Annie Wood Besant advocated for birth control, socialism, labor reform, Theosophy, and Irish and Indian nationalism. Besant was good at promoting all the causes she was passionate about. She made headlines at a time when women would not dear appear or be mentioned in any media outlet. However, she was prosecuted under British anti- obscenity laws for publishing a six-penny birth control pamphlet in 1877. She declared that she was only trying to help a poor woman but, a jury failed to convict her which gave way to the wider dissemination of that type of information. In 1893 she moved to India to take leadership of the Theosophy movement. She also rose to the top of the movement for Indian freedom and in 1917 she was elected president of the Indian National Congress, the pro-independence group led by Mohandas Ghandi. She did not believe in Ghandi's advocacy for non-violent resistance and broke all ties with him.