Theos-Talk Archives (September 2004 Message tt00816)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "john_hopkinsphd_2000" 
<john_hopkinsphd_2000@y...> wrote:


> Why did Annie Besant the President, at the International Meeting of 
> the TS ask all members to oppose Gandhi according to you ?

Show me where I mentioned that.

> A book called "Outside the Fold" claims she was in fact an 
> Imperialist.


Would an imperialist campaign vigorously for self-government for a 
nation under foreign rule, or encourage the study and teaching of its 
traditional values instead of the educational policies of the 
colonial power? Would she found schools and colleges and encourage 
the study of Sanskrit, which the colonial power ignored?

Would an imperialist deserve the following message from Jawaharlal 
Nehru, first Prime-Minister of Independent India, &#65279;to the Usha 
Theosophical Lodge in New Delhi on 1 October 1956, on the occasion of 
her birthday?

"&#65279;I send my greetings on the occasion of the birthday of Mrs. Annie 
Besant. To the younger generation today, she might be just a name, 
and it is possible that to some she is not even a name. To my 
generation and, indeed, to an earlier one, she was a tremendous 
figure who influenced us greatly. There can be no doubt that in 
India's struggle for freedom her part &#65279;was a considerable one. 

Apart from this, she was one of those early persons who drew our 
attention to our own heritage and made us proud of it. 

It is right that we should remember this great personality and pay 
our homage to her memory." 


> But she was not only a British Imperialist, which might explain the 
> earlier suggestion that she supported Mussolini.


I am still waiting to see the relevant quotation and reference about 
this "suggestion". 


Pedro