Shri. Ram Swarup ji : The greatest Hindu intellectual of post-Independent India
On the Death Anniversary of the renowned Hindu Thinker and Philosopher on 26th December
In every society we have a handful of unusual individuals with an unusual sensitivity to the sacred and an uncommon reflectiveness about the nature of their Universe, and the rules which govern their society.
Shri. Ram Swarup ji 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.
Shri. Ram Swarup ji 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.
Shri. Ram Swarup ji, 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.
Dr Koenraad Elst says about Shri. Ram Swarup ji : “In the long run, Ram Swarup will probably prove to have been the most influential Hindu thinker in the second half of the 20th Century. He has, at any rate, been a crucial influence on most other Hindu Revivalist authors of the last couple of decades”.
Dr David Frawley says about Shri. Ram Swarup ji : “Sri Ram Swarup was one of the most important inspirations in my Vedic study and writings on Hindu Dharma. I was in touch with him for many years. Later, I wrote forewords to each of the four main Volumes of his collected works through Voice of India”.
Shri. Ram Swarup ji wrote in 1985 about the East waking up from its slumber
A fateful thing has been happening. The East is waking up from its slumber. The wisdom of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism is becoming available to the world. Already, it is having a transforming effect on the minds of the people, particularly in countries where there is freedom to seek and express.
Dogmas are under a cloud; claims on behalf of Last Prophethood and Only Sonship, hitherto enforced through great intellectual conditioning, brow-beating, and the big stick, are becoming unacceptable. Religions of proxy are in retreat. More and more men and women now seek authentic experience. Borrowed creed will not do. Men and women are ceasing to be obedient believers and are becoming seekers.
They no longer want to be anybody’s sheep, now that they know they can be their own shepherds. An external authority, even when it is called God in certain Scriptures, threatening and promising alternately, is increasingly making less and less impression; people now realize that Godhead is their own true, secret status and they seek it in the depth of their own being. All this is in keeping with the wisdom of the East.
Shri. Ram Swarup ji wrote in 1992 about fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is not accidental but essential to Islam.
It is inherent in those religious ideologies which are built on a narrow spiritual vision, have a limited psychic base, and which emphasise dogma and personalities, other than experience and impersonal truth. Islam’s fundamentalism is rooted in its theology, its founder and his practices. It means that it will also have to be fought there. But this point is ill understood and, therefore, the struggle is at the best of times phoney war.
On his Death Anniversary, we pay our obeisance and respects to this great soldier of Hindu Dharma.
| Unquestioning subservience to authority is one of the greatest threats to an active, and moral, intellectual life ! |