Henry Steel Olcott was born on 2 August 1832 to a pious Presbyterian household in Orange, New Jersey, USA. In his teens, he attended the College of the City of New York and Columbia University. At the age of twenty, he converted to spiritualism. Soon he was championing a host of causes, including anti-slavery, agricultural reform, women’s rights, cremation, and temperance. 

At the age of 28 (in 1860), he married Mary Epplee Morgan, the daughter of the rector of the Trinity Parish, and together had three sons. He gained a reputation in the field of agricultural education by establishing a school farm and lecturing on agriculture at Yale University. Furthermore, Olcott was the agricultural editor of the New-York Tribune.  

When the American Civil War began in 1861, he joined the US Army, serving initially as a Special Commissioner investigating allegations of fraud in the New York Disbursement office. Having achieved the rank of colonel, he was seconded to the US War and Navy departments in Washington. He was commended for his work by the Secretary of the Navy. Following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, he was made a member of the team that investigated the President’s murder. In 1865, he resigned from his commission and returned to New York where he studied for and became a member of the Bar, specialising in customs, excise and insurance cases, and became a recognised expert in this area of law.  

In 1874, he met Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and one year later, he and Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society, an organisation that would soon play a major vote in introducing Americans to the ancient wisdom of the East. Olcott was the President of the society while Blavatsky was its Corresponding Secretary.

On 16 May 1880, Olcott and Blavatsky arrived in Colombo. A huge crowd gathered to welcome them. White cloth was spread for them from the jetty steps to the road where carriages were ready, and a thousand flags were frantically waved in welcome.

A few days later, on 25 May 1880, at the Wijayananda Temple in Galle, Olcott and Blavatsky took “pansil” by reciting, in broken Pali, the Three Refuges and the Five Precepts of Theravada Buddhism and becoming the first European-Americans to publicly and formally become Buddhists.

Olcott started to promote the Buddhist Theosophical Society (BTS) in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and worked, as he saw it, to purify and reform Buddhism of practices that had crept into the popular tradition.

Olcott’s second visit to Ceylon took place in April 1881. Together with Ven. Mohottivatte Gunananda Thera, who had spearheaded the first phase of the Sinhalese Buddhist revival, he crisscrossed the Western Province for eight months in a bullock cart of his own design. He sold merit cards and solicited subscriptions to support his National Education Fund, wrote and distributed anti-Christian and pro-Buddhist tracts, and secured support for his education reforms.

Olcott’s great achievement was to start a school for Buddhist children. Ananda College began its roots 137 years ago in that historic year – 1986 –  at No. 61 Maliban Street, Pettah, when he started it as a Buddhist high school and C.W. Leadbeater, a foreigner and convert to Buddhism, became the first principal. A total of 37 students enrolled at the school. 

Gradually, Olcott founded Buddhist schools in major cities such as in Kandy with Dharmaraja College, in Galle with Mahinda College, in Mathara with Rahula College, and in Kurunegala with Maliyadeva College. He also established the Young Men’s Buddhist Association and lobbied for recognition of the day of the Buddha’s birth (Wesak Poya Day) as a national holiday and acted as advisor to a committee appointed to design a Buddhist flag. 

Olcott pioneered unity between different Buddhist communities. He travelled to Burma (Myanmar) and to Japan and advocated the formation of a World Buddhist League. In 1950, when the World Buddhist Fellowship was established, it adopted Olcott’s flag as its emblem.

Col. Henry Steel Olcott’s life ended at the age of 75 in India on 17 February 1907.

Senior Old Anandians have taken the initiative to organise a ceremony at the college premises to mark “Olcott Day”, which falls on 17 February.

(The writer is a former student of Ananda College, Colombo)