Another movement influenced in part by Hinduism is the Theosophical Society. Founded in New York City in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky of Russia, it was originally inspired by Kabbala (Jewish esoteric mysticism), gnosticism (esoteric salvatory knowledge), and forms of Western occultism. When Blavatsky went to India in 1879, her doctrines quickly took on an Indian character, and from her headquarters at Adyar she and her followers established branches in many cities of India.
After surviving serious accusations of charlatanry leveled against its founder and other leaders, the society prospered under the leadership of Annie Besant, a reform-minded Englishwoman. During her tenure the many Theosophical lodges founded in Europe and the United States helped to acquaint the West with the principles of Hinduism, if in a rather idiosyncratic form. Aurobindo Ashram
Another modern teacher whose doctrines had some influence outside India was Shri Aurobindo. He began his career as a revolutionary but later withdrew from politics and settled in Pondicherry, then a French possession. There he established an ashram and achieved a high reputation as a sage. His followers saw him as the first incarnate manifestation of the superbeings whose evolution he prophesied. After his death, the leadership of the Aurobindo Ashram was assumed by Mira Richard, a Frenchwoman who had been one of his disciples. Other reform movements
Numerous other teachers have affected the religious life of India. Among them was the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was influenced by many currents of earlier religious thought, both Indian and non-Indian. Tagore was particularly popular in Europe and the United States about the time of World War I, and he did much to disseminate Hindu religious thought in the West.
Rabindranath Tagore.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Less important outside India but much respected in India itself, especially in the south, was Ramana Maharshi, a Tamil mystic who maintained almost complete silence. His powerful personality attracted a large band of devotees before his death in 1950.
In 1936 Swami Shivananda, who had been a physician, established an ashram and an organization called the Divine Life Society near the sacred site of Rishikesh in the Himalayas. This organization has numerous branches in India and some elsewhere. His movement teaches more or less orthodox Vedanta, one of the six schools of Indian philosophy, combined with both Yoga and bhakti but rejects caste and stresses social service. The struggle for independence
The Hindu revival and reform movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries were closely linked with the growth of Indian nationalism and the struggle for independence. The Arya Samaj strongly encouraged nationalism, and, even though Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna Mission were always uncompromisingly nonpolitical, their effect in promoting the movement for self-government is quite evident.
Religion and politics were joined in the career of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, an orthodox Maharashtrian Brahman who believed that the people of India could be aroused only by appeals couched in religious terms. Tilak used the annual festival of the god Ganesha for nationalist propaganda. His interpretation of the Bhagavadgita as a call to action was also a reflection of his nationalism, and through his mediation the scripture inspired later leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi.
Hindu religious concepts were also enlisted in the nationalist cause in Bengal. In his historical novel Anandamath (1882), the Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee described a band of martial ascetics who were pledged to free India from Muslim domination under the Mughal empire. They took as their anthem a stirring devotional song written in simple Sanskrit—“Bande Mataram” (“I Revere the Mother”)—whose title referred both to the fierce demon-destroying goddess Kali and to India itself. This song was soon adopted by other nationalists. Vivekananda emphasized the need to turn the emotion of bhakti toward the suffering poor of India. During his short career as a revolutionary, Shri Aurobindo made much use of “Bande Mataram,” and he called on his countrymen to strive for the freedom of India in a spirit of devotion. The bhakti of the medieval poets was thus enlisted in the cause of modern independence. Mahatma Gandhi
Much influenced by the bhakti of his native Gujarat and fortified by similar attitudes in Christianity and Jainism, Mahatma Gandhi, the most important leader in the movement for independence, appeared to his followers as the quintessence of the Hindu tradition. His austere celibate life was one that the Indian laity had learned to respect implicitly. Gandhi’s message reached a wider public than that of any of the earlier reformers.
Mahatma Gandhi.History Archive/REX/Shutterstock.com
Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolence can be found in many Hindu sources, although his beliefs were much strengthened by Christian ethical literature and especially by the later writings of Leo Tolstoy. His political technique of passive resistance, satyagraha, also has Indian precedents, but here again he was influenced by Western writers such as the American Henry David Thoreau. The chief innovations in Gandhi’s philosophy were his belief in the dignity of manual labour and in the equality of women. Precedents for both of these can be found in the writings of some 19th-century reformers, but they have little basis in earlier Indian thought. In many ways Gandhi was a traditionalist. His respect for the cow—which he and other educated Indians understood as the representative of Mother Earth—was a factor in the failure of his movement to attract large-scale Muslim support. His insistence on strict vegetarianism and celibacy among his disciples, in keeping with the traditions of Vaishnava asceticism, also caused difficulty among some of his followers. Still, Gandhi’s success represented a political culmination of the movement of popular bhakti begun in south India early in the Christian era. The religious situation after independence
Increasing nationalism, especially after the division of India into India and Pakistan in 1947, led to a widening of the gulf between Hindus and Muslims. In the early 1970s Indian scholars painted the relations of the two religions in earlier centuries as friendly, blaming alien rule for the division of India. In Pakistan the tendency has been to insist that Hindus and Muslims have always been “two nations” and that the Hindus nevertheless were happy under their Muslim rulers. Neither position is correct. In earlier times there was much mutual influence. But the conservative element in Indian Islam gained the upper hand long before British power was consolidated in India.
One of the pioneers of nationalism, Tilak, glorified the Maharashtrian hero Shivaji as the liberator of India from the alien yoke of the Mughals; and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s militant ascetics, who pledged to conquer and expel the Muslims, sang a battle hymn that no orthodox Muslim could repeat. British rulers of India did little or nothing to lessen Hindu-Muslim tension, and their policy of separate electorates for the two communities worsened the situation. Many leaders of the Indian National Congress movement, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, carried their Hinduism lightly and favoured a secular approach to politics; the majority, however, followed the lead of Gandhi. Although to the right of the Congress politically, the Hindu Mahasabha, a nationalist group formed to give Hindus a stronger voice in politics, did not oppose nonviolence in its drive to establish a Hindu state in India.