Vol 4 Page 94

WE STAND CORRECTED

[The Bombay Gazette, April 3, 1882, p. 2]

To the Editor of The Bombay Gazette:
Sir,—
Since you refuse publishing my long letter, will you kindly insert this one—merely to correct two grave mistakes I find in your today’s editorial—unless it is indeed your determined object to make the “venerated” Swami turn still more fiercely upon us? I never said that the Arya Samaj

Page 95

“became a branch of the Theosophical Society,” but only that, among several other branches of our Society, we had one established solely for those Theosophists who were already Arya-Samajists, or desired to recognize the Pandit as their Spiritual Guru. This branch we called the “Theosophical Society of the Arya-Samaj of Aryavarta.” Neither the Arya-Samaj nor the Theosophical Society, as a body, was ever a branch of the other. This incorrect notion that the Arya-Samaj may have been taken as a branch of the Theosophical Society, was the very thorn in Swami’s side Both the societies, as bodies, were perfectly independent of each other, the “Theosophical section of the Arya-Samaj” being a branch of both.
Still more do you err in saying that we have been Buddhists “for a good many months.” As a body we belong to no religion. I myself am a Buddhist for many years, and Colonel Olcott has also been for several years. The various members, as individuals, have a perfect right to keep to their own particular faiths and creeds, but, as theosophists, they belong to none.
Yours, etc.,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Bombay, March 31

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