AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        Ram Swarup (1920-1998) is perhaps the greatest Hindu intellectual of post-independent India. His most outstanding disciple was Sita Ram Goel, an 'Intellectual Kshatriya'. The intellectual and emotional relationship that existed between them for more than five decades is a glorious chapter in the history of Hindu revival after 1947. The relationship between these two great men was similar to the relationship between Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda in the latter half of the 19th century and between Dr Hedgewar and Sri Guruji Golwalkar in the 2nd quarter of the 20th century. Sita Ram Goel often used to acknowledge the fact that he came back to the fold of Hinduism from the concentration camp of communism only on account of the spiritual influence of Ram Swarup.

        Ram Swarup was firmly of the view that the foremost task of an intellectual lay in his effort to break down the stereo-types and reductive categories which have a limiting and choking impact upon human thought and communication. As early as in 1949, in his book 'Let us Fight the Communist Menace', he challenged the orthodox communist party view that every intellectual must be a man or woman of the Left. After the II World War, all the worldly powers in all areas of life effectively co-opted the intelligentsia to an extraordinary and unprecedented degree. The results were disastrous. As Wilfred Owen puts it poetically:

        'The scribes on all the people shove  And bawl allegiance to the State'.

        Against this contemporary situation of serfdom, Ram Swarup in the India of 1949 functioned as a 'One Man Brigade' against communism in India and the Indian State which was getting into the vicious grip of Russian brand of communism under Stalin. Ram Swarup felt that it was his principal intellectual duty to make an earnest search for relative independence from such pressures pointed out by Wilfred Owen. As a powerful political writer against communism, he tried to speak the truth to power.

Ram Swarup

Ram Swarup was born on October 12, 1920 in Sonipat in Haryana. His father was a private banker. Ram Swarup (formerly Ram Swarup Garg, his Gotra name and belonging to the Agrawal caste) took his degree in economics from Delhi University in 1941. Like others of his generation he too joined the Gandhian Movement during the Quit India Agitation of 1942. He acted as the over-ground contact (Post box) for the underground rebels like Aruna Asaf Ali. He had to spend a week in custody when a letter bearing his name was found in the house of another activist, the future Homeopath Dr. Ram Singh Ratna. He worked as a clerk in the American Office in Delhi from 1942 to 1944. This office had been set up in the context of the Allied War Effort against Japan. He became very popular in several progressive circles in Delhi and New Delhi on account of his capacity for lively conversation and astringent wit. He was a great admirer of Aldus Huxley, Bertrand Russell and a literary imitator of George Bernard Shaw.      He started an intellectual club called 'The Changers' Club' keeping in mind Karl Marx's dictum that philosophers have only interpreted the world instead of changing it. It was nothing more than an academic discussion forum for a dozen young intellectuals which included the future diplomat L.C. Jain, the future Planning Commission Member Raj Krishna, the future Times of India Editor Girilal Jain, and his intellectual protégé Sita Ram Goel. What is interesting to note is that at this time Ram Swarup was a committed atheist and this was reflected in the motto which he inscribed in the Changers' Club manifesto in these words: 'Butter is more important than God'. This club was disbanded in 1947 because most of the members were sucked into the vortex of real life.

         Ram Swarup worked for Mahatma Gandhi's English disciple Mira Behn (nee Madeleine Slade) when she retired to Rishikesh after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi to edit her correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi which unfortunately was not completed. During this period Ram Swarup engaged himself in exploring the relevance of Gandhism to real life problems, a subject which sustained his interest for a long time. As late as in 1977, he published the booklet called 'Gandhian Economics' as an alternative to the ideology which was rapidly gaining ground among the intelligentsia around him: 'Communism'.

        Around the time of independence in 1947, Ram Swarup had developed strong opinions against 'communism'. He was forthright in his criticism of the Communist Party of India (CPI) when they defended the 'Partition Scheme' with politically manufactured socio-economic arguments. Ram Swarup objected strongly by declaring that the Partition would only benefit the haves among the Muslims, not the have-nots. Thus he moved in a direction opposite to the ideological passion and trend of the day and time and became one of India's leading anti-communists. It was during this period he 'rescued' and 'saved' his friend Sita Ram Goel from the deathly trap of 'communist totalitarianism'.

        Ram Swarup's first two books, 'Let us Fight the Communist Menace' (1949) and 'Russian Imperialism: How to Stop it?' (1950) were published by Prachi Prakasham, an anti-communist publishing house founded by Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel in Calcutta which was then the Mecca of Indian Communism. This publishing house was part of their 'Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia' (SDFA) about which I shall speak in greater detail below. The great benefactor who came to the rescue of Bharath Mata at that time by way of financial assistance for this great national cause was Hari Prasad Lohia. These two books attracted attention in high places. Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Union Home Minister, took a decision to establish the 'Democratic Research Service' (DRS), a think tank specifically devoted to monitoring communism, which was formally launched in November 1950. It was sponsored by the family of G.D. Birla and was initially led by Morarji Desai, who later passed on the responsibility to Minoo Masani. It was as Secretary of the DRS that Ram Swarup prepared a 'History of the Communist Party of India' which was later published by Minoo Masani in his own name. On account of strong differences with Minoo Masani, Ram Swarup resigned from the DRS to re-join Sita Ram Goel in Calcutta.

        Together Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel established the 'Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia' (SDFA) in 1950. In his landmark work called 'Decolonising the Hindu Mind' (2001), Dr. Koenraad Elst writes emphatically: 'The most authentic and effective Indian centre of fact-finding and consciousness-raising about the communist menace in Asia was undoubtedly the Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia (SDFA).' It published some important studies, which were acclaimed by leading anti-communists in the West and Taiwan, and on one occasion violently denounced in the Pravda and the Izvestia. Until its closing in December 1955, the Centre was the main independent focus of ideological opposition to communism in the third world.

        Ram Swarup's main books on communism are: 'Let us Fight the Communist Menace' (1949); 'Russian Imperialism: How to Stop It?' (1950); 'Communism and Peasantry: Implications of Collectivist Agriculture for Asian Countries' (1954); 'Gandhism and Communism' (1954); and 'Foundations of Maoism' (1956). In his 'Gandhism and Communism' Ram Swarup stressed the need to raise the struggle against communism from a military to a moral and ideological level. This book was taken to the attention of Western anti-communists including some Congressmen in U.S.A. Some core ideas of Ram Swarup were adopted by the Eisenhower administration in its agenda for the Geneva Conference in 1955.

        Arun Shourie who had the good fortune of being a good friend of Ram Swarup wrote this about his struggle against communism: 'Ram Swarup now in his seventies, is a scholar of the front rank. In the 1950s when our intellectuals were singing paeans to Marxism and to Mao in particular, Ram Swarup wrote critics of communism and of the actual —that is dismal — performance of communist Governments. He showed that the 'sacrifices' which the people were being compelled to make had nothing to do with building a new society in which at some future date they would be heirs to milk and honey. He showed that the claims to efficiency and productivity, to equitable distribution and to high morale which were being made by these communist Governments in Russia and China, were wholly unsustainable, that in fact they were fabrication. Today, anyone reading Ram Swarup's critiques would characterise them as prophetic. But thirty years ago, so noxious was the intellectual climate in India that all he got was abuse and ostracism'.

        In every society we have a handful of unusual persons with an unusual sensitivity to the sacred and an uncommon reflectiveness about the nature of their universe, and the rules which govern their society. Ram Swarup was a rare intellectual who asserted his right to have his own space to walk around, the space in which to stand and talk back to authority. In all his writings he declared that an unquestioning subservience to authority in today's world is one of the greatest threats to an active, and moral, intellectual life. Ram Swarup had the rare gift of exposition which turns popularization into an art. All his life he spoke up for the free mind which is the glory and torment of the modern world.