Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00602)

Dear Bhakti Ananda Goswami,

Thanks for sharing your further thoughts, which inspire a few 
reflections and/or clarifications:

> thought leaders of an era. Their pseudo-scientific presentation 
> of 'root races' and glorification of an imagined superior 'Aryan' 
> race supplied an important rationale for Euro-centric imperialism. 

Perhaps the attitude of superiority of Kashmiri and Punjabi light 
skinned Indians towards darker South Indians might figure into HPB's 
Aryanism. Maybe the readiness of 20th century Indians to accept the 
Kashmiri Nehru-Gandhi dynasty had something to do with this same 
Aryanism. Yet the dynasty that has been leading the Theosophical 
movement through most of the 20th century has been South Indian, as 
was Krishnamurti. 
snip

> >I have become somewhat disappointed at the lack of honest self-
> reflective interest shown by native Indologists in the subject of 
the 
> genesis of Indo-Aryanism as related to Euro-centrism in general and 
> HPB / Theosophy in particular. That your important work on 
Theosophy 
> has received no critical review from Indian scholars (if I 
understand 
> you correctly) 

That is hopefully not the case, but I have been unable to determine 
otherwise. The Indian publisher did tell me, shortly after its 
release, that it had attracted some positive notice, but failed to 
reply to my inquiry about specifics. Indian periodicals are not 
indexed in USA sources, and the print Indian indexes lag far behind. 
Last time I checked at the Duke University library there were no 
indexes for Indian scholarly journals for the late 90s, (cut off date 
was 1997, this being in 2000), but surely by now there are. So it 
behooves me to go back and check.
snip

> agenda in the Theosophy of HPB and friends. She never reveals any 
> real living masters, and such masters never publicly owned her. 

That ignores the crucial, and hidden-in-plain-sight case of Swami 
Dayananda Sarasvati. (And her mythologizing his disciple Shyamaji 
Krishnavarma in letters to her aunt in Russia.) But after being 
publicly *disowned* by the Master she came to India to publicly 
serve, she was not likely to make the same mistake again. 
Mythologizing her other and later mentors protected her from any such 
embarrassments down the road. (Which would have been problematic had 
she been obliged to explain the deaths of Ranbir Singh, Thakar Singh, 
and Mikhail Katkov, and the upheaval this entailed in her network of 
sponsors.)

, HPB 
> pieced her Mahatmas together out of some real Sikhs, Advaita 
> Vedantist Hindus and others, and their writings. In this 
composite 
> the dominant element is the personality of some real charismatic 
> characters, who I believe are well identified as the Kashmiri 
> Rajas. 

This is the case with the more fully-developed characters, especially 
Koot Hoomi and Morya. But some of the ones more briefly sketched, 
e.g. "The Chohan Lama of Shigatse" are probably not composites but 
fictionalizations of single individuals.

Since she never identified them, and they never publicly 
> owned any relationship to her, I doubt if there was actually a 
master-
> disciple relationship between them. Instead she imagined these 
> charismatic leaders as her Gurus. There was some kind of 
> involvement between them, more likely political, because she was 
> trying to get close to them by offering politics-related 
services. 

True, but the diary entries from Swami Dayananda indicate that he was 
actually helping her learn Sanskrit and monitoring her progress, etc. 
so in that case there is at least an *element* of a guru relationship.
Surely intertwined with a political one though.

> She and her associates had the spy-network and diplomat cards to 
play in the 
> colonial fight for dominance in the region of Kashmir. This no-
> doubt would have given them access to the Rajas, as it is 
apparently 
> did. 

Not just there but in central and northeast India as well, with the 
maharajas of Indore and Varanasi among the most prominent sponsors.
> 
> orbit. HPB used them, and they used her. 

She used Olcott, Olcott used her. A similar case in that their 
spiritual partnership was one of mutual advantage more than mutual 
admiration, when examined closely. Perhaps these origins in 
manipulative and secretive associations have something to do with an 
ongoing atmosphere of suspicion and conspiracy theories in the 
movement they led?

> secrecy ? Were her Rajas Masons? Were they Sufi occultists? 

No, but some of her Middle Eastern mentors were, and her descriptions 
of Mahatmas build upon those of her "Oriental Rosicrucian" mentors in 
the Ottoman Empire.
snip
> publication of my work and receive my degree. Now my health has 
> improved a little, and I have a computer installed on my bed, so I 
> need to focus my attention on trying to get at least one 
introductory 
> volume to my work summarized, out of my immense and ever-growing 
> graduate work data base. This is going to take all of my efforts, 
> and so I have to restrict my writing on other subjects. 

Best wishes on your progress in that endeavor.

> Thus it deserves to be studied at very close-range, by specialists 
in 
> the various fields involved. 
> 
Within the coming month I will get down to Duke and see what Indian 
periodical indexes reveal about recently scholarship on Theosophical 
history there.

Cheers,

KPJ