Celestial India : Madame Blavatsky and the Birth of Indian Nationalism

by Lubelsky, Isaac; Lotan, Yael

• ISBN13: 9781845539238
• ISBN10: 1845539230
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-12-15
• Publisher: Isd

Summary

In 1917 Annie Besant (1847-1933), a white English woman, was elected president of the Indian National Congress, the body which, under the guidance of Mohandas Gandhi, would later lead India to independence. Besant was from 1907 until her death the president of the Theosophical Society, an international spiritual movement whose headquarters' located in Madras symbolized its belief in India as the world's spiritual heart.This book explores the contribution of the Theosophical Society to the rise of Indian nationalism and seeks to restore it to its proper place in the history of ideas, both with regard to its spiritual doctrine and the sources on which it drew, as well as its role in giving rise to the New Age movement of the twentieth century. The book is the first to show how nineteenth-century Orientalist study dramatically affected the rise of the Theosophical ideology, and specifically demonstrate the impact of the work of the Anglo-German scholar, Friedrich Max Mueller on Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society.

Author Biography

Isaac Lubelsky teaches history in the Comparative Religion Program and the East Asian Studies Department at Tel Aviv University and at the Israeli Open University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xii
Introduction and Author's Acknowledgements	p. xv
Following the Steps of the Orientalists - The Quest for the Linguistic Origins	p. 1
Friedrich Max Müller - Orientalism at the Zenith	p. 39
The Theosophical Society - The Quest for the Spiritual Source	p. 77
The Theosophical Doctrine	p. 118
The Sources of the Theosophical Doctrine	p. 147
Annie Besant: Her Pre-Theosophical Career	p. 190
The Struggle Over the Leadership of the Theosophical Society, 1889-1907	p. 214
The Struggle for the Leadership of the Indian National Movement, 1907-1919	p. 247
Theosophy and the World Teacher: The Esoteric Alternative	p. 285
Postscript	p. 319
Bibliography	p. 323
Index	p. 341
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