Google the term ‘Mahatma’ and you are likely to be directed to Mahatma Gandhi. The term has become inextricably woven into the legend of the man and it’s nearly impossible to separate the two. However, there were Mahatmas before Gandhi, most notably the Tibetan Mahatmas Koot Humi and Mahatma Morya, who had a special proclivity for writing letters. These letters were not only the foundation of the Theosophical Society but also laid the groundwork for the formation of the Indian National Congress. More importantly, the idea of the Mahatma who engages in the public realm and directs political action was born in the theosophical movement. It circulated, morphed, and transformed till it found an embodiment in the flesh and blood of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
The Tibetan Mahatmas
To understand that story we need to turn to that most enigmatic protagonist – Madame Blavatsky. She was probably the most learned and certainly the most widely travelled woman of the nineteenth century. Born in Ukraine in 1831, Helena married Nikifor Blavatsky in 1849 and left him three months later. The next nine years saw her in Cairo as companion to a Russian princess, in a shipwreck in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Africa, Paris, in New York and in Tibet. During these years, she supposedly was taught by the Mahatmas who lived in caves in Tibet. Based on this ancient wisdom imparted to her, she founded the Theosophical Society.
When she left Tibet, they communicated to her and others through letters that became known as the Mahatma Letters. The first such letter appeared in 1870 to Madame Blavatsky’s aunt in Odessa. It was delivered, she claimed, by an Asiatic messenger who disappeared before her very eyes. This was supposedly Master Morya. Then followed a series of letters from the Mahatmas to Colonel Olcott, which were remarkable for the lavish praise they heaped upon Madame Blavatsky and the urgency with which they commanded that she should be helped financially by Olcott.
“Try to help the poor broken hearted woman and success will crown your noble efforts.”
Further letters were received by the editor of Pioneer, A.P. Sinnett and A.O.Hume, published in the work The Mahatma Letters. Read those names again. Remember that A.O. Hume was the single most important figure in the formation of the Indian National Congress. Connect the dots.
Hume believed in the Mahatmas. He believed they were superhuman beings with a special interest in India’s welfare. He wrote letters to them that were placed by Madame Blavatsky in a wooden box. From there they mystically dematerialised, ‘called away’ by the Mahatmas. The replies precipitated from nowhere – falling from the ceiling, dropping on to a pillow or sitting in a shrine. Hume said that in 1878, he read various documents that convinced him that most Indians were violently opposed to colonialism. These documents were the letters he had received from the Mahatmas. When he set up the Indian National Congress, he did it with the help of the network of contacts he had established within the Theosophical Society. No Indian could have founded such an organisation. The British would have shut it down. It needed a British retired civil servant to lay the foundation for the organisation that fought for India’s independence. Hume was the first to admit that the mission, the ability, and the wisdom was a gift to him from the Mahatmas.
Also read: AO Hume, ‘Father’ of Indian National Congress who was distrusted by the British & Indians
An imposter in Mahatmaland
Unfortunately, Madame Blavatsky fell out with Hume. It was a consequence of her dismissal of the Coulombs couple from the Theosophical headquarters. Soon letters emerged that revealed the miraculous “phenomena” that underlay some of Theosophy’s exotic appeal had a more humdrum explanation. One of these letters explicitly talks about Hume’s desire to see Koot Humi in his astral form from a distance. Blavatsky seems to be begging Madame Coulomb to perpetrate some massive fraud so that Hume can be convinced. More damning still was the letter that instructed Madame Coulomb to send a telegram that will reach at four or five in the afternoon and which will convince Jacob Sassoon to give Rs 10,00 to repair the Theosophical headquarters. The series of letters were published in the Madras Christian College Magazine.
The Hodgson Enquiry investigated the Mahatma Letters, and concluded they had been written by Blavatsky herself and declared her as “as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history.”
Also read: Gandhi was like Adam Smith in his thinking. But Gandhian studies won’t tell you this
If this was true, consider the consequences. It means that Blavatsky might be the first woman to have created a whole new religion out of the Mahatmaland in her own mind. When she met Gandhi in November 1889 at the Blavatsky Lodge, her “Mahatmas” had been publicly declared as “Mahatmas of muslin and bladders.” Did she recognise in him the possibility of a reinvented Mahatma – a soul that achieves greatness through moral elevation and intellectual attainment? Did Gandhi reading about the theosophical Mahatmas influence the man that he subsequently became? We will never know.
One thing is for sure. If Blavatsky’s mahatmas were fiction, Mahatma Gandhi was that fiction made real.
Dr Vinita Dhondiyal Bhatnagar is professor of Humanities at RGPV University, Bhopal and a performance storyteller. She will be performing at the Living Mahatma online story session of the Bhopal Storytellers Tribe on 2 October 2021. Views are personal.