Anton has posted the membership details of the Theosophical Society 2007/2008 on his site. I thought I’d go into that a bit more.
Total membership of the Theosophical Society Adyar in 2007: 29,014.
The largest section is India with 12,444 registered members. There has been some talk about the lagging administration of the Indian section, so this is probably a low number (they have been growing). That is 41% of the members of the Theosophical Society.
The second largest section (still no surprise here) is the one in the United States. 4,072 members. That’s roughly 14% of the members of the TS.
Italy and Australia are next with each more than a thousand members.
Iceland stands out with its 370 members. That may not seem a large number, but it’s more than 1% of the total population of that country.
New Zealand stands out with its 982 members. I guess having a former politician at the helm probably helps, but still 0.2% of the population is impressive.
We have heard it said that the membership of the Indian section alone suffices to elect a president. This is not true. Of the members eligable to vote for the president (roughly 20.000 in total) only about 9000 live in India. This means India does sway the vote (assuming they all vote the same), but they cannot sinch it without help. They had 45% of the members that could vote in this election. That they did in practice determine the vote, apparently has to do with the fact that only around 50% of the members in the West ended up voting.
Let’s run the numbers.
50% of 11000 = 5500 votes outside of India
If the same number of votes came from India that would have been 61% of their votes.
There was in fact a two thirds majority for Radha. Assuming for simplicity sake that only Indians voted for Radha (which seems unlikely, but hey) 95% of the Indians members that could vote, actually did. That shows an enormous amount of dedication to both the Theosophical Society and our current president Radha Burnier. It also likely shows that the Indian members really did want the TS president to live at Adyar.
note
I should read the comments here more often. Apparently the election results were published in detail online earlier. I had no idea. Looking at the stats, the Indian vote alone was more than the votes for John Algeo, but if all the people outside India who voted for Radha had voted for John, it would have been a tie.
Note two (Thanks to ‘critic’)
I’m feeling more out of the loop by the minute. Apparently John Algeo did a blogpost about this issue as well.
John Algeo’s own interpretations about the past election:
http://www.theosophyforward.com/2008/07/gc-message-%E2%80%93-international-election/
Most of what is said above is valid, but there is still a numbers problem.
The article says 2007 members = 29,014
The Theosophist July 2008 shows the number of members eligible to vote = 20,724.
That is a colossal difference. About 30%. The only legitimate difference would normally be that members of less than 2 years standing do not vote, but such an increase when most sections are reporting decreases is illogical. So the only explanation that appears rational is that there are different countings for different occasions, and there is no central place where this is checked out.
Second, I have read in some of the more contraversial correspondance that at least one section considers the Indian Federation’s membership administration to be lacking, presumably therby inferring they got more votes than they should have.
But then, compare that with the USA Section.
The Theosophist July 2008 shows the number of members eligible to vote = 2,757.
In the 2008 Convention Presidential Address reproduced in The Theosophist January 2009, the President’s report on sections, which is presumably provided directly by the Sections themselves, reports a decline of 172, “making a total of about 4,000 members”.
This is a difference of even greater magnitude = 32%.
Off the numbers, the first 3 Presidents were not of South Asian extraction, yet they were “more Indian than the Indians”, and they lived in Adyar. Olcott re-introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka, Besant was a fierce fighter for Indian independence, Arundale married Rukmini Devi, a renowned Karnatic dancer. As a simple member, I have belonged to 2 Indian lodges and 2 European lodges; in reading correspondance, I see names from American members which can only be of Indian origin. The only level – and the dangerous level – where I see polarization, is at the national section level.
The US numbers issue can be explained by another issue with membership: there are a lot of new members who join for a year and then resign again (or stop paying). Or so I’ve heard.