[GHHF] “This is India” as seen by Annie Besant, who said, “If Hindus do not maintain Hinduism, who shall save it?”

•    Annie Besant arrived in India in 1893; she died in Adayar, Tamil Nadu, on September 20, 1933. She initially came to help with the Theosophical Society's work, promoted Indian self-rule, and became a prominent figure in the Indian independence movement.
•    Co-founder of Theosophical Society; She promoted Jiddu Krishnamurti to be a world teacher; She founded the Home Rule League in 1916 to push for self-governance.
Exemplary quotes on India/Hinduism 
•    After a study of some forty years and more of the great religions of the world, I find none so perfect , none so scientific, none so philosophical and none so spiritual that the great religion known by the name of Hinduism. Make no mistake, without Hinduism, India has no future. Hinduism is the soil in to which India's roots are stuck and torn out of that she will inevitably wither as a tree torn out from its place. And if Hindus do not maintain Hinduism who shall save it? If India's own children do not cling to her faith who shall guard it. India alone can save India and India and Hinduism are one.
•    This is the India of which I speak - the India which, as I said, is to me the Holy Land. For those who, though born for this life in a Western land and clad in a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their true mother - they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past, must dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination; for they are bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past; and with her, too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a future which they know they will share with her who is their true mother in the soul-life. 
•    India is the mother of religion. In her are combined science and religion in perfect harmony, and that is the Hindu religion, and it is India that shall be again the spiritual mother of the world. 
•    During the early life of a Nation, religion is an essential for the binding together of the individuals who make the nation. India was born, as it were, in the womb of Hinduism, and her body was for long shaped by that religion. Religion is a binding force, and India has had a longer binding together by religion than any other Nation in the world, as she is the oldest of the living Nations. 
•    Based on knowledge it need not fear any advance in knowledge; profound in spirituality, the depths of the spirit find in it deeps answering into deep, it has nothing to dread, everything to hope, from growth in intellect, from increasing sway of reason. 
•    The highest Hindu intellectual training was based on the practice of yoga, and produced, as its fruit, those marvellous philosophical systems, the six Darshanas and the Brahma Sutras, which are still the delight of scholars and the inspiration of occultists and mystics.
•    Annie Besant brings up another idea, that even westerners who are now drawn to the rare teachings of the Vedic philosophy are experiencing an attraction that was attained in a previous life. In India: Essays and Lectures she says: "Among the priceless teachings that may be found in the great Indian epic Mahabharata, there is none so rare and priceless as the Gita... This is the India of which I speak–the India which, as I said, is to me the Holy Land. For those who, though born for this life in a Western land, and clad in a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their true mother–they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past; must dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination; for they are bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past and with her, too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a future which they know they will share with her who is their true mother in the soul-life." 
•    Annie Besant embedded basically to the perception of Hindu identity of Indian nationhood. Sum total of her works demonstrate that Hinduism and Bharat are inextricably interwoven and both these terms are interchangeable. To quote her, thus: “Hinduism is the soul of India. Without Hinduism there can be no India. Without Hinduism India has no future. Hinduism is the soil into which India’s roots are struck and torn of that she will inevitably wither as a tree torn out of from its place. Many are the races flourishing in India, but none of them stretches back into the far dawn of her past, nor are they necessary for her endurance as a nation. Every one might pass away as they came and would still remain. But let Hinduism vanish and what she is? A geographical expression of the past, a dim memory of a perished glory, her literature, her art, her monuments all have Hindudom written across them. And if Hindus do not maintain Hinduism, who shall save it? If India’s own children do not cling to her faith, who shall guard it? Hindus alone can save India, and India and Hinduism are one”. She continued, “…I do not mean Hinduism narrow, anglicized, dogmatic, I mean Ancient Hinduism enlightened, full of vigour and strength”. In similar strain Besant, in first Convocation of Kashi Hindu Vishvavidyalaya addressed, “Christianity came to India and might go away, Zoroastriansim reached India and leave……Similar is the case with Islam. But let Hinduism perish, India shall remain as a corpse”.