Spiritualist West, Magical Orient: Theosophists and India, 1875-1930

Dr Sugata Nandi presents his 2020 National Library Fellowship research on theosophists and India from 1875 to 1930, and the resulting new interpretations and uses of Hinduism and Buddhism.

In 1879, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91), an émigré Russia noblewoman, and Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907), an American, reached India in search of knowledge of her two religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. In 1875 they had founded The Theosophical Society in New York, a spiritualist organisation that, by the 1900s, enjoyed a global presence and had turned Western esoteric quests to India and her two religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. Their quest led to radically new interpretations and uses of the religions which gave rise to a new, diverse and highly controversial body of knowledge on India as the proverbial Magical Orient.

Dr Sugata Nandi is a 2020 National Library of Australia Fellow supported by the Stokes Family.


About Dr Sugata Nandi
Dr Sugata Nandi is Assistant Professor of History at the West Bengal State University, Kolkata, India, where he teaches Modern Indian History, Early Modern European political ideas, Western Historiography and Research Methodology. He has been a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of the University of Edinburgh (2018) and a Fulbright–Nehru Doctoral and Professional Research Fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA (2011-12). He has recently been awarded the Junior Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study of Central European University, Budapest. which he will commence in early 2023.