We, the undersigned, the “Accepted” and “Probationary” Hindu Chelas of the Himalayan Brothers, their disciples in India, and Northern Cashmere, respectfully claim our right to protest against the tone used in the above article, and the bold criticisms of H. X. [A.O. Hume]—a lay Chela. No one who has once offered himself as a pupil has any right to openly criticise and blame our MASTERS simply upon his own unverified hypotheses, and thus to prejudge the situation. And, we respectfully maintain that it befits ill one, to whom positively exceptional favours were shown, to drag their personalities as unceremoniously before the public as he would any other class of men.
Belonging, as we do, to the so-called “inferior” Asiatic race, we cannot help having for our Masters that boundless devotion which the European condemns as slavish. The Western races would however do well to remember that if some of the poor Asiatics arrived at such a height of knowledge regarding the mysteries of nature, it was only due to the fact that the Chelas have always blindly followed the dictates of their Masters and have never set themselves higher than, or even as high as, their Gurus. The result was that sooner or later they were rewarded for their devotion, according to their respective capacities and merits by those who, owing to years of self-sacrifice and devotion to their Gurus, had in their turn become Adepts. We think that our blessed Masters ought to be the best judges how to impart instruction. Most of us have seen and know them personally, while two of the undersigned live with the venerated Mahatmas, and therefore know how much of their powers is used for the good and well-being of Humanity. And if, for reasons of their own, which we know must be good and wise, our Gurus abstain from communicating “to the world all the knowledge they possess” it is no reason why “lay Chelas” who know yet so little about them should call it “a sin” and assume upon themselves the right of remonstrating with, and teaching them publicly what they imagine to be their duty. Nor does that fact that they are “educated European gentlemen”—alter the case. Moreover our learned Brother, who complains of receiving so little from our Masters, seems to lose sight of the, to him unimportant, fact that Europeans, no less than natives, ought to feel thankful for even such “crumbs of knowledge” as they may get, since it is not our Masters who have first offered their instruction, but we ourselves who, craving, repeatedly beg for it. Therefore, however indisputably clever and highly able, from a literary and intellectual stand-point, H.X.’s letter, its writer must not feel surprised to find that, overlooking all its cleverness, we natives discern in it, foremost and above all, an imperious spirit of domineering—utterly foreign to our natures—a spirit that would dictate its own laws even to those who can never come under any one’s sway. No less painfully are we impressed by the utter absence in the letter, we are now protesting against, of any grateful acknowledgment even for the little that has confessedly been done.
In consequence of the above given reasons, we, the undersigned, pray our Brothers of the THEOSOPHIST to give room in their journal to our Protest.
DEVA MUNI
PARAMAHANSA SHUB-TUNG
T. Subba Row, B.A.B.L., F.T.S.
Darbhagiri Nath, F.T.S.
S. Ramaswamier, B.A., F.T.S.
Guala K. Deb, F.T.S.
Nobin K. Banerjee, F.T.S.
T. T. Gurudas, F.T.S.
Bhola Deva Sarma, F.T.S.
S. T. K……… Chary, F.T.S.
Gargya Deva, F.T.S.
Damodar K. Mavalankar, F.T.S.
1. This is a reply to the article “‘C.C.M.’ and Isis Unveiled,” Theosophist, September, 1882, being a letter by A.O. Hume.