The Central Hindu College and Annie Besant

Bhagavan Das

SIR,— will you kindly extend to the undersigned the fairness and courtesy of your columns
to enable him to place before your readers the following, with reference to Mrs. Besant’s
remarks on the “Central Hindu College,” which appeared in the Christian Commonwealth of
4th June, 1913? The nature of these makes it unavoidable to publish a full statement of facts.

To understand the situation clearly we have to bear in mind that, like every other human
being, Mrs. Besant has two natures, a higher and a lower. Because of her extraordinary gifts
and powers, the manifestation of these two in her are also extraordinary. Because of the high
level of her intellectual development, they work in a correspondingly subtile and sublimated
form. In her case, these two time-old natures, altruism and egoism, have taken on the
particular forms of (1) the wish “to save” mankind, and (2) the wish “to be regarded as a
Saviour” of the same. The two aspects are very subtly and very closely connected as the
poles of a magnet; and yet are as wide apart and opposed. (To Read More . . .)