Annie Besant

It's pretty much a given that the reader has never heard of Annie Besant. But she was one of the most progressive women of her time - which was from 1847 to 1933.

If you have heard of Annie it's probably that she was a Theosophist. As to what a Theosophist is, about all we can say is it's someone who subscirbes to the teachings of Theosopy. Often called a religious movement, Theosophists deny it is a religion per se although there are affinities with Hinduism. Annie joined the Theosophical Society in 1889.

Religion or no, one of Annie's dictums was that people should be able to believe as they thought best without fear. This put her at odds with her husband who was a minister and so naturally believed that people should always live in abject fear and trembling unless they thought the way he did. Eventually the pair separated but it doesn't seem that their marriage was ever officially annulled.

Although it's as a social reformer that Annie is best known, she became one of the more prolific writers on the late 19th and 20th century. She worked as an editor and also published children's books.

As a strong advocate of women's rights, Annie published a pamphlet on birth control. That got her arrested for obscenity. And although the judge threw her in the slammer, the case was tossed on appeal.

This was also the era when women began entering the workplace. Annie became a believer in workers rights, and she helped organize a strike of the women who worked in a match facotry. This famous "Matchgirls Strike" improved both the girls' working conditions and their pay.

Freed of her husband's traditional Anglicanism, Annie joined both the Theosophical Society and the famous Fabian Society. Naturally she met a diverse and ecclectic bunch which included George Bernard Shaw who at one time was the most famous playwright in the world. And at the London Vegetarian Society, Annie was introduced a young Indian national studying in London named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Whether her meeting with Mohandas - later called the Māhātmā - influenced the decision, she sailed to India in 1893 and decided to live there. She began to work for Indian independence and served as the president of the Indian National Congress which later became what is now the major political party of the country.

Annie was a joiner and organizer by nature and in 1917 she is credited with forming the first organization dedicated to an Independent India. She adopted an almost militant tone and wrote that the movement should make Britain fear for its safety unless their demands were met. This was pretty tough talk, and she was placed under house arrest for three months.

She did, though, disagree with the Mahatman tactics. She thought that using large crowds for non-violent protests was setting a precedence that would result in anarchy. It was also hypocritical since the protesters were inevitiably subjected to violence by the authorities. Worse, she predicted that the non-violence movement would itself later turn violent. And in 1922 a group of protesters who had been attacked by a group of policemen responded by going to the local police station and killing all 22 policemen inside.

Annie lived the rest of her life in India. She died in Aydar in 1933, nearly 85 years old. She was cremated in the traditional Hindu manner, and some of her ashes were kept in an urn in Aydar and the rest were scattered in the Ganges.

It would be fourteen years before the British established not only an independent India but an independent Pakistan as well. The partitioning was something neither Annie nor the Mahatma wanted. But given the circumstances, there wasn't much they could do about it.

References

"Annie Besant", BBC History.

"Besant, Annie Wood", Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Centuries, Christine L. Krueger

Annie Besant's Rise to Power in Indian Politics, 1914-1917, Raj Kumar, Concept Publishing Company, 1981.

"Annie Besant", Spartacus Education.

"Annie Besant", NNDB: Tracking the World.