Nilakanta Sri Ram

Who was Nilakanta Sri Ram?

Nilakanta Sri Ram or Nilakantha Sri Ram was a freemason, theosophist and president of the Theosophical Society Adyar.

In his early years Sri Ram worked under Annie Besant in various capacities. Sri Ram was a teacher at the Besant Theosophical College in Madanapalle, the National School in Bangalore and the National University of India in Chennai.

The twenty years of N. Sri Ram’s Presidency represented a very important change in the work of the Theosophical Society and also in the perception its members’ had of the nature of Theosophy. His achievement was indeed an outstanding one: a shift from an emphasis on the occult side of things and its related phenomena, to the focus on the lofty ethics of Theosophy, or true occultism, and its role in the transformation of the human consciousness. N. Sri Ram was the last President of the TS to have had contact with the President-Founder, Col. Olcott. He represented a link with the very origins of the Society and its work, not only historically but above all spiritually.

Sri Ram's daughter Radha Burnier was the seventh president of the Theosophical Society Adyar, from 1980 until 2013.