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‘Not as a Stranger or a Tourist’

This chapter narrates and contextualizes the story of the Australian educationist Leonora Gmeiner, an Australian teacher who travelled to India in the 1890s inspired by the ideals of Theosophical education. Gmeiner lived in India for twenty-nine years, participated in Gandhian campaigns to abolish the indenture system, took part in Annie Bessant’s Home Rule League activities, and served as the principal of the Indraprastha Hindu Girls’ School in Delhi, where she was joined by other similarly inspired Australian women. Gmeiner dedicated her life to the physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual training of Indian girls to bring them out of purdah and make them politically active full citizens of the emerging Indian nation. This chapter argues for an alternative to ‘White Australian’ attitudes to India and demonstrates that the circulation of knowledge and ideas flowed from the Antipodes to India as well as through Indian migration south.