Editing Helena Blavatsky (section)

=== South Asian religion and politics ===

Hutton suggested that Blavatsky had a greater impact in Asia than in the Western world.{{sfn|Hutton|1999|p=19}} Blavatsky has been cited as having inspired Hindus to respect their own religious roots.{{sfn|Meade|1980|p=8}}
The Theosophical Society influenced the growth of Indian national consciousness, with prominent figures in the [[Indian independence movement]], among them Mohandas Gandhi and [[Jawaharlal Nehru]], being inspired by Theosophy to study their own national heritage.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2004|p=17}}
The Theosophical Society had a major influence on [[Buddhist modernism]] and [[Hindu reform movements]],{{sfn|MacMahan|2008}} while Blavatsky and Olcott took part in [[Anagarika Dharmapala]]'s revival of [[Theravada Buddhism]] in Ceylon.{{sfn|Gombrich|2003|pp=185–188}}{{sfn|Fields|1992|pp=83–118}}

Meade stated that "more than any other single individual", Blavatsky was responsible for bringing a knowledge of Eastern religion and philosophy to the West.{{sfn|Meade|1980|p=8}} Blavatsky believed that Indian religion offered answers to problems then facing Westerners; in particular, she believed that Indian religion contained an evolutionary cosmology which complemented Darwinian evolutionary theory, and that the Indian doctrine of reincarnation met many of the moral qualms surrounding [[vicarious atonement]] and eternal [[damnation]] that preoccupied 19th-century Westerners.{{sfn|Bevir|1994|p=748}}
In doing so, Meade believed that Blavatsky paved the way for the emergence of later movements such as the [[International Society for Krishna Consciousness]], [[Transcendental Meditation movement]], [[Zen Buddhism]], and [[yoga]] in the West.{{sfn|Meade|1980|p=8}} Hutton believed that the two greatest achievements of Blavatsky's movement were in popularizing belief in reincarnation and in a singular divine [[Anima mundi|world soul]] within the West.{{sfn|Hutton|1999|p=20}}

Blavatsky "both incorporated a number of the doctrines of eastern religions into her occultism, and interpreted eastern religions in the light of her occultism", in doing so extending a view of the "mystical East" that had already been popularized through Romanticist poetry.{{sfn|Bevir|1994|p=674}}
[[Max Müller]] scathingly criticized Blavatsky's Esoteric Buddhism. Whilst he was willing to give her credit for good motives, at least at the beginning of her career, in his view she ceased to be truthful both to herself and to others with her later "hysterical writings and performances". There is nothing esoteric or secretive in Buddhism, he wrote, in fact the very opposite. "Whatever was esoteric was ''ipso facto'' not Buddha's teaching; whatever was Buddha's teaching was ''ipso facto'' not esoteric".{{sfn|Müller|1893a}}{{efn|For Sinnett's response and Müller's rejoinder, see {{harvnb|Sinnett|1893}} and {{harvnb|Müller|1893b}}.}} Blavatsky, it seemed to Müller, "was either deceived by others or carried away by her own imaginations."{{sfn|Müller|1902}}
Blavatsky responded to those academic specialists in Indian religion who accused her of misrepresenting it by claiming that they understood only the exoteric nature of Hinduism and Buddhism and not the inner esoteric secrets of these faiths, which she traced back to the ancient Vedas.{{sfn|Bevir|1994|pp=758–759}}