Perennial Bonds: Esotericism and Egyptian-Indian Nationalist Solidarity in Early 20th Century

Description

It is well-established that theosophy and the Theosophical Society played a considerable role in the formation of the Indian national movement in the late 19th and early 20th century. Though no similar influence was apparent in the contemporary Egyptian nationalist case, Egyptian-Indian nationalist cooperation and solidarity, emerging around the turn of the century and carrying on into the interwar period, did occasionally find use and inspiration in various esoteric ideas when conceptualizing the cultural preconditions of their shared pan-nationalist, “Easternist” project. The paper discusses these conceptualizations, their possibilities and limitations, by focusing on the Egyptian side of story and zooming in on three historical moments, texts and meetings from the first three decades of the 20th century where esoteric ideas became a mediating factor of “Easternist” visions generally and of Egyptian-Indian nationalist solidarity specifically: the Indian-Egyptian co-organized Young Egyptian Congress of 1910 in Brussels; the Egyptian jurist and intellectual ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Sanhūrī’s (1895-1971) doctoral dissertation on the caliphate from 1926; and the moment of Mahatma Gandhi’s brief sojourn in Suez, Egypt in 1931. The paper argues that while esoteric ideas and movements – such as theosophy, perennialism, traditionalism and Sufism – did bolster the Egyptian-Indian “Easternist” claims of Eastern cultural, “spiritual” and ultimately political cohesion, it often clashed with the modernist and activist ethos of Egyptian nationalist intellectuals, thus rendering such ideas to be only of selective use.

Period	25 Jun 2023
Event title	ENSIE 2023 Meeting (European Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism)
Event type	Workshop
Location	København, DenmarkShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International