Autobiography : Annie Besant

‘She tried to follow Truth’—from Annie Besant’s epitaph

Annie Besant was born in 1847. Married at the age of nineteen to Rev. Frank Besant and a mother of two by the time she was twenty-three, Annie was nonetheless an independent spirit. She would often question the religion she and her family practised, earning the displeasure of her more traditional husband. When Annie refused to attend communion, he ordered her to leave the family home. Rejecting Christianity, she went to live in London where she joined the Secular Society and also learned about Theosophy, a modern re-statement of an ancient spiritual wisdom found at the heart of the religions of the world. During these years she wrote many articles on issues such as marriage and women’s rights and health, even publishing her controversial book, The Laws of Population, advocating birth control.

In the 1890s Annie Besant became a member of The Theosophical Society, founded by Madame Blavatsky and Col. H.S. Olcott in 1875, and came to live in India in 1893. At the forefront of the movement for India’s cultural and spiritual resurgence, she started the Indian Home Rule movement and became President of the Indian National Congress in 1907. The same year, she was elected President of The Theosophical Society, a position she held till her death in 1933.

Outstanding orator, reformer, humanist and educationist, Annie Besant inspired and continues to inspire thousands of men and women all over the world.