SRI RAM SWARUP - A FEARLESS INTELLECTUAL SEER OF MODERN HINDU INDIA

Sri 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 intellectual relationship between these two great men was similar to the spiritual relationship between Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda in the latter half of the 19th century and the Hindutva relationship 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 Sri Ram Swarup.

Sri 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 intellectual serfdom, Sri 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. Sri 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.

Sri Ram Swarup was born on October 12, 1920 in Sonipat in Haryana. His father was a private banker. Sri Ram Swarup (formerly Sri 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.