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Francis Younghusband
‐
British Indian Army officer who developed a strong interest in religion and spirituality
Other names
Sir Francis Younghusband
Sir Francis Edward Younghusband
Place of birth
Place of death
Dorset
About
Francis Younghusband was a member of the British Indian Army. He was an explorer of the Gobi Desert and Manchuria. In 1903 Younghusband led a mission to Tibet. In 1906 he became British Resident in Kashmir.
Younghusband returned to Britain in 1909 and became involved and interested in religious/spiritual matters. He was a member of the India Society and became friends with many Indians in Britain. In 1933 he attended the Second Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He then became involved in the organization and leadership of the World Fellowship of Faiths congress in London, held in 1936. Subsequent congresses, in which Younghusband continued to take a leading role, were held in places such as Oxford in 1937, Cambridge in 1938 and Paris in 1939.
Younghusband wrote twenty-six books between 1895 and 1942 on topics ranging from exploration and mountaineering to philosophy and politics.
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Albion Rajkumar Banerji, Lord Curzon, Kedar Nath Das Gupta, Sayaji Rao (Maharaja of Baroda), Ranjee G. Shahani, Purohit Swami, Rabindranath Tagore, Charles F. Weller.
India and Tibet (London: John Murray, 1910)
The Gleam: The Religious Experiences of an Indian, Here Called Nija Svabhava (London: John Murray, 1923)
Life in the Stars (London: John Murray, 1927)
The Coming Country: A Pre-vision (London: John Murray, 1928)
Dawn in India (London: John Murray, 1931)
Modern Mystics (London: John Murray, 1935)
'Foreword', in Douglas A. Millard (ed.) Faiths and Fellowship: Proceedings of the World Congress of Faiths Held in London (London: J. M. Watkins, 1936)
Braybrooke, Marcus, A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936–1996 (Oxford: One World, 1996)
French, Philip, Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (London: HarperCollins, 1994)
Manuscripts, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Letters to Shri Purohit Swami, Nehru Memorial Library, Delhi
Image credit
Sir Francis Edward Younghusband by Walter Stoneman, bromide print, 1929, NPG x44902
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
