Who was Annie Besant, and why did she present a teenage boy as the new Messiah?

Annie Besant (1847-1933) was already a prominent figure in British public life before she ever encountered Theosophy: a freethinker and campaigner for secularism, a Fabian socialist and labor organizer who helped lead the 1888 London matchgirls' strike, and a birth-control advocate co-prosecuted with Charles Bradlaugh for publishing contraceptive literature. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Theosophical Society's own historical records, she joined the Society in 1889 after reviewing Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine for a London newspaper, became a close associate of Blavatsky, and after Blavatsky's death rose to become president of the Theosophical Society in 1907, a post she held until her own death in 1933. She was also active in Indian politics, serving as president of the Indian National Congress in 1917 and campaigning for Indian home rule.

Besant's most consequential and controversial act came through her discovery of Jiddu Krishnamurti, a Brahmin boy she encountered on the Society's estate at Adyar, India, around 1909. Besant and her colleague Charles Webster Leadbeater became convinced Krishnamurti was destined to become the physical vehicle for the 'World Teacher,' a messianic figure Theosophists identified with the Bodhisattva Maitreya (and, syncretistically, with the same office they held Jesus had once occupied). Besant took legal guardianship of Krishnamurti and his brother, educated him in England, and in 1911 founded the Order of the Star in the East to prepare the world for his advent, eventually claiming tens of thousands of members internationally. The arrangement collapsed in August 1929, when Krishnamurti (at a gathering at Ommen, the Netherlands) dissolved the Order outright and famously declared 'Truth is a pathless land,' rejecting organized religion, gurus, and the World Teacher role Besant had built around him. Besant was reportedly devastated but remained personally close to him afterward, including deeding him land adjoining the Adyar estate.

Besant's theology, inherited largely from Blavatsky and elaborated with Leadbeater, holds that a hidden hierarchy of spiritual masters guides human evolution and periodically sends an avatar or World Teacher to renew humanity's spiritual understanding: a framework in which Jesus is one historical instance of a repeating office rather than the unrepeatable incarnation of God the Son (John 1:1-14). This directly contradicts the New Testament's claim that Christ's coming was decisive and final, not one installment among many (Hebrews 1:1-2, 9:26-28), and Krishnamurti's own public repudiation of the role Besant assigned him stands as the clearest historical demonstration that the claim did not hold even on its own terms.