Janaki Nath Ghosal

Janaki Nath Ghosal was an early Bengali member of the Theosophical Society who formed the Karwar Theosophical Society.

Colonel Olcott related this account of visiting Mr. Ghosal:

On the 9th of the month, I went in company with Mrs. Gordon to the garden-house of Babu Janaki Nath Ghosal, a very influential Bengali gentleman, and admitted into membership his ideally beautiful wife — daughter of the venerable Debendra Nath Tagore, associate-founder, with the late Rajah Rammohan Roy, of the famed Brahmo Samaj. Mrs. Ghosal, besides being a Peri for beauty, is also one of the brightest intellects of the day, and her children inherit her talents. Along with her, I admitted three other Indian ladies. This sounds simple enough to Western people but they should recollect that since the days of Mussalman supremacy the high-born ladies of Bengal have been seclude ed behind the purdah, or entrance-door-curtain of the Zenana, the Brahmo ladies alone excepted, and the fact of my being admitted so often as I have, into the family privacy, is a striking proof of the kindly light in which I am regarded by the Hindus.

Another time,

Among our friends at Allahabad as much unrest had been created by the Coulomb-Missionary conspiracy against our Society as at any station in India. Certain agents had been very active in sowing distrust and I had my work cut out for me, but I had a good case and all came at right in the end. With Mr. Janaki Ghosal I went to pay my respects to Swami Madhavdas, an English-speaking ascetic who is much respected.

Mr. Ghosal is further mentioned in the account of phenomena given by Mohini Mohun Chatterji in the Hodgson Report.