Any guesses who the first woman president of the Indian National Congress was? She presided over its Calcutta session in 1917 and was, in fact, British national, political firebrand and supporter of Irish self-rule, Annie Besant. And this is just one of the many avatars that Clare Paterson describes so vividly in The Nine Lives of Annie Besant, the recent biography of a key force behind India’s Home Rule movement and a dominant figure in the Theosophical Society, which celebrated its 150th anniversary last year.

The engrossing life story brings alive one of the most colourful figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – an inspirational activist and educator who left her imprint on many schools and colleges, localities and roads across India that are named after her. In recording Annie Besant’s remarkable journey across continents and ideologies, Paterson presents a study in political and spiritual transformation. She shows how Besant’s early activism in Britain laid the intellectual and moral foundations for her later, pivotal role in India’s struggle against British rule.

Early life

Born in 1847, Annie, as she was popularly known in London’s East End, was a revolutionary thinker, swept up on an extraordinary roller-coaster of a life. Losing her father when she was five, she and her older brother were brought up by their mother in a Victorian middle-class family. An intelligent, intuitive and deeply religious young girl, Annie was riveted by tales of the sufferings of early Christian martyrs, writes Paterson. Ironically, this unshakeable faith was shattered after her disastrous marriage, at age 20, to clergyman Frank Besant.

Parting ways from her husband of six years and forced to give up their son to his care, Annie turned breadwinner for her mother and daughter with short-term jobs. As a prolific writer, she was drawn to unconventional thinkers of the time, and became a pamphleteer in the early 1870s. She wrote prodigiously, on vital current issues such as women’s suffrage, unemployment, workers’ rights, corruption, slavery, political reform, the lunacy laws, and much more.

Being a powerful orator, Annie was also a sought-after public speaker, captivating large crowds with her impassioned campaigns for birth control, workers’ rights, and women’s emancipation. Paterson highlights her involvement in freethought circles, her collaboration with politician, radical thinker and proponent of atheism, Charles Bradlaugh, and her willingness to court controversy while defending principle. The legal action and trial relating to her pamphlet on birth control underscore Annie’s courage in challenging state and church authority, and her faith in fearless public engagement.

A series of fiery and impactful articles in her paper The Link in 1888 amplified women match workers’ call for basic rights, and forced the London Trade Council to broker a deal that ensured all their demands were met, including recognition as the Union of Women Matchmakers. Later that year, she was elected a member of the School Board of London, and her commitment to reforming children’s education in that role was no less revolutionary.

Theosophical turn

Annie’s early radicalism, Paterson argues, did not disappear with her later turn toward spirituality; it evolved. Describing her meeting with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1889, Paterson writes, “Madame Blavatsky’s appearance was ramshackle but her personality was electrifying. She smoked incessantly and swore prodigiously. She rejected all accepted norms, from the church to science... It must have been invigorating for Annie to find so powerful a woman at the head of this organisation.”

Annie’s embrace of the Theosophical Society offered a broader framework that accommodated both spiritual inquiry and social reform. This new philosophy’s emphasis on universal brotherhood and Eastern wisdom allowed multiple trajectories to converge, and resonated with her long-standing critique of Western imperial arrogance. She believed that self-government, or Home Rule, required not only political change but also moral, intellectual and cultural renewal.

Indian independence

The account of Annie’s role in India’s Independence movement forms the political core of the book. Paterson captures both the scale of her influence and the tensions inherent in her position as a British-born advocate of Indian self-government, which led to her imprisonment for political activism. When Annie Besant assumed presidency of the Indian National Congress in 1917, Paterson says, she acquired “a huge base among nationalists as well as Theosophists, the sort of support that is every politician’s dream.”

British officials in India and England didn’t know what to make of her but understood that “this formidable woman now at the centre of the imperial picture was refusing to toe the government line,” while occupying “an extraordinary position of power as president of both a new world religion and of the mainspring of Indian nationalism.”

Tasked by his political bosses to assess her risk as a political threat, colonial intelligence officer Sempkins reported from Delhi in November 1917: “It is apparent [...] that Mrs Besant intends to make her year of office a period of the most strenuous political agitation.” An assessment that would, no doubt, have been met with horrified reactions back home. This “diminutive, white-haired lady who had just celebrated her 70th birthday” was making “men of rank across two continents quake in their boots.”

Paterson recognises the contradictions in Annie’s radical politics — her preference for constitutional methods, her unease with civil disobedience, and her eventual marginalisation as nationalist strategies shifted. The book leaves the reader viewing Annie as a bridge between Britain and India, rationalism and mysticism, dissent and institution-building. It is an astonishing portrait of a woman who repeatedly reinvented herself while remaining faithful to the core of justice and service.

The Nine Lives of Annie Besant stands out for the clarity and edgy elegance of Paterson’s prose. She balances colourful narrative with analytical depth, enlivening the text with delightful and wondrous anecdotes. The result is a biography that is both intellectually rigorous and hugely readable.

(The reviewer is an independent editor based in Besant Nagar, Chennai)

Published on May 3, 2026