ABSTRACT
All of Woodroffe's roles in Calcutta's life begin in the High Court: a group of senior judges supported the Tagore brothers in the promotion of the Indian Society of Oriental Art; it was in the High Court among the Indian barristers and vakils that Woodroffe's image as a nationalist was fostered; and it was among the Court's personnel that he may first have come in contact with the devotees of tantric gurus.1 We shall see that according to Vasanta Kumar Pal's biography of Sivacandra Vidyarnava, it was the High Court Sanskrit interpreter, Haridev Sastri, who introduced Woodroffe to his guru. When gathering 'oral traditions' about Woodroffe at the High Court in 1991 I was told that his interest in Tantra had been aroused by his court clerk who had been healed of a long-standing ailment by a tantric guru. Another story ran that it was Woodroffe's wife who was healed of mental illness, again through an intermediary at the High Court. It was not possible to pursue these stories; but the fact that memories of Woodroffe lingered at the High Court at all was significant. Of one thing moreover everyone who knew of him there was quite certain: that he had been a Tantric. His name was linked to Atal Behari Ghose; and I was told of Ghose's house at Chaibassa in Bihar where the two men were believed to practise tantric sādhanā together in secret. The High Court was also significant as the source of the prestige which Woodroffe could lend to those aspects of Indian life with which he identified himself.
