Annie Besant

Annie Besant (née Wood; 1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was an English socialist, theosophist, freemason, educationist, and activist involved in women's rights, Home Rule, and Indian nationalism. She gave support to both Irish and Indian self-rule. She had been the first female president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.

She became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society (NSS), a writer, and a close friend of Charles Bradlaugh. In 1877 they were prosecuted for publishing a book by birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. Thereafter, she became involved with union actions, including the Bloody Sunday demonstration and the London matchgirls strike of 1888. She was a leading speaker for both the Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF). She was also elected to the London School Board for Tower Hamlets, topping the poll, even though few women were qualified to vote then.

In 1890 Besant met Helena Blavatsky, and over the next few years her interest in theosophy grew, whilst her interest in secular matters waned. She became a member of the Theosophical Society and a prominent lecturer on the subject. As part of her theosophy-related work, she travelled to India. In 1898 she helped establish the Central Hindu School, and in 1922 she helped establish the Hyderabad (Sind) National Collegiate Board in Bombay (today's Mumbai), India. The Theosophical Society Auditorium in Hyderabad, Sindh (Sindh) is called Besant Hall in her honour. In 1902, she established the first overseas Lodge of the International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain. Over the next few years, she established lodges in many parts of the British Empire. In 1907 she became president of the Theosophical Society, whose international headquarters were, by then, located in Adyar, Madras (Chennai).

Besant also became active in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress. When World War I broke out in 1914, she helped launch the Home Rule League to campaign for democracy in India, and dominion status within the British Empire. This led to her election as president of the Indian National Congress in late 1917. In the late 1920s, Besant travelled to the United States with her protégé and adopted son Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she claimed was the new Messiah and incarnation of Buddha. Krishnamurti rejected these claims in 1929. After the war, she continued to campaign for Indian independence and for the causes of theosophy. She died in 1933.

Early life

Annie Wood was born on 1 October 1847 in London, the daughter of William Burton Persse Wood (1816–1852) and his wife Emily Roche Morris (died 1874). Her father was English, attended Trinity College Dublin, and attained a medical degree; her mother was an Irish Catholic. Her paternal grandfather Robert Wright Wood was a brother of Sir Matthew Wood, 1st Baronet.

Wood's father died in her early childhood, leaving a son, Henry Trueman Wood, and Annie, his one daughter. Her mother supported Henry's education at Harrow School by running a boarding house there. Annie was fostered by Ellen Marryat, sister of the author Frederick Marryat, who ran a school at Charmouth, until age 16. She returned to her mother at Harrow self-confident, aware of a sense of duty to society, and under the influence of the Tractarians. As a young woman, she was also able to travel in Europe.

In summer 1867, Wood and her mother stayed at Pendleton near Manchester with the radical solicitor William Prowting Roberts, who questioned Wood's political assumptions. In December of that year, at age 20, Annie married the cleric Frank Besant (1840–1917), younger brother of Walter Besant, an evangelical, serious Anglican.

Marriage and separation

The Rev. Frank Besant was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, ordained priest in 1866, but had no living: in 1866 he was teaching at Stockwell Grammar School as second master, and in 1867 he moved to teach at Cheltenham College as assistant master. In 1872, he became vicar of Sibsey in Lincolnshire, a benefice in the gift of the Lord Chancellor—who was Lord Hatherley, a Wood family connection, son of Sir Matthew Wood, 1st Baronet. The Besant family, with their two children, Arthur and Mabel, moved to Sibsey, but the marriage was already under strain. As Besant wrote in her Autobiography, "we were an ill-matched pair".

Money was short, and Frank Besant was stingy. Annie Besant was sure a third child would strain the family finances too much. She wrote short stories, children's books, and articles, but her husband controlled the money she earned.

Besant began to question her own faith after her daughter Mabel was seriously ill in 1871. She consulted Edward Bouverie Pusey: by post he gave her advice along orthodox, Bampton Lecture lines, and in person he sharply reprimanded her unorthodox theological tendencies. She attended in London, with her mother, a service at St George's Hall given by the heterodox cleric Charles Voysey, in autumn 1871, and struck up an acquaintance with the Voyseys, reading in "theistic" authors such as Theodore Parker and Francis Newman on Voysey's recommendation. Voysey also introduced Besant to the freethinker and publisher Thomas Scott. Encouraged by Scott, Besant wrote an anonymous pamphlet On the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth, by "the wife of a beneficed clergyman", which appeared in 1872. Ellen Dana Conway, wife of Moncure Conway befriended Annie at this time.

The Besants tried much to repair the marriage. The tension came to a head when Annie Besant refused to attend Communion, which Frank Besant demanded, now fearing for his own reputation and position in the Church. In 1873 she left him and went to London. She had a temporary place to stay, with Moncure Conway. The Scotts found her a small house in Colby Road, Upper Norwood.

The couple were legally separated and Annie Besant took her daughter Mabel with her, the agreement of 25 October 1873 giving her custody. Annie remained with Mrs. Besant for the rest of her life. At first, she was able to keep contact with both children and to have Mabel live with her; she also got a small allowance from her husband. In 1878 Frank Besant successfully argued her unfitness, after Annie Besant's public campaigning on contraception, and had custody from then of both children. Later, Annie Besant was reconciled with her son and daughter. Her son Arthur Digby Besant (1869–1960) was President of the Institute of Actuaries, 1924–26, and wrote The Besant Pedigree (1930). Initially in London, Besant attempted to support her daughter, her mother (who died the following year) and herself with needlework.

Reformer and secularist

Besant began in 1874 to write for the National Reformer, the organ of the National Secular Society (NSS), run by Charles Bradlaugh. She also continued to write for Thomas Scott's small press. On the account given by W. T. Stead, Besant had encountered the National Reformer on sale in the shop of Edward Truelove. Besant had heard of Bradlaugh from Moncure Conway. She wrote to Bradlaugh and was accepted as an NSS member. She first heard him speak on 2 August 1874.

Through Bradlaugh, Besant met and became a supporter of Joseph Arch, the farmworkers' leader.

Her career as a platform speaker began on 25 August 1874, with the topic "The Political Status of Women". The lecture was at the Co-operative Hall, Castle Street, Long Acre in Covent Garden. It was followed in September by an invitation from Moncure Conway to speak at his Camden Town church on "The True Basis of Morality". Besant published an essay under this title, in 1882. She was a prolific writer and a powerful orator. She addressed causes including freedom of thought, women's rights, secularism, birth control, Fabian socialism and workers' rights. Margaret Cole called her "the finest woman orator and organiser of her day".

Criticism of Christianity

Besant opined that for centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil and that the greatest saints of the Church were those who despised women the most. "Against the teachings of eternal torture, of the vicarious atonement, of the infallibility of the Bible, I leveled all the strength of my brain and tongue, and I exposed the history of the Christian Church with unsparing hand, its persecutions, its religious wars, its cruelties, its oppressions." In the section named "Its Evidences Unreliable" of her work "Christianity", Besant presents the case of why the Gospels are not authentic: "before about A.D. 180 there is no trace of FOUR gospels among the Christians."