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

V SUNDARAM I.A.S

Sri Ram Swarup(1920-1998) 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'. Theintellectual 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.

Sita Ram Goel (Sishya) with Sri Ram Swarup (Guru) on the right 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 of1949 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. 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 protg Sita Ram Goel. What is interesting to note is that at this time Sri 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. Sri 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 Sri 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, Sri 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. Sri 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 anticommunists. It was during this period he 'rescued' and 'saved' his friend Sita Ram Goel from the deathly trap of 'communist totalitarianism'.

Sri 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, ananti-communist publishing house founded by Sri 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 explain 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 DRSthat Sri 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, Sri Ram Swarup resigned from the DRS to re-join Sita Ram Goel in Calcutta. Sri Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel together, 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. Sri 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' Sri 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 Sri 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 Sri Ram Swarup wrote this about his struggle against communism: Sri 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, Sri 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 Sri 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 reflective-ness about the nature of their universe, and the rules which govern their society. Sri 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. Sri 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. Sri Ram Swarup, as a fearless intellectual, did not feel powerless in the face of an overwhelmingly powerful network of social authorities, the communist mafia of mass media, the government and business corporations, etc which were competing with one another in crowding out the possibilities for achieving any decent change in post-independent India. Sri Ram Swarup openly came out against the disgraceful public performance of Nehruvian intellectuals marked by strategic premeditated trimming, careful silence, patriotic bluff and bluster and above all a self-dramatising and retrospective apostasy. In his approach to public affairs, Sri Ram Swarup often found exhilaration in danger and relished nothing better than a controversy. His was the spirit

in opposition, rather than in accommodation. He was firmly of the view that the romance, the interest, the challenge of intellectual life was to be found in dissent against the status quo in India immediately after 1947 when the struggle on behalf of the under-represented and disadvantaged groups seemed so unfairly weighted against them. As a young intellectual, Sri Ram Swarup had the integrity and moral courage to proclaim that standards of truth about human misery and oppression should be upheld by fearless intellectuals regardless of their party affiliation, regional background and primeval loyalties. Edward W Said, an internationally known literary critic, beautifully describes the predicament of a committed and ardent intellectual in this context: Witnessing a sorry state of affairs when one is not in power is by no means a monotonous, monochromatic activity. It involves what Foucault once called 'a relentless erudition', scouring alternative sources, exhuming buried documents, reviving forgotten (or abandoned) histories. It involves a sense of the dramatic and of the insurgent, making a great deal of one's opportunities to speak, catching the audience's attention, being better at wit and debate than one's opponents. And there is something fundamentally unsettling about intellectuals who have neither offices to protect nor territory to consolidate and guard, self-irony is therefore more frequent than pomposity, directness more than hemming or hawing. But there is no dodging the inescapable reality that such representations by intellectuals will neither make them friends in high places nor win them official honours. It is a lonely condition, yes, but it is always a better one than a gregarious tolerance for the way things are. Sri Ram Swarup, through his life and writings as a fearless fighter for great public causes, gave a cubic content to the above words of Edward Said. All his life he stood upright and talked back to authority. He was disgusted by the unquestioning subservience to authority in the India of his time and viewed it as the greatest of threats to an active, and moral, intellectual life. He often told his friends that the hardest aspect of being an intellectual is to represent what you profess through your work and interventions, without hardening into an institution or a kind of automaton acting at the behest of a system or method. When he and Sita Ram Goel were fighting together against the menace of communism in India after 1949, Sri Ram Swarup viewed Gandhism as an alternative to communism. In a pamphlet written after the assassination of

Gandhiji ' Mahatma Gandhi and his Assassin ' (1948), he expressed the view that martyrdom was only befitting a man of Gandhiji's elemental greatness. After waging a relentless intellectual battle against communism and serfdom, Sri Ram Swarupturned to religious and philosophical issues after 1957. Apart from contributing a large number of seminal articles on Hinduism, Islam and Christianity from several points of view to important newspapers like The Times of India, The Indian Express, The Observer and Hindustan Times, he also wrote a series of important books on comparative religion and philosophy. Some of his main works are: Buddhism vis-a-vis Hinduism (1958), The Hindu View of Education (1971), The Word as Revelation: Names of Gods (1980), Hinduism vis-a-vis Christianity and Islam (1982), Christianity, An Imperialist Ideology (1983), Understanding Islam Through Hadis (1983), Hindu-Sikh Relationship (1985), Ramakrishna Mission in Search of a New Identity (1986), Cultural Alienation and Some Problems Hinduism Faces (1987), Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992), Woman in Islam (1994), On Hinduism: Reviews and Reflections (published posthumously in 1999), and Meditations: Gods, Religions (published posthumously in 2000). Sri Ram Swarup was an unassuming, quiet and reflective type of person. He never sought a job; he never got married and he never did any business for commercial profit. After a life of strenuous and unremitting intellectual labour, Sri Ram Swarup passed away peacefully during an afternoon nap on 26 December 1998 leaving to the world a splendid example of lonely and disinterested pursuit of truth and light. When Sri Ram Swarup's Hindu View of Christianity and Islam was published in 1992, Syed Sahabuddin, a Janata Dal Member of Parliament wrote a letter on 20 August 1993 to his co-religionist, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs (Late) P M Syeed, asking theGovernment of India to have the book examined from the point of view of banning it under the law of the land. SYED SAHABUDDIN'S VILE ATTEMPT TO GET SRI RAM SWARUP'S BOOK HINDU VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM BANNED BY GOVERNMENT OF INDIA IN 1993 FAILED MISERABLY. An instantaneous reaction from Arun Shourie fully exposed the unfounded prejudice of Syed Sahabuddin in the whole affair and a statement made by a group of intellectuals, under the leadership of K S Lal against Syed Sahabuddin's proposal to impose a ban on that book also had the desired impact.

In their statement on that occasion these intellectuals declared as follows: We strongly condemn all recent attempts in India and abroad to prevent free enquiry into the history and the doctrines of various religions. In particular we condemn the attempt by Syed Sahabuddin to make the Indian authorities impose a ban on the book Hindu View of Christianity and Islam by Sri Ram Swarup published by Voice of India, New Delhi in 1992. This book is one of the first serious comparative studies of religion written from the Hindu viewpoint; banning it would be a direct attack on the right of Hindu society to develop an intellectual response to ideological challenges. Sri Ram Swarup was a crusader for ' Sanathana Dharma ', Hindu culture, Hindu civilisation, Hindu society, Hinduism as a whole and above all for things, issues and ideals Hindu in character. He wrote in his Hindu View of Christianity and Islam: If religious tolerance is a value, Christianity as well as Islam lacks it badly. Wherever they have gone, they have carried fire and sword and oppressed and destroyed as far as it lay in their power. They demolished and occupied the temples and shrines of others. Any tolerance shown was an exception, intolerance was the rule. SRI RAM SWARUP CLEARLY CONCLUDED THAT THE DESTRUCTIVE RECORD OF ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY THROUGH THE AGES HAS BEEN OUTDONE ONLY BY COMMUNISM. LIKEWISE, SRI RAM SWARUP REJECTED THE PHILOSOPHY OF 'SARVA DHARMA SAMBHAVA' OFMAHATMA GANDHI ON THE GROUND THAT THE TOLERANT POLYTHEISTIC HINDUISM CAN NEVER BE EQUATED WITH BRUTAL MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS LIKE ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY. Under the 'Islam-embracing, Christianity-coveting, Hindu-hating, casteQuota-loving' UPA government in New Delhi, Hinduism has become a dirty word and Hindus are being made to disown their identities. Smaller identities and narrower loyalties, once an integral part of a larger Hindu milieu, are being mischievously thrown to the forefront by planned antisocial and anti-national policies. Castes and creeds are becoming more prominent at the highest levels of governance. Such dangerous forces have acquired their own momentum, power, justification and vested interests. Their game is obvious; it is to confuse the nation's counsel, to weaken its will, to create a soft society so that its parts can be picked up one by one and the nation dismembered and destroyed to the total pseudo-secular satisfaction of all tall leaders in New Delhi! This seems to be the only po0litical agenda of the anti-Hindu and anti-National Sonia Congress Party and the UPA Government today.

In this terrible and desolate context for Hinduism and the Hindus of India today, I have to refer to 4 brilliant articles written by Sri Ram Swarup in August 1979. The titles of these 4 thought provoking articles were: (1) The Politics of Self-Alienation (2) The Dishonest Secularist (3) The RSS Bogey (4) The Embarassing Allies Janatha Government was in power and Charan Singh was the Prime Minister of India. Several forces at that time were uniting and conspiring together against Hinduism and national unity. Sri Ram Swarup had the vision to understand and comment upon the long range implications of the configuration of these evil forces. He was the first Political Scientist to point out as early as in August 1979 that voting in India was being done on communal and caste lines which gave Muslims a Balancing Role and which in turn made them the wooed community by all kinds of political parties, leading to the forging of a Grand Alliance between opportunistic, communal and caste-based politicians. In his foreword, to the above 4 articles, Sri Ram Swarup, observed as follows: They are not Election Articles though they refer to elections. Rather, they deal with the larger configuration and deeper motivations of Indian politics. Indian thinking today is characterized by Self-Alienation, which has also given birth to its own brand of politics. This politics rejects the deeper values of the country and its culture. Its arrogance has prevented it even from comprehending those values This politics dresses itself in Left Phraseology. It uses the Phrases of Secularism and Socialism in order to serve its own ends. It is also from this source that a good deal of anti-RSS propaganda emanates. RSS-baiting is, at heart, Hindu-baiting. The slogan is raised by those who would like to use Minorities to foist a party or dynastic dictatorship over the majority. Here is another brilliant observation from Sri Swarups foreword: There is the culture of SERVICE and the politics of POWER. The RSS, in so far as it derives its ethos Hinduism, represents the former, which the latter finds difficult to appreciate. Hence the misunderstanding about the RSS. Ram also from even

As Sri Ram Swarup put it in his foreword: I offer these articles in the hope of promoting a larger discussion, particularly amongst those who love their country and culture. They must know the nature of the danger the country is facing and the unholy alliance its enemies are forging. What Sonia Gandhi and Karunanidhi have achieved together in theTELECOM SPECTRUM SCAM using the convenient handle of their page boys like Dr Manmohan Singh and A. Raja --- I am referring to the combined Himalayan Corruption of thisCRIMINAL coterie --- was clearly foreseen by Sri Ram Swarup in these articles. In his article titled The Politics of Self Alienation, Sri Ram Swarup stated that in many Hindu intellectuals and politicians, the hatred of the religion in which they were born has acquired neurotic and even lunatic proportions. In others it is more self-controlled, more prudently expressed and more profitably directed --- it is expressed with an eye to Muslim and Christian votes. Similarly, in some it is expressed emotionally; in others it takes on a more intellectual look. In Communists, the madness becomes a method and acquires a long-range aim; it becomes their necessary ideological prop which supports their aim of capturing power. They distrust all those who have roots, who have self-esteem, who have any structure of beliefs, any rallying point. They know that people who are ideologically and organizationally cohesive are not an easy prey to their ambitions. Therefore the people must be ideologically disarmed, their culture subverted, they must lose their self-respect, their organic leadership and their identity; they must be atomized, their internal differences fanned so that they can be easily picked up. The Self-Alienation of Indians in general and Hindus in particular was an important component of the intellectual ferment of the British days though it was kept in check by the pervading influence of Gandhiji. But after the passing away of Gandhiji on 30-January-1948, the old deathly disease of Self-Alienation again came into the forefront and showed itself in all its power and ramifications. Its most undisguised incarnation is in the elitist and Leftist politics of the day. The elites --- Nehruvian Congress pseudosecularists and the Communists --- are enamoured of the West and they seek solutions of all the countrys problems in imported models. They would like to cast the country in the image of the West. Sri Ram Swarup attacked this approach in a powerful language charged with elemental power: They fail to see that this is a sterile path in more than one sense and just by reproducing the West in ourselves, we also make no contribution to the pool of the world-good. Nehru was such a model as Prime Minister; so was Indira Gandhi; so was Rajiv Gandhi; and so is Dr

Manmohan Singh today. Dr Manmohan Singhs live, living, life-giving, lifeenhancing Western models in this sense are Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and all the members of the Nehru-Gandhi Congress Dynasty. Our listless, lustureless, lifeless, directionless and national visionless Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has several times declared from the housetop: Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are my live models (perhaps like the historic wax models created by Madame Tussaud!!!). Their meaningful (mendacious and machinating and self-promoting) mission is my mission; their self-less benighted Be-Cause is my Because; and their transcendental (treacherous) vision is my vision. What is happening in this Sonia-Congress organized and Sonia Gandhi-manipulated Dark Age in which India and her helpless millions find themselves in a disastrous rut today, was clearly foreseen by Sri Ram Swarup as early as in 1979. Smt Indira Gandhi, the greatest political criminal who adorned the highest seat of power in post-Independent India, was the originator of this malignant disease of Politics of Self-Alienation so eloquently described by Sri Ram Swarup above. Smt Indira Gandhi, besotted victim and wife of Love Jihadi Feroze KHAN (name changed to Gandhi later), succeeded in shattering the identity and morale of Hindus and Hindu society in India. By sowing and promoting the virus of Self-Alienation amongst the Indians in general and Hindus in particular by using the might of the state, she succeeded in poisoning the roots of the ancient Hindu culture. I am referring to the 42nd Amendment that Smt Indira Gandhi brought into the Indian Constitution, by mischievously using the dark cover of Emergency, in 1976 by declaring India to be a Secular State. The main aim of this Amendment was to use the helpless and unorganized Hindu millions as disposable fodder on the state organized bonfire programme (in final effect deliberately planned for the welfare of Muslims and Christians only and viciously intended as a pogrom for the Hindus as a whole) of Minority Rights CONCEIVED ONLY FOR PURPOSES OF MINORITY VOTE BANK POLITICS. If our totally impotent, inefficient, lethargic, phlegmatic, corrupt and stupidly smiling Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is able to declare, with authoritarian shamelessness on stilts, that Muslims of India will have the first charge on our National Resources, it is only because of the fact that dastardly anti-Hindu Smt Indira Gandhi created the antiHindu virus--- I am referring to the Secularism Missile aimed at the Hindu throats --- by amendingthe Constitution in 1976. I am calling todays surrogate Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singhcorrupt only

because he allows the Himalayan corruption of Union Communications Minister Spectacular Spectrum Raja to continue unchecked, unhindered and unquestioned by any enforcement authority under his control. If Raja commits the mega-crime, the surrogate Prime Minister abets it through his masterly inactivity and cold calculated silence!!! The levers of his, perhaps, involuntary responses and actions are controlled by the well-knownItalian Mafia operating from No: 10, Janpath in New Delhi. Sri Ram Swarup was a great visionary. After pointing out all the perils and the dangers that were encircling Hinduism and Hindus of India, he concluded as follows in his article The Politics of Self-Alienation: Hinduism has the necessary depth, catholicity, dynamism to assimilate all that is good and true. IT HAS ALSO A GOOD DEAL WHICH IS ALWAYS TRUE, WHICH IS NOT EASILY FOUND ELSEWHERE AND OF WHICH WE SHOULD BE PROUD AND WHICH WE SHOULD CULTIVATE. Having touched upon Sri Ram Swarups article on The Politics of SelfAlienation, let me now turn to his article titled The Dishonest Secularist. In this seminal and prophetic article, Sri Ram Swarup made a frontal attack on the Minority Politics of State-Organized Secularism. I am giving a few excerpts from this article. 1. Today secularism has become a profitable business. It has attracted all kinds of shady characters. Even more than patriotism, it has become the first and last refuge of the scoundrels of all descriptions. Ambitious politicians use it for vote-catching; communal (Communists included, words within these brackets mine) intellectuals use it for giving themselves a progressive image; aggressive minorities use it for self-aggrandizement. 2. The slogan of secularism has been so often cynically repeated that it has become hackneyed, and trite. People have become to feel that the minorities are being pampered, that they are hard to please, that they are getting unreasonable and even impossible. 3. Secularism is not merely an agnostic or metaphysical idea or even a generous social impulse; it is a hard-nosed election politics; it is a bid for Muslim and Christian votes. Hindu-Muslim unity is a desirable thing but it does not suit that breed of politicians who prosper on division. Divide and Rule was no invention of the British; it is an indispensable policy of all who want to perpetuate a party or dynastic rule. The rules of the game do not change simply because the British have left. These have been adopted by the BROWN ELITE

they have left behind. They have vested interest in keeping people divided and perpetuating their differences. 4. In his book My eleven years with Fakhrudin Ali Ahmed, Mr. Fazle Ahmed Rehmaney provides an interesting case which throws great light on the psychology of secularism. During the Emergency days, when the members of the Jamat-e-Islami were put in the same jail as the members of RSS, the former began to discover that the latter were no monsters as the latter were made to believe by nationalist propaganda; therefore they began to think better of their Hindu brothers. This sent alarm into the hearts of secularists and nationalists. Maulavis belonging to the Jamat-e-Islami-e-Hind met the President (Fakhrudin Ali Ahmed) and reported to him about the growing rapport between the leaders of the two communities. This stunned President Fakhrudin Ali Ahmed and he said that this carried ominous future for Congressite Muslim leaders. He also promised that he would speak to Indiraji about this dangerous development and ensure that the Muslims remain Muslims. (Sonia Gandhi and Ahmed Patel are playing the same sinister game of Divide and Rule Anti-Hindu Secularism today.) 5. THERE IS A VESTED INTEREST OF MUSLIMS RETAINING THEIR HINDU PHOBIA OF THE HINDUS. THIS PHOBIA IS A VERITABLE CORNUCOPIA OF VOTES FOR WHICH THE OPPORTUNIST ELEMENTS ARE COMPETING. IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY HAS THROWN UP NO WORTHWHILE LEADERSHIP WHICH IS INTERESTED INT EH LARGER QUESTION OF HINDUMUSLIM AMITY; ON THE OTHERHAND, IT HAS BEEN IN THE GRIP OF A LEADERSHIP THAT HAS BEEN WORKING MERELY AS THE ELECTION AGENT OF THE RULING CLIQUE IN THE CONGRESS POLITICS. 6. The Hindu society is divided into castes. It thinks in terms of castes, it votes in terms of castes. Hindus do not vote for Hindu candidates; they vote for caste candidates. So, if one belongs to the right caste or can manipulate the caste factor successfully and also manage the minority votes on anti-Hindu slogan one is bound to succeed. Thus while the Hindu society is divided, Muslims vote enbloc. This gives them disproportionate representation on Indian Politics. HINDU CASTE BASED ORGANIZATIONS in British India were all essentially Hindu organizations rooted in Sanatana Dharma and being very proud of their Hindu identity and heritage. In the dirty communal anti-Hindu electoral politics of today, the caste-based

organizations and political parties are trying to wean away people from their primordial Hindu roots. More particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala this seems to be the most serious political malady afflicting these two states. The classic instance of communal anti-Hindu politics relates to the NAIR SERVICE SOCIETY (NSS) in Kerala today. The grim tragedy is that the NSS is functioning like a subordinate office of the Christian Church In Kerala. The NSS is trying to reduce Nairs, the erstwhile warrior-defenders of Sanatana Dharma in Kerala, to a bunch of pompous vainglorious casteists having simultaneously, superiority complex towards other Hindu castes on the one hand and inferiority complex towards Christians and Muslims on the other. No Nair Karayogam (a unit of the Nair caste organizations), whether inside Kerala or outside, is known to start their meeting with the traditional Hindu invocations of Guru-Vandana and Vinayaka Stuti. The Nair Karayogams have been infiltrated, consciously and deliberately, by Communist paratroopers who are trying to wean away the Nair member-families from their Hindu roots under the guise of the debilitating and pernicious virus of SECULARISM consciously and continuously marketed by the Sonia Congress Party and the Communist Parties in Kerala. The Communist moles inside the caste-based organizations try their best to sabotage and prevent Hindu Unity and Hindu solidarity resting on caste consolidation. The case in point is the 156th Sri Chattambi Swami Jayanthi Celebrations at the Panmana Ashram in September 2009. The Ashram authorities had invited the widely respected Hindu Dharmacharini Mata Amritnandamayi for the Jayanthi Celebrations. Many of the members of the NSS could not tolerate a Hindu Dharmacharini like Mata Amritnandamayi who belongs to lower caste being invited and given prominence in the Jayanthi Celebrations. Finding themselves in the hopeless situation, from their divisive and narrow-minded casteist point of view, the Communist moles in the NSS of Kerala in general and its GENERAL SECRETARY Shri P K NARAYANA PANICKER, went into a depressed state sulking and they deliberately disassociated themselves from the Sri Chattambi Swami Jayanthi Celebrations. This, despite the known fact that Chattambi Swamigal was a great Hindu Rishi and Social reformer who fought against social evils of casteism and religious conversion. The General Secretary of the NSS P K Narayana Panicker showed supreme contempt for the essential and enduring Hindu cultural, social and spiritual message of SRI CHATTAMBI SWAMIKAL on the auspicious occasion of his 156th Jayanthi Celebrations at the

PANMANA ASHRAM. In my view Sri P K NARAYANA PANICKER behaved like a jihadi Muslim towards a great Hindu saint, sage and seer like Hindu Dharmacharini Mata Amritnandamayi. 7. Today, in India, there is no minority problem; there is a majority problem. This situation will continue as long as political parties find that they can spite the majority with impunity and get the minority votes into the bargain. But if they knew that their brand of politics also lost them at least as many votes of one community as it won them of other, they would be more circumspect. 8. But for Modern Secularists, Muslim or Christian communalism is sacred and patriotic. They have made common cause with this; they walk hand-in-hand with this. This Current Secular slogan is nothing but another name for Hindu-baiting. IT SPECIALIZES IN USING THE MUSLIM STICKS FOR BEATING THE HINDUS. The third article of Sri Ram Swarup titled THE RSS BOGEY is as hard hitting as the earlier 2 articles dealt with above. IT WAS NEHRU WHO STARTED THE RSS BAITING AFTER AUGUST 15, 1947. IT REACHED ITS VIRULENT CLIMAX AFTER THE ASSASSINATION OF MAHATMA GANDHI ON JANUARY 30 1948. THE RSS WAS BANNED AND GURUJI GOLWALKAR, THE RSS CHIEF WAS IMPRISONED WITHOUT ANY TRIAL. Having wailed eloquently in his autobiography against the denial of civil liberties during the British Raj, Pundit Nehru and his government shamelessly denied civil liberties to Guruji Golwalkar and the RSS Swayamsevaks for a period of more than 18 months after January 30, 1948. The might of the Indian State was let loose by Nehru against Guruji Golwalkar and the RSS. Guruji Golwalkar effectively demonstrated that his immortal soul-force was more powerful than the mortal temporal force of the state displayed by Pundit Nehru. When Indira Gandhi introduced the Emergency in 1975, very much like Nehru in 1948, she again imposed a ban on the RSS and imprisoned thousands of its Swayamsevaks without any trial. The common people of India, under the leadership ofJayaprakash Narain rose in revolt and threw out Indira Gandhi and her Congress Party in the 1977 General Elections. Taking note of all this background, Sri Ram Swarup wrote as follows on 25 August 1979: It should be obvious to anybody that the most vicious anti-RSS propaganda is at heart anti-Hindu propaganda. So long as the RSS is identified with Hinduism in one form or another, it would invite this attack. It cannot hope to convince or please the enemies of Hinduism, except by repudiating this identification and denying its inspiration. In this repudiation, it will also lose its own raison

detre. The RSS will have to overcome the forces of self-denigration, selfalienation and even self-destruction deliberately let loose by Sonia Gandhi and her cohorts in the Congress Party and the other Islamist and casteist political parties. The attack on the RSS is dishonest, interested, motivated, sustained, vicious and virulent. It is spearheaded by those who have a deep animus against Hinduism especially that give it cohesiveness, identity, the will and the strength to survive. Resist and fight back. Those who want Hinduism to have no backbone and who want to disarm it ideologically are opposed to the work of the RSS. This kind of pan-Hindu organization working for bringing social cohesion and religious and political consolidation in the Hindu society does not suit the designs of the enemies of Hindu society. In the same article Sri Ram Swarup also declared But while the enemies of the RSS have worked themselves up to a frenzied point and have whipped up their tirade, the propaganda itself is losing its appeal with the thinking people. They now know that it is emanating from demented minds, from professional Hindu-baiters, from corrupt and opportunist politicians, from agents of foreign powers, from those who are interested in the dismemberment of the country, from inveterate communalists putting on the mask of a progressive phraseology. Renascent Hinduism will have to contend with the forces that are working round the clock for the destruction of Sanatana Dharma, the Hindu society and Hindu culture. The chief enemy of Sanatana Dharma today is the Italian Catholic woman imposter Sonia Gandhi and her chattels in the Congress Party --- Islamic political marauders like Ahmed Patel, A.R Antulay and Christian mercenaries like A.K. Anthony, Oomen Chandy, Oscar Fernandez, Ambika Soni --- and they are all working in concert to convert India into a non-Hindu nation of Islam and Christianity. I would like to pay my tribute to Sri Ram Swarup by quoting his words which give a clear and clairvoyant message to all of us: Those who are against India are even more opposed to Hinduism, a name and nomenclature for India at its deepest and most cultural and spiritual; Hinduism embodies India's civilizational dimension and gives it cohesion, integrity, continuity and unity. They know that before they can subvert India, they must subvert Hinduism, that the country's Balkanisation is not possible without prior fragmentation of the Hindu society. Hence, the tenacious attack on Hinduism, their need to unleash divisive caste politics.

The world of scholarship is permanently indebted to my revered Guru Shri Jyothirmayananda Swamiji for making available to the world the 4 original unpublished articles of Shri Ram Swarup referred to above. If only he had not taken care to preserve those articles which were personally handed over to him by Shri Ram Swarup in 1979, they would have been lost for ever.

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Monday, May 3, 2010

Paintings of Vande Mataram done in 1923

V.SUNDARAM

A public meeting was organized on 10 September 2006 by the Rajaji Centre for Public Affairs in Royapettah, Chennai to commemorate the centenary of the singing of the Vande Mataram song at a Special Session of the Indian National Congress at Benaras on 7 September 1905. I had the privilege of addressing this meeting.

Immediately after the meeting, my esteemed friend Dr Parthasarathy, son of Shri Shri Acharya (Mandayam Srinivasachariar), gave me a book titled Bandemataram Albumpublished in Cawnpore (Kanpur) in 1923 by Shiva Narayan Mishra Vaidya of Prakash Pustakalaya. This book contains rare and beautiful paintings by K.TEJENDRA KUMAR MITRA illustrating some of the gloriously symbolic Sanskrit words in the Vande Mataram song. I view it as a great privilege to present some of the pages from this rare book with the text and the paintings on the immortal VANDE MATARAM song.

Shri Aurtobindo Ghosh (1872-1950) This extremely rare and out of print book contains the full English Translation of Bandemataram song by Shri. Aurobindo. I am presenting below the text of immortal Vande Mataram song in SANSKRIT, immediately followed by the English translation of that text by Shri.Aurobindo.

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ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Mother, I salute thee! Rich with thy hurrying streams, bright with orchard gleams, Cool with thy winds of delight, Green fields waving Mother of might, Mother free. Glory of moonlight dreams, Over thy branches and lordly streams, Clad in thy blossoming trees, Mother, giver of ease Laughing low and sweet! Mother I kiss thy feet, Speaker sweet and low! Mother, to thee I bow. Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands When swords flash out in seventy million hands And seventy million voices roar Thy dreadful name from shore to shore? With many strengths who art mighty and stored, To thee I call Mother and Lord! Thou who saves, arise and save! To her I cry who ever her foe drove Back from plain and sea And shook herself free. Thou art wisdom, thou art law, Thou art heart, our soul, our breath Though art love divine, the awe In our hearts that conquers death. Thine the strength that nerves the arm, Thine the beauty, thine the charm. Every image made divine In our temples is but thine.

Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen, With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen, Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned, And the Muse a hundred-toned, Pure and perfect without peer, Mother lend thine ear, Rich with thy hurrying streams, Bright with thy orchard gleems, Dark of hue O candid-fair In thy soul, with jewelled hair And thy glorious smile divine, Loveliest of all earthly lands, Showering wealth from well-stored hands! Mother, mother mine! Mother sweet, I bow to thee, Mother great and free!

Cover page of the book of 1923.

First page of Vande Mataram Published in CAWNPORE in 1923 A truly magnificent tribute was paid by Shri.Aurobindo to Shri.Bankim Chandra Chaterjee in the following words: "When posterity comes to crown with her praises for the Makers of India, she will place her most splendid laurel not on the sweating temples of a place-hunting politician, not on the narrow forehead of a noisy social reformer, but on the serene brow of that gracious Bengali Shri.Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who never clamoured for place or power, but did his work in silence for love of his work, even as nature does, and just because he had no aim but to give out the best that was in him, was able to CREATE A LANGUAGE, A LITERATURE AND A NATION".

This is the front cover page of a nationalistic journal called Vijaya which was shifted from Chennai to Pondicherry in 1909. This cover page appeared in the August 1909 Issue of this Journal.

MANDAYAM SRINIVASACHARIAR AND; S.THIRUMALAIACHARIAR Mandayam Srinivasachariar and his brother S Thirumalachariar were pillars of support toMahakavi Bharathi during his exile in Pondicherry from 1908 to 1918. A Tamil Journalcalled 'Vijaya' was started by S Thirumalachariar on Triplicane High Road Madras in 1907 and later shifted to Pondicherry in 1909. The Cover page of August 1909 issue of VIJAYA from Pondicherry carried the picture of Bharath Mata with the sacred words of Vande Mataram. This issue of Vijaya has been presented above.

I am presenting below the marvellous paintings done by SHRI.TEJENDRA KUMAR MITRA to illustrate the lines of Vande Mataram in the Bande Mataram Album published in Cawnpore in 1923.

Bande Mataram Hail Mother, I bow to thee!

Sujalam Nature supplies thee with all thy wants, With Sweet Water.

Suphalam And with luscious fruits


Malayaja Sheetalam Shashya Shyamalam Mataram Thou art soothed by balmy breeze Ever verdant with green herbage

Shubra-jyostna-pulakita yamineem Thy nights ever resplendent with silver moons


Phulla-Kusumita-drumadala-shobhineem Bedecked thou art in flowery plants


Suhasineem Ever cheerful, ever bright

Sumadhur-bhashineem

Full of promise and of hope; Mother, thou bestoweth sweet pleasure and happiness divine

Sapta-koti-Kantta-kalakala-ninada-karale Dwisapta-koti-bhujairdhrit-kharakarabale Thy cause championed thy thirty crores of souls, Twice thirty crores of arms to defend thee


Ke-bole-ma-tumi-able Bahubala dharineem Who says mother thou art feeble? Thou commandest immense strength


Namami tarineem Our salvation lies in thee; (Hail mother I bow to thee!)

Ripudalavarineem Mataram Thou hast power to ward off foes, Mother I bow to thee


Shyamalam saralam Susmitam Bhushitam Dharaneem Bharaneem Mataram

Ever happy and ever simple Ever bright and ever beautiful Thou our support, our nourishment, I bow to thee. To quote the brilliant words of my esteemed friend (late) A.Ranganthan; Vande Mataramwas composed even before the Ananda Math was written. However, it became part of the Ananda Math. Here it is necessary to stress the similarities between the Indian National Movement and the Irish Nationalist Movement. Just as the Irish Nationalist Movementinspired by great poets like W.B.Yeats had its beginnings in the Gaelic Revival, so wasShri.Aurobindos English translation of Vande Mataram triggered off by Bankim Chandras song. As Shri Aurobindo put it, it was Bankim Chandras Ananda Math that gave us the reviving mantra of Vande Matarama glorious mantra which is creating a new India.And Shri.Aurobindo developed this point in his own

characteristically eloquent stream: For what is a nation? What is our mother country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti composed of all the Shakties of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani, Mahisha, Mardini sprang into being from the Shakti of all the millions of Gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani-Bharathi is the living unity of the Shakties of 300 million people..For Vande Mataram expresses the aims and power of the Indian Nation as the Marseillaise embodied the ideal of awakened France or as the aspirations of Ireland are expressed in the song of Ethana Carberry. Vande Mataram is something more than the defense of the Motherland. It is a song of struggle for liberty and preservation of our cultural heritage. I am presenting below a beautiful paintingof BHARATA-MATA done by Shri.Abanindranath Tagore (Bengali: ) (August 7, 1871 - December 5, 1951), who was the principal artist of the Bengal school and the first major exponent of swadeshi values in Indian art. Shri.Abanindranath Tagore believed that Western art was "materialistic" in character, and that India needed to return to its own traditions in order to recover spiritual values. Shri.Abanindranath Tagores famous painting ofBHARAT-MATA was done during the stormy days of the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal in1905 following the Partition of Bengal brought about by Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India. This beautiful painting of BHARAT-MATA was inspired by the sublime National Song of Vande Mataram composed by Shri.Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.

Paintining of Bharat-Mata by Shri.Abanindranath Tagore Shri.Abanindranath Tagore was also a noted writer. He was popularly known as 'Aban Thakur'. He was nephew of the poet Shri. Rabindranath Tagore Shri.Abanindranath Tagores students included Nandalal Bose, Kalipada Ghoshal, Surendranath Ganguly, Asit Kumar Haldar, Sarada Ukil, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Samarendranath Gupta, Mukul Dey, K. Venkatappa, Jamini Roy,and Ranada Ukil. When Sister Nivedita (1867-1911) happened to see the above painting of BHARAT-MATAdone by Shri.Abanindranath Tagore in 1905, she was enraptured by it and went into flights of divine ecstasy. She paid the following tribute to Shri. Abanindranath Tagore: "We have here a picture which bids fair to prove the beginning of a New Age in Indian Art. Using all the added means of expression which the modern period has bestowed upon him, the artist has here given expression nevertheless to a purely Indian idea, in Indian form. The curving line of lotuses and the white radiance of the halo are beautiful additions to the Asiatically-conceived figure with its four arms, as the symbol of the divine multiplication of power. This is the first masterpiece, in which an Indian artist has actually succeeded in disengaging, as it where, the spirit of the Motherland

giver of Faith and Learning, of Clothing and Food,--and portrying HER, as SHE appears to the eyes of HER children. What he sees in HER is here made clear to all of us. Spirit of the Motherland, giver of all good, yet eternally virgin..The misty lotuses and the white light set HER apart from the common world, as much as the four arms, and HER infinite love. And yet in every detail, of Shanka bracelet, and close-veiling garment, of bare feet, and open, sincere expression, is SHE not after all, our very own, heart of our heart, at once MOTHER and DAUGHTER of the INDIAN LAND, even as to the RISHIS OF OLD was USHABALA, IN HER Indian girlhood, daughter of the DAWN?