The uncommon self-confidence of Annie Besant

Despite the criticism heaped on her, Besant learned to be ruthless in putting her interest first, refusing to be led by men

- Swarna Rajagopalan

Annie Besant was the first woman president of the Indian National Congress. GETTY IMAGES

(GETTY IMAGES)

“We are a family of Theosophists,” I have heard all my life. I mostly understood that to mean being like my sage, gentle great-grandfather who was a Theosophist.

In family conversations, the term was invoked to explain liberalism, a social conscience and a detachment from rituals and outdated mores. Annie Besant features in this lore because, like many girls in that generation, my aunt was named for her. So who was Annie Besant, this figure that appeared in both family lore and school history textbooks?

Clare Paterson’s The Nine Lives of Annie Besant is an account of Besant’s lives, as the author describes them, within this janma 1847-1933, and not a revelation about previous incarnations. In this lifespan, she reinvented herself repeatedly, sometimes to survive her circumstances and sometimes despite them. Theosophy brought her to India and her part in India’s freedom movement through the Home Rule League was the very last part of her journey.

Annie Wood acquired her famous last name through a brief, abusive marriage to a clergyman in Hastings in 1867 which gave her two children. She courageously walked out after six years with her daughter, struggling for several years thereafter to gain custody of her son. The marriage was shaken as well by her loss of her Christian faith and this contributed to the stigma she endured thereafter. In the next phase of her life, Besant became a Freethinking pamphleteer and public speaker and started her journey as a writer. She spoke and wrote on a wide variety of topics, from atheism to women's rights, undaunted and irrepressible.