March,
1913, dischartered and expelled from the T.S. the whole of that Section with
all its Branches and over two thousand members, cancelling the diplomas of all
these. She so successfully worked her theory, (that anyone may ‘push within’
the T.S. any view he pleases,) that she has ‘pushed out’ of that T.S. all these
two thousand members and more at one push - simply because they did not approve
of her O.S.E. propaganda. It appears that in the course of the last few months,
the two thousand have swelled to three thousand, because of resignations, in
consequence of this highhanded procedure, in England, France, Italy,
Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Russia, and elsewhere, also.
Such an autocratic, unconstitutional
and tactless act undoing the good work of a whole generation of laborers in the
cause of Universal Brotherhood and the federation of the nations, would have
been inconceivably impossible for Col. Olcott., or even for the Mrs. Besant
herself of five or six years ago. The various Sections of the T.S. have always
been understood to be entirely autonomous. They might make their own rules and
additional conditions of membership. Individual Branches have been permitted to
be denominational, even as individual members may and do have their own private
creeds, without seeking aggressively to convert others.
With a little more tact and balance,
and a little less self-assertiveness and impulsive haste, with a few more of
the long-sighted Counsellors whom she had ‘shaken out’ (in her favorite phrase)
and a few less of the ‘obedient’ courtiers whom she had ‘taken in’ instead, on
the General Council of the T.S., she could most easily have arranged to put the
O.S.E. members of the T.S. in Germany into separate Branches and a Section of
their own, and retained all the older members also intact. But as she has
publicly stated, all of the members of the General Council of the T.S. now
belong, with one or two exceptions perhaps, to the ‘Esoteric Section,’ prime
condition of membership which is, the formal written pledge of absolute
obedience to Mrs. Besant; and so while the loud profession is freedom of
thought ‘for all,’ the practice is sedulously ‘for herself,’ and her pledged
votaries only, while the theory is that the O.S.E., “must not be identified
with the T.S.,” the practice is that the T.S. must be merged in the O.S.E.
Let us turn to the C.H.C. to bring
the narrative up to date. In March and April 1913, there came into the hands of
another Manager and Trustee, a printed ‘letter,’ covering some three foolscap
pages, bearing the signature of the gentleman who was then Principal of the
C.H.C., the date, 20th October 1912, and the imprint of Mrs. Besant’s ‘Vasanta
Press,’ Adyar, Madras, and not bearing any word like ‘private’ or ‘personal’ or
‘confidential.’
In this ‘Letter’ amazingly
extravagant and fantastic statements are made as regards Mrs. Besant; she is
hailed repeatedly as one who is “to become one of the greatest Rulers of the
World of Gods and men;” mention is made of “the recognition of the ‘God without
us’ which made us members of this Group from which we draw our life today;” it
is said “that her light to ours was and is as the rays of the Sun at noon-time
to the rays of a lamp at night, and we did not desire to examine the Sun to see
under what conditions it might possibly ray forth a more dazzling brilliance,”
and the members of the ‘Group’ are reminded that “We ‘pledged’ ourselves in our
hearts that we should strive to become her true and loyal servants” that “we
have determined to follow her and support her to the uttermost, and that
however much she might become discredited, even by those nearest and dearest to
her, we, at least, would remain true to her, seeking only to understand ‘her’
and to help to carry out ‘her plan’, whatever it might be.”
Thus complete was the hypnosis and
surrender of reason which was sought to be effected amongst the votaries. It
was a case of emotionalism run amuck. The finest emotions, useful, beautiful,
nay necessary to full and rounded life, when controlled and well-directed by a
balanced wisdom, become instruments of disaster when allowed to become masters
instead of servants and to run away in wrong paths. The sublime and the
ridiculous, health and disease are separated only by a hair’s breadth.
The trustee and manager into whose
hands a copy of this astonishing document came, with the information that ‘it
had been circulated’ amongst a number of the C.H.C. Students, informed the
Secretaries of the College, and sent the letter with comments on the same for
publication in a daily paper, in order to show to the public how the
person-worship-creeds of Mrs. Besant’s ‘neo-theosophy’ were being sown and
grown within the C.H.C., despite the resolutions of the Trustees.
On publication of the rhapsody, a
great outcry, on the lines of ‘injured innocence’ was raised by the members of
the ‘Group,’ and the undersigned and others were charged with ‘dishonorable
persecution’ and hatred of Mrs. Besant and her followers. [These words are
repeated by Mrs. Besant in her article under reply.] It is not quite clear what
made these persons peculiarly sensitive at this particular time; for not much
less ecstatic statements had been made before, times out of number, by them and
by Mrs. Besant, in public speeches and writings.
Perhaps the law-suits had made the
atmosphere especially tense. As to the dishonorableness of the publication,
competent judges of such matters have pronounced that it was dishonorable only,
if it be dishonorable to expose what cannot be called otherwise than gross treason
to the Constitution and the ideals of the C.H.C., and to bring to light, and to
the bar of public opinion, under-hand or half-concealed or openly defiant
efforts to convert students to a grotesque person-worship and demoralizing and
soul-stunting blind obedience to Mrs. Besant.
After the publication of this letter
on 13th April, 1913 , [in the ‘Leader’ of Allahabad ,] and after the delivery
of judgment against Mrs. Besant on the 15th April 1913, in the Civil Case at
Madras, and with her previous approval, out of a total of about seventy members
of the staff of the C.H.C. and the attached School and Girl's School, some
twenty, [six honorary and the rest salaried] - all pledged members of the
‘Group’ and the Esoteric Section - presented an ultimatum, on the 27th April
1913, to the Trustees and the Managers, to the effect that unless the
undersigned was “condemned publicly, unequivocally, and unreservedly,” they
would resign in a body.
Presumably the idea was that if such
condemnation was made, the undersigned and a number of the other oldest workers
of the C.H.C. who were opposed to the propagation of neo-theosophy, in its
various forms within an institution founded for far other purposes, would
naturally resign and withdraw; and then the whole College - and School - full
of some one thousand impressionable youths and boys and one hundred girls would
become the happy hunting-ground and recruiting preserve of the propagandists of
‘neo-theosophy,’ pledged to absolute obedience of Mrs. Besant, the Protectress of
the Head of the ‘Embryo of a New Religion’ who was the destined vehicle of the
‘World-Teacher;’ and if the condemnation could not be secured, then they could
retire under the cover of the cry of ‘dishonorable persecution’ etc., from a
place where their extraordinary doings were beginning to be challenged
publicly.
The Trustees and Managers saw no
reason to condemn the undersigned as desired: and when the resignants refused
to reconsider their conditions, the Managers found themselves compelled to
accept their resignation and look for others to fill their places.
Mrs. Besant herself posted, to the
Trustees on the evening of the 15th April 1913, from Adyar, a printed letter
bearing the previous date, in which she says, … “I should have liked to have
continued President of the Board of Trustees for the short time which remains
ere the C.H.C. is merged in the Hindu University . After fourteen years of work
it would have been pleasant to have worked to the end. But I appear to have
lost for some reason the confidence and good will of some of my old friends. …
I therefore place my resignation … in your hands … If you signify your wish
that the resignation should be accepted, I bid you farewell with regret … If
you say that I should remain, I will gladly do so, until our cherished charge
is handed over to the Hindu University … “The meeting of the Trustees which
considered this letter, out of gratitude and regard for her past invaluable
services to the College, requesting her to remain President.
And now we have the very painful
spectacle of Mrs. Besant ‘descending,’ as an Indian Journal recently remarked,
“from the role of Spiritual Teacher, to that of revengeful person.” She is now
endeavoring to injure the C.H.C., of which she continues President, by creating
a prejudice against it in the mind of the public of England, through the pages
of ‘The Christian Commonwealth’; (in India she has lost the confidence alike of
the Indian and English) in a way which only the memory of her past good work
prevents one from characterizing adequately. Yet her present policy must be
publicly and unmistakably resisted by her former colleagues themselves, and in
the interest of her own better-self and of the preservation of her own past
good work.
Verily, Mrs. Besant’s crowning blunder,
in a life full of blunders (admitted by herself in her Autobiography and
elsewhere) as well as of good works and generous impulses, has been the asking
for, and the receiving of the pledges of obedience to herself without cavil or
delay, etc. - an act of over- weaning presumption against the God in every man,
which has called down upon her the wrath of her own indwelling spirit, so that
ever since she encouraged and started them, her mind has worked less and less
correctly and confusion has fallen even worse and worse upon her work, losing
to the T.S. many thousand of old members, alienating from her all her old
co-workers and co-founders of the C.H.C., and destroying the confidence in her
of the Indian public.
Such one-sided pledges of obedience
to mere mortals, feeble and frequently erring, without even any adequate
counter pledge of loyalty and service and rational and moral direction, have
been associated in history only with that dread thing of black soul-gloom - and
all evil for which the English language has no other than Jesuitism.
Great indeed, is the change in Mrs.
Besant's mind. From the somewhat overeager democracy of her earlier years,
through the restrained period of the golden mien of true Theosophy, she has now
passed over to a grotesquely exaggerated and openly avowed hierarchical
autocracy [vide, e.g. ‘The Herald of the Star’ for July 1912, one of her many
organs] Down to nearly the close of 1911, the undersigned was struggling, on
the one hand, though with ever-growing doubts and misgivings, in the pages of
various Indian Journals, for Mrs. Besant, and against her critics; and, on the
other hand, he was doing what he could by friendly private talks and
remonstrances with Mrs. Besant and members of the pledged band, to check the
evil growth within the T.S. and the C.H.C. But the subsequent rapid development
have forced him to realize with the deepest sorrow that Mrs. Besant and her
pledged votaries have justified their critics and put her older friends to
shame.
The persecution of which Mrs. Besant
and her votaries accuse these older friends, is indeed the same in quality with
which the lamb of Esop was charged by the wolf. Fortunately, in the present
case the ‘persecuting’ lamb has had, up to now, the help of a protecting
Providence , so far as the C.H.C. at least is concerned, in the shape of the
support of the majority of the College Trustees and Managers. As to ‘hatred’ -
to object to take a pledge of obedience to Mrs. Besant, to demand tests and
proofs of her ever-expanding claims to marvelous super-physical powers, and,
worse, to express dissent from her policy of booming an all unproven lad as the
vehicle of an equally all-unproven 'World-Teacher' and fail to support her
law-suits, is of course to ‘hate’ her and to take up “a violently hostile attitude.”
She says, “The Hon. Pandit openly
declared that Theosophy would have no part in the Hindustan University.” It is
not ‘Theosophy’ which is objected to; for Theosophy is older than Mrs. Besant,
and indeed is nothing else than ‘Atma-Vidya,’ the Eternal Science of the
Spirit, the very heart of Hinduism and of all religions. But it is Mrs.
Besant’s neo-theosophy that is objected to. At least seven of the Trustees and
Managers of the C.H.C. who have disapproved of Mrs. Besant’s ways and policies
in the recent controversy, are much older in the membership of the T.S. than
Mrs. Besant.
Mrs. Besant’s wildly reckless
statements about “the same great orthodox Party” engineering the Hindu
University movement and “instigating the lawsuit” at Madras ; about extremists
joining in the attack; about “anti-English spirit” etc., are all ‘simply and
utterly untrue.’
It is enough to say here that in her
first written defence in the recent civil suit at Madras , she made practically
the same statements, and Mr. Justice Bakewell characterized them as “highly
Scandalous” and “irrelevant,” and directed that, “the written statement is
ordered to be struck out, since it is impossible to separate the objectionable
portions from the necessary assertions,” and that a fresh and amended written
statement should be filed by her.
To show how incoherently her mind
has been working latterly, I will only quote one instance out of her perpetual
recent self-contradictions. In her article under reply she says, “ the anti-English
spirit … is most regrettable.” In a letter, dated 14th May 1913, which she
addressed to all the Trustees of the C.H.C., and at the same time sent to the
daily press [it appears, e.g. in the Allahabad ‘Leader’ of the 15th May 1913,]
she says, “only one thing is good in the present catastrophe - it is not a
question of race. English and Indian have united to persecute English and
Indian. Mr. Bertram Keightley joins hands with the Hon. Pt. Madan Mohan
Malaviya on the one side, and Mr. Arundale and Mr. P.K. Telang are united on
the other. That at least is well.”
As an unquestionable fact, it has
always been clearly understood that the help of competent and sympathetic
English workers would be engaged and welcomed on the staff and the Senate of
the projected University in ample proportion in respect of all secular matters.
The feeling of the H.U. Society may
be inferred from the fact that it elected Mrs. Besant in the very beginning
i.e., November, 1911, as one of its three Vice-Presidents, notwithstanding the
immediately preceding controversies in the public press over her O.S.E. cult;
and that of the C.H.C. Trustees from their requesting her to remain President
despite her recent most remarkable sayings and doings.
Mrs. Besant has now started a rival
THEOSOPHICAL EDUCATIONAL TRUST, as she mentions at the end of her article under
reply. This is a ‘most misleading misnomer.’ A brief Prospectus of the Trust,
published in the Lucknow ‘advocate’ of the 8th May 1913, says, “The members of
the TRUST will all belong to the Esoteric Section of the T.S., and the
President of the Trustees will be the Head of the Esoteric Section,” i.e. Mrs.
Besant herself, with plenary “discretionary powers.” What this means will
appear in its fullness only when it is remembered that MEMBERS OF THE ESOTERIC
SECTION HAVE TO SIGN A WRITTEN PLEDGE OF ABSOLUTE AND UNCONDITIONED OBEDIENCE,
WITHOUT CAVIL OR DELAY, TO MRS. BESANT. Can such a body be said to be
Theosophical at all?
The work of the T.S. and of
Theosophy is to “universalize” aspirations; that of the E.S. and neo-theosophy
is expressly and acutely to “personalize” them. Indeed, the Esoteric Section as
at present organized and conducted is the veritable antipodes and anticlimax of
the T.S. and of Theosophy. The spirit which will pervade education guided by
such a Trust may be easily inferred.
Let us conclude, when a person like
Mrs. Besant, with a biography full of remarkable changes, full of fine works as
well as bad blunders, having established herself, in her own belief, and that
of her pledged band, as the present chief Spiritual Teacher and Saviour of
Mankind, as “the God without us” now, and as the future “greatest Ruler of the
World of Gods and men,” suddenly adds on the role of political Saviours of
India in particular and predetermined martyr in constant danger of
assassination (‘mirabile dictu’) by anarchist miscreants, (for the quality of
her own pacifism, see her remarks in the ‘Theosophist’ for 1912 on miner’s
strikes, suffragettes, Ulster-demonstrations, etc.,) and proclaims that those
who differ from her are in league with those miscreants, - when this happens,
what explanation can be offered to their own minds by her old friends, who have
worked with her for almost a score of years, and served her as perhaps her own
relations and children have not done, and as perhaps they have not served their
own families - this means much more in India than it does in the West where
customs are different - but are now classed with such miscreants? The only sad explanation that they can
postulate is that she is suffering from mental delusions.
The following quotations from a
recent small book on Psychology by Dr. B. Hart, (‘Cambridge Manuals’) may be of
use in throwing light upon the sorrowful problem:
“Delusions may be of all kinds, but
there are two groups which call for special mention … grandiose and
persecutory. In the former, the patient believes himself to be some exalted
personage, or to possess some other attribute which raised him far above the
level of his fellows … A patient who exhibits the second … believes that
deliberate attempts are made to harm him in some way. Thus he may believe that
certain people are plotting to destroy his life. Both … are often associated
with hallucinations: voices hail the patient as the rightful owner of the
throne, or cover him with abuse and threaten some dire fate. The two types are
frequently combined; for example, a patient may maintain that he is king, but
that an organized conspiracy exists to deprive him of his birthright. In this way
delusions are sometimes elaborated into an extraordinary complicated system and
every fact of the patient’s experience is distorted until it is capable of
taking its place in the delusional scheme …
Delusions of grandeur are, indeed,
almost invariably accompanied by delusions of persecution. The patient cannot
conceal from himself that his claims to exalted rank and position are not
recognized by his environment, but he rationalizes this failure of recognition
by persuading himself that it is the work of a malignant and envious enemy … (p. 32, 33, 87)”
BHAGAVAN DAS
Benares, India. 17. 7. 1913.
"The Divine Life", 614 Oakwood Blvd.
Chicago, Ill., U.S.A.
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