Escape into sunlight

All religions flourished in the aftermath of the American civil war, especially a new belief which offered those who mourned the precious consolation of contact with the dead. It was important to discover the truth of spiritualism - which phenomena were genuine, which cruel and clever fraud. According to Stephen Prothero, assistant professor in the religion department of Boston University, the scientific investigation of spiritualist phenomena was the original purpose of the Theosophical Society, whose president/founder, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, is the subject of this book. Born in 1832, of Puritan descent, Olcott was brought up a strict Presbyterian. Energetic, capable and inquisitive, his success in the field of journalism, agricultural reform and insurance law, joined to his drive to "uplift" his fellow human beings leads Prothero to praise him as a 19th-century Renaissance man. During the civil war he was promoted to colonel as a result of his investigations into fraud by purveyors. After Lincoln's assassination he was put to chasing alleged conspirators and caught the mother of a suspect who, despite doubts about her guilt, was hanged.

In 1874 while investigating spiritualists' claims in Vermont, Olcott met Helena Petrovna Blavatsky who was to become corresponding secretary of the Theosophical Society and his beloved "chum". Flamboyant, enigmatic, and astute, a wanderer versed in esoteric knowledge, whose path was strewn with marvels, Madame Blavatsky was the Cagliostro of her age. After 1882, when the society was established in a maharaja's palace on the banks of the River Adyar at Madras, Olcott began a campaign to uplift the underprivileged labouring under British rule in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Religion was his path to freedom from the Raj; equality was not an issue; Prothero notes that Olcott did not seek to raise Untouchables, merely to make them more effective in their predetermined place. The faith he chose was Buddhism; while in Ceylon he and HPB "took Pansil". From Adyar where he reigned supreme after Madame Blavatsky fell foul of the Society of Psychical Research, Olcott published ancient Buddhist texts, founded schools and worked to bring about one unified Buddhist faith. E pluribus unum was his mantra and Prothero contends that his vision of reform through unity was peculiarly American. The first of his countrymen to go East instead of West, Olcott was fulfilling the mission to the wilderness of his Puritan forebears while escaping into sunlight from their God whose severity oppressed him.

The White Buddhist is a lucid and valuable thesis in the history of American religion. Sadly, though Prothero had wider scope than usual among the Adyar archives, he failed to discover any personal papers. The Colonial Office records disappoint: they demonstrate the lofty disregard of the British towards the American who came to India prophesying a second disaster to rival the Mutiny. (Rumour of Soviet documents proving Madame Blavatsky to have been a Russian spy are tantalising.) Prothero's failure to address Olcott's role in the Coulomb Affair is deliberate, though he confirms that HPB left Adyar on the colonel's orders. Likewise he omits any mention of the Leadbeater inquiry, immediately after which Olcott's health collapsed. He died on February 2 1909, an anniversary that is still celebrated at Adyar and in Sri Lanka. Olcott's reputation was damaged by his connection with the scandal and tragedy that afflicted the Theosophical Society in his lifetime. By ignoring them this book has done his genuine concern for his fellow men no more than justice.

Anne Taylor is a freelance writer and biographer of Annie Besant.