 It's amazing what you can come across in the back streets of Chennai. Just poke and prod, and you can uncover magic. Take this - a life-size statue of the remarkable, admirable, Annie Besant. It's in a vestibule slightly concealed from street view, at the New India Building (the title of one of her journals), also known as the Besant Memorial Building. This is in Georgetown, not far from the Gokhale Hall which Besant established in 1915 - and which I recently blogged about.
The caretaker here is all too happy to let the curious inspect Annie's statue - a marked contrast to the grumpy, hostile, jobsworth at the Gokhale Hall. I first came across this Besant statue four years ago - it's good to see it clearly cared for, even if its future must be a little precarious. The statue was at some stage moved from the Gokhale Hall. There are several other busts and statues of Besant across Chennai - from a full length gilded statue overlooking Marina beach to a bust and a portrait (and perhaps more) at the international theosophists' headquarters in Adyar.. There's nothing obvious to indicate when this statue was made, or by whom. It's probably from towards the end of Besant's life - she died at Adyar in 1933 aged 85. She is depicted dressed in what I take to be the Indian style, not a sari exactly but certainly not a conventional dress or skirt. And - an interesting detail - she is barefoot.  I admire Annie Besant. She got things done and was, at various times, an atheist, freethinker, advocate of women's rights, socialist, trade unionist, theosophist, Indian nationalist, writer and educationalist. Not bad for one lifetime! And this is the building which houses the statue - the entrance is on the left and she's on the ground floor, take a few steps in and you'll see her. 
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 This is a rare glimpse into Chennai's Gokhale Hall. Once one of the city's leading nationalist rallying points, and later an important musical venue, the hall has been shuttered and near derelict for more than a decade. The hall was built in 1915 by Annie Besant, the Indian nationalist and theosophist. It was here that she announced the establishment of the Home Rule League. What a pity that it is now falling apart. The building was at first known as the Young Men's Indian Association Hall. The association was founded by Annie Besant as a 'political gymnasium'. The letters YMIA are prominent on the exterior. The association still controls the building. Its website says the hall is undergoing 'major repairs' - of which there is no sign - but also states that a decision is pending on whether to demolish the hall and rebuild on the site or whether to restore and refurbish,  If some repair work isn't carried out urgently, then the structure could well be unsalvageable. That would be unforgivable. This is historically such an important building in a city which values its heritage.  The hall used to have a capacity of 1,500. Now the caretaker fends off any sign of interest and shoos away the curious. No one is allowed in. The YMIA has another building nearby. This remains open, and it boasts a glorious life-size statue of, yes, Annie Besant. That will be the subject of my next Chennai blog.   This is Annie Besant - one of the most remarkable, and complex, figures in the annals of British radicalism. She was in, the first halfof her life, a renowned and outspoken freethinker, advocate of birth control, Fabian socialist and campaigner for women's rights. Then in about 1890, when she was in her forties, she came across theosophy, a spiritual movement which sought to syncretise the best of the principal global religions and which drew particularly on Hinduism and Buddhism. Besant moved to Madras (now Chennai) in South India, the global centre of the theosophist movement, and it became her principal home for the rest of her life. She remained a radical, becoming prominent in the Indian nationalist and home rule movements, and she was an ardent supporter of women's suffrage.  This excellent portrait - which I had never seen before - is in the small but well-kept and recently refurbished museum at the theosophists' international HQ at Adyar in Chennai. You can feel the sternness in that gaze! Adyar is where Besant died and was cremated in 1933. The theosophist HQ also has a bust of Besant.  What I hadn't realised until I visited the museum was that Besant was also a very active freemason. One of the display cases exhibits dozens of engraved plasterers' trowels presented to Besant by women masons in India. When I said to the German theosophist who presides over the museum: 'Besant was a mason?!', he replied - very reasonably: 'What wasn't she?'  The sprawling Adyar campus, and the theosophists' headquarters building, looked serene - better cared for than on my previous visit and altogether a wonderful place to spend a couple of hours. I was a little underwhelmed by the Giant Banyan Tree, but the roosting fruit bats were something else!   The statue of Annie Besant once in Gokhale Hall is now in the YMIA building nearby on Second Line Beach Road Among the many contributions the remarkable Annie Besant made to Indian nationalism was the establishing in 1914 of the Young Men's Indian Association - a challenge to the YMCA. The purpose of the YMIA was to serve as “a political gymnasium as it were, to equip the youth with a strong body, an informed mind and a noble character". The following year, the YMIA's HQ opened - Gokhale Hall, on Armenian Street in Madras. Annie Besant paid for the construction herself. It took the name of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a leader of the Indian National Congress and founder of the Servants of India Society, who died in February 1915. The hall has been sealed off for a decade at least. It's caught up, apparently, in a property dispute - with heritage enthusiasts seeking to block plans for demolition. But as the row rumbles on, one of the main venues of Indian nationalism is sliding rapidly into dereliction.   Annie Besant established the Home Rule League in this hall and it's where she delivered her 'Wake Up, India' lectures. It was also used as a venue by the Justice Party, the pioneer of the Dravidian movement which now dominates the region's politics and a precursor of the anti-caste, anti-religion, self respect movement. Periyar, the firebrand of twentieth century Tamil radicalism, spoke here. So too did Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India. Nehru once declared, in tribute both to the building and to Besant: "The Gokhale Hall has been the scene of great achievements in oratory and public speaking as well as music and the fine arts. It has received with open arms persons of every description without distinction of caste, creed, colour or political persuasion. The Hall ever reminds us of the voice of its founder and no one associated with it can ever forget the inspiration of that voice,"  The photograph above - taken from Reddit - dates from 1929. At the centre of the front row is the Urdu writer and poet, Muhammad Iqbal., who died before independence but has been described as the 'spiritual father' of Pakistan. After independence, the hall became a venue for Tamil music and cultural events. But it is now slipping into dilapidation. The hall has a caretaker who sits outside the shuttered entrance and keeps all-comers at bay. When I spotted a door leading into the hall ajar and started to photograph through the security grille, he quickly closed this peephole on the hall's once glorious past.
 Quite by chance, I came across another YMIA building a short distance away on the splendidly named Second Line Beach Street (aka Moor Street). And I caught just a glance of a statue of Annie Besant - and alongside, a bust of Sir William Wedderburn, a co-founder of the Indian National Congress and colleague of both Besant and Gokhale. It transpires these items have been retrieved from Gokhale Hall and appear to be well cared for in their new home.  Unlike Gokhale Hall, this YMIA building is still in use. It has a small library (consisting of a locked display cabinet), a gym, a boxing exercise room and - the only part of the building with any activity when I popped by - a room devoted to the table-top game, carrom.     Well, that's it from Chennai for another year. As I write this post, I'm already back in London - earlier than expected because of coronavirus. I am hoping there will be another series of posts from one of India's great cities in a year's time.
 Annie Besant, variously radical, freethinker, trade unionist, Theosophist, Indian nationalist ... and suffragist. In 1893, Annie Besant - already interested in Theosophy - visited India for the first time. It became her home. There's still a gilded life-size statue of her on the sea front in Chennai. But this was not the end of her interest in British politics. In March 1912, at the age of 64, she addressed a meeting of Mrs Pankhurst's pro-suffrage Women's Social and Political Union at the Albert Hall in London. This leaflet - just acquired - contains a summary of her remarks.   Madurai, so famous for its temples, has other havens too. I stumbled across the local Theosophical Society, which provides a free reading room and library. This is one of the oldest branches of the TS - dating back to 1883, within a few years of the foundation of the movement. It has a large library - named after a local lawyer, A. Rangaswami Aiyar, and apparently based on his own collection. I spotted about fifty titles by Annie Besant alone. She must have come to Madurai, and I wondered whether she had personally given any of her books to the local society and inscribed them. I couldn't find any signed copies - but among the several thousands volumes and pamphlets kept carefully behind glass, I am sure there will be real gems. How nice to find such a wonderful, public spirited institution.
The reading room takes the English and Tamil daily papers and seems to have a loyal coteries of users. How long the society can survive - the street it's on is largely given over to modern, high-rise hotels - I really wonder, but there is something soothing and special about such a tranquil spot amid the bustle of this restless temple town. 
Her life was very much in two acts (three if you include her rather sheltered upbringing and unhappy marriage). In 1889, she reviewed two volumes by one of the founders of Theosophy, H.P. Blavatsky, met her and became her disciple. Annie's freethinking, radical colleagues - Charles Bradlaugh among them - were horrified. Four years later, Annie Besant made the journey to India - which was to become her principal home for the last forty years of her life. For much of that time she lived in Adyar on the outskirts of Madras/Chennai, in what is now the sprawling, enticing, global headquarters of the Theosophy movement. She was cremated here too. The bust stands in the main hall of the Theosophy Society HQ. Nice to see you, Annie! 
 I suppose I ought to attempt to explain Theosophy. It respects all faiths - and in the grounds of the headquarters there are temples, churches and shrines of all the world's main religions. The society's three objectives - the only values and beliefs that adherents are required to subscribe to - are: + to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour + to encourage the study of Comparative Religion, Philosophy, and Sciences + to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in men The key figures in the establishment of the Theosophical movement were from Europe and North America, and it was in some ways a manifestation of Orientalism, albeit one respectful of Eastern belief systems. Blavatsky's impulse to establish the Theosophy Society came from a visit to India - and while the movement was founded in New York in 1875, its headquarters were from an early date in South Asia. Although not core to Theosophy's beliefs, it is widely seen as tinged by spiritualism and occultism. While a theosophist, Besant also embraced the occult, clairvoyance and (this really does seem bizarre, but there you go) freemasonry. But don't rely on my inexpert account - here's the link to the Theosophy Society's website: http://www.ts-adyar.org/ The society's grounds - only open for a few hours a day - are magical, with banyan trees, palm groves and gentle jungle, sprinkled with places of worship and busts of founding fathers. There's an excellent bookshop, and no-one tries to proselytise. For me, part of the magic was following in the footsteps of some whose lives I have researched: the socialist novelist Margaret Harkness came here about 110 years ago to meet up with Annie Besant; 25 years later, Freda Bedi's husband-to-be, B.P.L. Bedi, came to Adyar to seek, and receive, Besant's benediction before setting sail for Europe. 
 Theosophy feels a little bit like the Esperanto movement - born out of a sense of optimism and an impulse towards universal brotherhood, but never quite making it into the mainstream ... and now just hanging on, its best years long since gone. I keep getting drawn back, though, to Besant. From the moment she set foot in India, she regarded herself as Indian and championed its interests over that of the imperial power which was her native country. In India, she dressed and ate in the Indian style. She championed social welfare, the reform movement within Hinduism, higher education, and was so forceful and prominent within Indian nationalism that she was prohibited from some Indian provinces . She enjoyed a spell as a highly visible and active president of the Indian National Congress - the movement which led India to independence. Alongside this remarkable range of activism, she was distrustful of mass political mobilisations and of universal suffrage. While she admired Gandhi, she didn't agree with him. By the end of her life, she was sharply out of step with the increasingly strident tone of India's national movement.
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