Angelika Malinar is presenting a working paper on 'Karmic history, politics and the synthesis of “East” and “West”: Annie Besant (1847-1933) on Hinduism'

The research focusses on European women as interpreters of Hinduism in the colonial-modern period. The interpretation of Hinduism as well as the “woman question” were prominent arenas of the political-cultural debates that characterised the entangled history between India and Europe at that time. From the last decades of the nineteenth century onward women not only in India, but also in Europe participated increasingly in the debates about Indian religion and society. Annie Besant (1847-1933) and Margaret Noble (1867-1911), for instance, did not only pursue their own spiritual interests, but were also actively engaged in socio-political and educational projects. In doing so they challenged constructions of gender and regimes of power both in India and Europe which resulted in complex biographies as well as in various. While their political activities received some scholarly attention, their interpretations of Hinduism did not. One reason for this is that these interpretations were often seen as intellectually irrelevant or mere apologetics. This view seems to be based on the application of certain paradigms in the interpretation of female agency and individuality in the colonial context. The European women were considered as being either mere mouthpieces of “Indian Gurus” or agents of imperialism (even when they saw themselves fighting against it). Such unilateral views of colonial history have been challenged in recent years by emphasizing the entangled, multi-layered interactions between Indians and Europeans as well as the complex personal relationships they entertained. In following this approach, I shall explore the individual biographies, the social and political networks of the European women and the larger intellectual contexts of their interpretation of Hinduism. The paper focusses on Annie Besant and deals firstly with some theoretical issues and in the second part discusses certain features of Besant´s interpretations of Hinduism.