Ram Swarup

{{infobox writer

| name = Ram Swarup

| image = Ram Swarup.JPG

| image_size =

| caption =

| birth_date = {{birth date|1920|10|12|df=yes}}

| birth_place = Sonipat, Haryana, India

| death_date = {{death date and age |1998|12|26 |1921|10|12 |df=yes}}{{citation needed|date=December 2023}}

| occupation ={{hlist|Historian|Writer|publisher}}

| alma_mater = University of Delhi

| period = Late 20th century

| genre = History, Politics, Comparative Religion

| subject = Hinduism, Dharmic traditions, British Imperialism

| movement =

| notableworks =}}

Ram Swarup (Hindi: राम स्वरूप; {{Birth date|df=yes|1920|10|12}} – {{Death date|df=yes|1998|12|26}}), born Ram Swarup Agarwal, was an Indian author and one of the most important thought leaders of the Hindu revivalist movement.Adelheid Herrmann-Pfandt: Hindutva zwischen „Dekolonisierung“ und Nationalismus. Zur westlichen Mitwirkung an der Entwicklung neuen hinduistischen Selbstbewußtseins in Indien In: Manfred Hutter (Hrsg.): Religionswissenschaft im Kontext der Asienwissenschaften. 99 Jahre religionswissenschaftliche Lehre und Forschung in Bonn. Lit, Münster 2009, S. 233–248. p. 240

Life

Ram Swarup was born in 1920 to a banker father in Sonipat, now a part of the state of Haryana in the Garg gotra of the merchant Agrawal caste. He graduated with a degree in economics from Delhi University in 1941. He started the Changer's Club in 1944, members of which included Lakshmi Chand Jain, Raj Krishna, Girilal Jain and Sita Ram Goel. In 1948–49, he worked for Mahatma Gandhi's disciple Mira Behn (Madeleine Slade).{{Cite web |last=VOI |date=2016-09-24 |title=Ram Swarup: Outline of a biography – Koenraad Elst |url=https://voiceofindia.me/2016/09/24/ram-swarup-outline-of-a-biography-koenraad-elst/ |access-date=2022-03-08 |website=Voice of India |language=en}}

Swarup wrote a book on the Communist Party that was published under an assumed name. In 1949, he founded the Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia. The Society published books, reviewed in the West, that criticised both the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet-mouthpiece Izvestia as well as Pravda, another mouthpiece for that same foreign power's Communist Party.Sita Ram Goel Genesis and Growth of Nehruism (1993) The Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia ceased operations in 1955. His early book Gandhism and Communism from around this time had some influence among American policymakers and members of Congress.{{Cite web |title=Ram Swarup A Fearless Intellectual by V. Sundaram |url=https://www.boloji.com/articles/4983/ram-swarupa-fearless-intellectual |access-date=2022-03-08 |website=boloji.com}} Swarup also wrote for mainstream Indian weeklies and dailies, like the Telegraph, The Times of India, Indian Express, Observer of Business and Politics, Hindustan Times and Hinduism Today.

In 1982, Swarup founded the publishing house Voice of India,{{Cite web|date=1998-07-01|title=Letter by Goel to Hinduism Today, July 1998. Letters|url=https://www.hinduismtoday.com/magazine/july-1998/1998-07-letters-2/|access-date=2021-07-04|website=Hinduism Today|language=en-US}} which has published works by Harsh Narain, A. K. Chatterjee, K.S. Lal, Koenraad Elst, Rajendra Singh, Sant R.S. Nirala and Shrikant Talageri, among others.Goel, Sita Ram, [http://voiceofdharma.com/books/hibh/ch9.htm "How I became a Hindu"], Chapter 9

Views

= Hinduism =

Ram Swarup upheld the polytheistic interpretation of the Vedas by rejecting the concept of one God,{{cite book|last=Goel|first=Sita Ram|title=Defence of Hindu Society|year=1987|publisher=Voice of India|location=New Delhi, India|url=http://voi.org/books/hindusoc/ch5.htm|quote="In the Vedic approach, there is no single God. This is bad enough. But the Hindus do not have even a supreme God, a fuhrer-God who presides over a multiplicity of Gods." – Ram Swarup|access-date=2011-08-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303181337/http://voi.org/books/hindusoc/ch5.htm|archive-date=2016-03-03|url-status=dead}} and states that, "only some form of polytheism alone can do justice to this variety and richness."{{cite book|last=Goel|first=Sita Ram|title=Defence of Hindu Society|year=1987|publisher=Voice of India|location=New Delhi, India|url=http://voi.org/books/hindusoc/ch5.htm|access-date=2011-08-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303181337/http://voi.org/books/hindusoc/ch5.htm|archive-date=2016-03-03|url-status=dead}}

Swarup was influenced by Sri Aurobindo, whom he held to be the greatest exponent of the Vedic vision in our times.Goel:How I became a Hindu. ch.8

Ram Swarup was "most responsible for reviving and re-popularizing" the Hindu 'critique' of Christian missionary practices in the 1980s, according to Chad Bauman. He insisted that monotheistic religions like Christianity "nurtured among their adherents a lack of respect for other religions".Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India by Chad M. Bauman, Oxford University Press, 2015 In the 1980s, he and Goel were involved in a "vigorous debate" with the Christian Ashram movement represented by Bede Griffiths.Theology in the Public Sphere Sebastian C. H. Kim Swarup has been named one of the most important thought leaders of the Hindu revivalist movement.

= European paganism =

Swarup also had an interest in European Neopaganism, and corresponded with Prudence Jones (chairperson of Pagan Federation) and the Pagan author Guðrún Kristín Magnúsdóttir.Koenraad Elst. Who is a Hindu, 2001 Under the influence of Ram Swarup, other Hindu revivalists also took an interest in European paganism.Adelheid Herrmann-Pfandt: Hindutva zwischen „Dekolonisierung“ und Nationalismus. Zur westlichen Mitwirkung an der Entwicklung neuen hinduistischen Selbstbewußtseins in Indien In: Manfred Hutter (Hrsg.): Religionswissenschaft im Kontext der Asienwissenschaften. 99 Jahre religionswissenschaftliche Lehre und Forschung in Bonn. Lit, Münster 2009, S. 233–248.

Christopher Gérard (editor of Antaios, Society for Polytheistic Studies) said: "Ram Swarup was the perfect link between Hindu Renaissance and renascent Paganism in the West and elsewhere."{{Cite web|date=1999-04-01|title=The Voice of India|url=https://www.hinduismtoday.com/magazine/april-1999/1999-04-the-voice-of-india/|access-date=2021-07-04|website=Hinduism Today|language=en-US}}

Swarup has also advocated a "Pagan renaissance" in Europe, saying {{blockquote|Europe became sick because it tore apart from its own heritage, it had to deny its very roots. If Europe is to be healed spiritually, it must recover its spiritual past—at least, it should not hold it in such dishonor...}} He argued that the European Pagans "should compile a directory of Pagan temples destroyed, Pagan groves and sacred spots desecrated. European Pagans should also revive some of these sites as their places of pilgrimage."Hinduism Today. July 1999. Antaios 1996 (Interview with Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel){{cite web |url=http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1999/7/1999-7-07.shtml |title=Archived copy |access-date=2007-01-07 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061030024504/http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1999/7/1999-7-07.shtml |archive-date=30 October 2006 }}

Bibliography

Indictment, Changer's Club
Mahatma Gandhi and His Assassin, 1948. Changer's Club
Let us Fight the Communist Menace (1949)
Russian Imperialism: How to Stop It (1950);
Communism and Peasantry: Implications of Collectivist Agriculture for Asian Countries (1950,1954)
Gandhism and Communism (1954)
Foundations of Maoism (1956). with a foreword by Kodandera M. Cariappa
Gandhian Economics (1977)
The Hindu View of Education (1971) [http://library.bjp.org/jspui/handle/123456789/566 Online (PDF)]
The Word as Revelation: Names of Gods (1980), (1982, revised 1992) [https://archive.org/details/WordAsRevelationNamesOfGodRamSwarup Online]
Understanding Islam through Hadis (1983 in the US by Arvind Ghosh, Houston; Indian reprint by Voice of India, 1984); The Hindi translation was banned in 1990, and the English original was banned in 1991 in India. [https://archive.org/details/understanding-islam-through-hadis-religious-faith-or-fanaticism Online], [http://voiceofdharma.org/books/uith/ other source]
Buddhism vis-à-vis Hinduism (1958, revised 1984).
Hinduism vis-à-vis Christianity and Islam (1982, revised 1992)
Woman in Islam (1994);
Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1993, contains also as an appendix Swarup's foreword to D. S. Margoliouth's Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (1985, original in 1905) and to William Muir's The Life of Mahomet (1992, original in 1894) [https://archive.org/details/HinduViewOfChristianityandIslamRamSwaroop Online]
Ramakrishna Mission: Search for a New Identity (1986) [https://archive.org/details/Identity_201605 Online]
Cultural Alienation and Some Problems Hinduism Faces (1987)
Hindu-Sikh Relationship (1985) [http://library.bjp.org/jspui/handle/123456789/560 Online (PDF)]
Hindu-Buddhist Rejoinder to Pope John-Paul II on Eastern Religions and Yoga (1995)
Hinduism and monotheistic religions. (2015). {{ISBN|9788185990842}}
On Hinduism: Reviews and reflections. New Delhi: Voice of India. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180402200130/http://voiceofdharma.org/books/ohrr/ Online] {{ISBN|9788185990620}} (2000).

;Writings as a contributor

Christianity, an Imperialist Ideology (1983, with Major T.R. Vedantham and Sita Ram Goel)
Chapters Five and Six in Hindu Temples - What Happened to Them (1990 vol.1, with Arun Shourie and others, {{ISBN|81-85990-49-2}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20120104125735/http://voiceofdharma.org/books/htemples1/])
Foreword to a republication of D.S. Margoliouth's Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (1985, original in 1905)
Foreword to a republication of William Muir's The Life of Mahomet (1992, original in 1894)
Foreword to Anirvan: Inner Yoga (1988, reprint 1995)

;Writings in other languages

Hindu Dharma, Isaiat aur Islam (1985, Hindi: "Hindu Dharma, Christianity and Islam");
Foi et intolérance: Un regard hindou sur le christianisme et l'Islam (2000). Paris: Le Labyrinthe.