Francis Younghusband

Other names: 

Sir Francis Younghusband

Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

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Date of birth: 
31 May 1863
City of birth: 
Muree, North-West Frontier
Country of birth: 
India
Date of death: 
31 Jul 1942
Location of death: 
Dorset, England
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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 Faith's congress in London, to be held in 1936. Subsequent congresses were held in places such as Oxford in 1937, Cambridge in 1938, Paris in 1939, in which Younghusband continued to take a leading role.

Younghusband wrote twenty-six books between 1895 and 1942 on topics ranging from exploration and mountaineering to philosophy and politics.

Connections: 

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.

Network: 
Purohit Swami
Organizations: 
India Society
Involved in events: 

British Empire Exhibition, 1924

World Congress of Faiths, London, 1936

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Published works: 

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)

Secondary works: 

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)

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Archive source: 

Manuscripts, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to Shri Purohit Swami, Nehru Memorial Library, Delhi