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        At a time when one of our sacred temples in the most ancient Hindu city of Varanasi has been bombed, I cannot help recalling the services of a great Field Marshal of Hinduism and Sanathana Dharma.

        Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003) was one of the most independent, objective, totally fearless front-rank Hindu thinkers in the second half of the 20th century.

        He was a great soldier who defended the time-honoured fortress of Hinduism and Sanathana Dharma with tremendous moral courage, verve and intellectual perspicacity against the attacks emanating from several monotheistic faiths like Islam and Christianity on the one hand and pseudo-secularists like Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and now Sonia Gandhi with her beloved communist apron springs on the other for nearly four decades.

        As a soldier for and defender of Hindu faith, he was indeed a rare combination of Drona-Arjuna-Karna. As an eminent thinker of modern India, he was the author of many books and publisher of many more. The books, written or published by him are now the single most important source of inspiration to the people of India in spite of successive Congress governments' vile attempts to suppress his endeavours from time to time. And today, it is the government of India which is weaker and the Indian masses much stronger, thanks to the mass Hindu-awakening created by Sita Ram Goel through his powerful writings. He sincerely believed that without courage there can be no truth and without truth there is no other virtue.

Sita Ram Goel (1921 - 2003)

Sita Ram Goel was a many-sided personality. He was a scholar, writer, publisher, harbinger, creator and mentor of a new school of Hindu thought grounded in Sanathana Dharma. It was David Frawley who described Sita Ram Goel as ' an intellectual Kshatriya'. Who is an intellectual Kshatriya? In this context we are indeed very fortunate because Sri Aurobindo Ghosh has already defined this term for us:         'As intellectual Kshatriyas we should be absolutely unsparing in our attack on whatever obstructs the growth of the nation, and never be afraid to call a spade a spade. Excessive good nature will never do ... in serious politics. Respect of persons must always give way to truth and conscience... What India needs especially at this moment is aggressive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, fearless resistance, courageous attack; of the passive inertia we already have too much.'         In an effete, corrupt, decadent, slavish, servile and hypocritical India created by the Congress party and its members dedicated to the philosophy of unbridled self-aggrandisement after our independence, Sita Ram Goel was an intellectual Kshatriya who shone like a pole star, exemplifying the qualities described by Sri Aurobindo Ghosh above.         Born on 16 October, 1921, Sita Ram Goel finished his formal education with an MA in History in 1944 from the University of Delhi. As a student, he was a social activist, and did work for a Harijan Ashram in his village. During the Great Calcutta killing of 16 August 1946 that was organised by the Muslim League shortly before Partition of India, Goel, his wife and first son narrowly escaped death. Goel had strong Marxist leanings during his student days and was on the verge of joining the Communist Party of India in 1948.

         He later came under the influence of Ram Swarup (1920-1998) and lost his faith in communism. He turned against the ideology of communism in 1949 when he came to understand the plight of people living in communist Russia. After 1950, he committed himself to informing the Indian people of the real theory and practice of communism in Stalin's Russia and Mao's China. His carefully and objectively researched work during this time rightly earned him the reputation of being a formidable and unassailable activist.

        As regards the influence of Ram Swarup on his thinking, Sita Ram Goel has gratefully acknowledged his debt to him: '...It would have been in the fitness of things if Ram Swarup had been in our midst today, because whatever I have written and whatever I have to say today really comes from him. He gives me the seed ideas which sprout into my articles ... He gives me the framework of my thought. Only the language is mine. The language also would have been much better if it was his own. My language becomes sharp at times; it annoys people. He has a way of saying things in a firm but polite manner, which discipline I have never been able to acquire.'

        Yet he spent his entire life pursuing and sharing a broad spectrum of knowledge on a variety of subjects. He was well versed in several languages and came to be respected as a scholar of literature, philosophy, religion, and sociology. By his own account, he drew his primary inspiration on all these subjects from Plato and Sri Aurobindo. Starting as a poet and a novelist, he later emerged as a commentator and critic on Christianity, Islam, and Communism in the Indian context. He published books in English and Hindi. He also translated George Orwell's 1984, Three dialogues of Plato, Denis Kincaid's book The Great Rebel about Shivaji and other books into Hindi.

        What inspired Sita Ram Goel to become a Hindu activist? He strongly felt that Hindu society was going through a crisis and that a Hindu renaissance was necessary. He wanted to do his part in bringing about this change. He was lucky to gain the confidence of and guidance from Ram Swarup, his close friend and advisor from his early days. Together, these two men wrote pamphlets that were forceful and strong, with titles like Hindu Society Under Siege, Defence of Hinduism and Perversion of India's Political Parlance. Eventually they decided that, to do this kind of controversial work, they needed their own publication house. That was how the non-profit publishing house called Voice of India was started in 1981. To quote the appropriate words of N S Rajaram in this context: 'Sri Goel has been as important a pioneering publisher as a scholar and writer. In fact I regard him as the foremost serious publisher in India whose work has led to the creation of the most important school of thought in the Indian humanities today, the Hindutva School in all its diversity.

        In this regard, his publishing house Voice of India has been more like a research centre and think-tank rather than a commercial house. While the Marxists and the anti-Hindu 'secularists' are running for cover, desperately clinging to what is left of their perks and positions (their influence is all but gone), many of the positions advocated by Sri Goel are moving into the mainstream. He was 20 years ahead of his time.

        Sita Ram Goel's great works include: India's Secularism-New Name for National Subversion; Hindu Society Under Siege; Defence of Hindu Society; Hindu Temples - What happened to them Vol. I & II; Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD); Muslim Separatism - Causes and consequences; How I became a Hindu; Pseudo-secularism, Christian Missions and Hindu Resistance; History of Hindu-Christian Encounter and Story of Islamic Imperialism in India.

        Although both Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup have now passed away, the Voice of India is still quite active - dedicated exclusively to the promotion of issues important to the modern-day Renaissance of Hinduism, a cause for which Sita Ram Goel gladly and courageously dedicated his life.

        In his classic book Why I became a Hindu. Sita Ram Goel wrote with a heart heaving with great passion and emotion as follows: 'I was born a Hindu. But I had ceased to be one by the time I came out of college at the age of 22. I had become a Marxist and a militant atheist. I had come to believe that Hindu scriptures should be burnt in a bonfire if India was to be saved. It was 15 years later that I could see this culmination as the explosion of an inflated ego. During those years of self- poisoning, I was sincerely convinced that I was engaged in a philosophical exploration of cosmic proportions. How my ego got inflated to a point where I could see nothing beyond my own morbid mental constructions, is no exceptional story. It happens to many of us mortals. What is relevant in my story is the seeking and the suffering and the struggle to break out of that spider's web of my own weaving. I will fill in the filaments as I proceed. I wonder how this story will shape if I wait for another 20 years. But I am impelled to write it because in today's India it is not sufficient to be a Hindu by birth. Hindu society and culture are under attack from several quarters. One has to be a convinced and conscious Hindu to meet and survive that attack. One has to find one's roots in Sanathana Dharma.