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THE MISSIONARIES MANIPULATIONS AND THEIR HATRED OF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY


 
In this article, William Judge describes the manipulations carried out by the missionaries to try to Christianize the Hindus and how the emergence of the Theosophical Society became an obstacle to their objectives.
 
 
THEOSOPHY AS A CULT IN INDIA
 
The pictures fabricated in our youthful minds, with infinite care by missionary zeal, regarding India, are fast fading away. And, as the unreal image dissolves into the nebulous recesses of the missionary headquarters, the outlines of things as they really are in that country come into view. What reasons these paid servants of the Church had for thus beginning a deception, and for now keeping it up, we need not inquire into. It is sufficient to know that they do so.
 
The other day, in Brooklyn, N.Y., a returned missionary said, in a public meeting, that the poor Hindus need and are asking for the gospel of the Christians; that the condition of their women is deplorable; and lastly, to cap the climax, that Buddhism never could satisfy the intellectual needs of the people there, that it is fast losing ground, and that now is the time for the good Christian here to step in, payout his money, and send more men—like the speaker—to bring these poor people into the true fold.
 
Such is the constant cry at every missionary meeting!
 
 
In order intelligently to consider the question of Theosophy as a cult in India, it is necessary first to see how much truth there is in the statements we have just quoted.
They are undoubtedly false, and flow either from ignorance or from willful tergiversation.
 
The proposition that Buddhism will not satisfy the needs of the people is a species of trick, because the Hindus do not, except in some few cases, hold to Buddhism. They are of the Brahmanical and Mohammedan faiths, and of course do not pay any attention to Buddhism. But those who are Buddhists—in Ceylon nearly all the people, and many in India—could never accept Christianity, because the latter is based on as much faith, suppression of intelligence, and miracle as the most corrupt form of Buddhism; while it is well known and accepted among students and thinkers that pure Buddhism is of the highest metaphysical and intellectual character.
 
The experiment only succeeds in cases where, as has been done in Ceylon, the Roman Catholic Church makes converts by adopting and adapting later and popular Buddhist practices and legends as a part of the religion offered to the people, just as was done in the early part of our era, when pagan feasts, fasts, and saints were incorporated into the new religion.
 
 
For about the last fifty years, the English government has been giving to the Hindus free education in the colleges which confer degrees; and, if there is anything a Hindu of the better class likes, it is a degree given by a competent college. But these colleges are absolutely unsectarian; while those schools and colleges which the missionaries established are, of course, sectarian, according to the particular sect to which the missionaries belong.
 
Previous to the establishment of these governmental institutions, almost the only way in which Hindus could learn English — absolutely necessary to them from the ever — growing English influences with which so much trade had to be done — was by going to the schools of the missionaries, in which English was taught. Several Hindu merchants have said to me, in India, that that was their only reason for attending those schools, and that they had a feeling of gratitude to the missionaries for the service thus rendered, but that they never did and never could accept their religion.
 
Since the spreading of the governmental colleges, the natives attend there, to the sorrow of the missionaries. But the natives like it better for two reasons: first, because they give degrees under government auspices; and, second, because they are let completely alone in their religious convictions. To all this, the missionaries have made and are now making violent objection; and each issue of the Epiphany in Calcutta, and other organs in their interest, are full of the matter. They have even gone so far as to try to influence the British government.
 
Having understood this, let us now pass to another branch of the subject.
 
 
The young Hindus of whom we have been speaking are, by nature, in possession of metaphysical faculties of the highest order, transmitted to them by heredity, and necessarily cultivated not only by the system of religious teaching, but also by the very structure of the language in which they have to study their religious and philosophical tenets.
 
In Madras, I have given out prizes at Sanskrit schools to little boys of from four to five years of age, as well as to those older. The Sanskrit is not, properly speaking, a dead language; for it is in constant use at any gathering of pandits met for religious or sociologic discussion, and of these there occur many.
 
I remember one which was held at Madras in 1884, to consider the subject of child marriages. The Deputy Collector of Madras, Mr. Ragonath Row, who is also a prominent member of the Theosophical Society in India, came from the meeting to see me, and told me about the discussion, and that it was conducted altogether in Sanskrit. I have also numerous young and old Hindu friends who all read, and can, if needed, speak in Sanskrit.
 
At the same time, with these changes in the matter of education, there was also going on another change among the young men of India, in that they were beginning to run after and follow English manners and style of thought. They were giving up all hope of reviving Aryan literature, morals, or manners, adopting as much as they might of Western scientific thought in its most materialistic phase.
 
Some of them, deluded by Huxley, Tyndall, Mill, Bain, and others, began to hold to such negations that they believed there was no such thing as Aryan literature or thought. And one of the learned Hindu founders (behind the scenes) of the Theosophical Society said he “went down to Calcutta, and there saw some of the descendants of ancient Aryavarta wearing the philosophical and mental garb of Western pessimism and Western materialism, boldly asserting that Patanjali was an ancient fool.”
 
All the older Hindus deplored this state of things, and vainly longed for a revival of pure Hindu thought and philosophy. The hope seemed indeed vain.
 
At the same time, here in the West, it was thought by some that Christianity had turned out a failure, leaving the people floundering into agnosticism and all forms of materialism.
 
At this point, in 1875, the Theosophical Society was formed in New York, with the distinct design in view of benefiting India and the whole of the Western world at the same time. This was its main object, and is expressed in its first declaration, “Universal Brotherhood.” The means for accomplishing that were only to be found in India; and, therefore, after it had acquired some corporeal form, its headquarters were transferred to Bombay.
 
 
At first, it was viewed by the government with suspicion; for, as Madame Blavatsky was at its head, and she being a Russian, the ridiculous rumor was spread that she was a spy in the pay of the Russian emperor. After a time, that was given up; and the English officials declared that it was no longer tenable, resulting in a real triumph; for many of those high in authority declared that the society was an instrument of great good for India.
 
As soon as this spy theory was abandoned, the Hindus, heretofore deterred from affiliating, began to join in large numbers; for they saw that it [the Society] really was determined to unearth all that is good in the philosophy, in the religions, and in the sciences of ancient India.
 
Instead of being engaged, as so many self-styled scientists in England so often declared, in exploiting phenomena or in getting up a new kind of Spiritualism, it was really organizing Buddhist schools in Ceylon, Sanskrit schools in Hindustan, encouraging Mohammedans to see what, if anything, was to be found of truth in the philosophy of the Sufis, and in bringing together, on one platform, men of the most widely divergent creeds for the purpose of finding out the one truth which must underlie all religion.
 
(This angered the missionaries who saw in the Theosophical Society an obstacle to their desire to evangelize the Orientals. And in a subsequent article, William Judge added.)
 
 
Since the writing of the preceding article in the April Index, I have been asked by several persons, “Why do you speak so oracularly on the subject of Theosophy as a Cult in India?”
 
If any of the statements in that article has an oracular sound, it is due only to faults in expression, caused perhaps by the writer’s profound convictions upon the subject. In consequence of having been in correspondence for over ten years with various learned Hindus, and from personal observations made in India,-not as a foreigner, who is refused intimate relations with the Hindus, but as a theosophist, who, so to say, had known them for years and was entirely in their confidence, the writer had arrived at certainty as to the facts in the case.
 
This feeling naturally produces what some call dogmatic statement and what others feel to be oracular enunciation. But, for all allegations of fact, I can produce evidence in written and printed reports from Indian daily newspapers, the words of others and myself, as well as correspondence.
 
(Boston Index, April 1 & June 3, 1886)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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