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| Annie Besant on 20 September 1933 |
Annie Besant on 1st October
Great Indian Personalities
Annie Besant
Diamond Soul
Born 1 October 1847Clapham, London, United Kingdom
Died 20 September 1933 (aged 85)
Adyar, Madras Presidency, British India
Known for Theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator
Religion Hinduism
Spouse(s) Frank Besant
(m. 1867, div. 1873)
Children Arthur, Mabel
Annie Besant, (1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was a prominent British socialist, theosophist, writer and orator women's rights activist and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule.
In 1890 Besant met Helena Blavatsky and over the next few years grew her interest in theosophy. She became a member of the Theosophical Society and started lecturering on the subject. As part of her theosophy-related work, she travelled all over India. In 1898 she helped establish the Central Hindu College and in 1922 she helped establish the Hyderabad (Sind) National Collegiate Board in Mumbai, India. In 1902, she established the first overseas Lodge of the "International Order of Co-Freemasonry". 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 in Adyar, Madras, (Chennai).
She became involved in active politics in India by joining the "Indian National Congress". During World War I in 1914, she helped launch the "Home Rule League" to campaign for democracy in India and its prominent status within the Empire. This work of her led to be as president of the India National Congress in late 1917. In the late 1920s, She travelled to the United States with her protégé and adopted son Jiddu Krishnamurti. She claimed that Krishnamurti was the incarnation of Buddha, which he later rejected in 1929. After the war, she continued to campaign rigorously for Indian independence and for the causes of theosophy, until her death in 1933.
She had written many Books
Few of them are as follows:
Man and His Bodies (1896, rpt 1911)
Initiation: The Perfecting of Man (1912)
Man's Life in This and Other Worlds (1913)
The Doctrine of the Heart (1920)
Memory and Its Nature (1935)
"Sin and Crime" (1885)
"God's Views on Marriage" (1890)
"A World Without God" (1885)
"Life, Death, and Immortality" (1886)
"The World and Its God" (1886)
"Why I Do Not Believe in God" (1887)
"The Myth of the Resurrection" (1886)
"The Teachings of Christianity" (1887)
"Atheism and Its Bearing on Morals" (1887)
"On Eternal Torture"
