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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