Redeemer Unsung

THE THREAT OF communism’s taking over India receded after the hugely unpopular Chinese invasion. The Communist Party of India itself split into two, one section affiliated with the Soviet Union, and the other with Maoist China. Sita Ram Goel now turned his attention to the Hindu-Muslim fault line that had divided India for centuries. It was an unhealing wound that needed the nation’s urgent attention. Instead, we were in constant denial, eager to erase the fact that Hindu society had endured an existential threat under two waves of colonialism, Islamist and Western.

Hindu secularists and leftists tried almost obsessively to blur the theological and civilisational line between the invading and colonising Islamic empires and Hindu society. They come up with all kinds of artifices and subterfuges, including mile-jule sanskriti, Ganga-Jamuni tahzeeb, aman ki asha, and so on. Commenting on Sita Ram Goel’s work, Koenraad Elst explains this almost suicidal folly: “Contrary to the fog-blowing of the secularists and their loudspeakers in Western academe, who always try to blur the lines between Hinduism and Islam, a line laid out ever so clearly by Islamic doctrine, Goel firmly stuck to the facts: Islam had waged a declared war against infidelism in India since its first naval invasion in AD 636 and continuing to the present.”

This line so openly and clearly drawn between Muslims and non-Muslims by both the precepts and practice of Islam through the ages confronts us in every conflict situation. It turned into a bloody conflagration during and after the Partition. It still simmers as an incarnadine boundary between India and its Muslim neighbours. The latter born, as we are never tired of repeating, of the same stock as the Hindus. It was Goel who first enunciated with the greatest clarity that India had been subjected to two waves of colonialism, Western, and prior to that, Islamic. His classic exposition of the latter, The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (Voice of India, 1994), should be compulsory reading in every course on post-colonialism. Instead, it is erased altogether.

That is why Goel focused his energies on the breaking-India efforts of the two Abrahamic and adversarial faiths which, to him, were the greatest threats to Hindu society, Islam and Christianity. Not as religions per se but as religious and political ideologies. Christianity worked against the native populace through the well-organised and funded enterprise of conversion. The difficulty with Islam was much deeper and historical. The unresolved conflict between a conquering Islam and a resistant Hindu society led not only to India’s Partition on religious lines, but also to continuing violence, riots, appeasement, and separatism within the country.

The decisive shift in Goel’s intellectual career occurred in 1981 when he retired from his mainline book business and created the non-profit Voice of India publishing platform. His aim, as stated in an early book from that period, Hindu Society Under Siege (1981), was to define the three main threats to Sanatana Dharma—political Islamism, proselytising Christianity, and anti-national Marxist-Leninism. As Elst puts it, “The avowed objective of each of these three world-conquering movements, with their massive resources, is diagnosed as the replacement of Hinduism by their own ideology, or in effect: the destruction of Hinduism” (ibid). It has taken over 40 years, without adequate credit, for his ideas to be mainstreamed. But today they have become commonplace, on the minds and tongues of most right wing or Hindutva intellectuals and activists. Only a few of them say them or think them through as well as he did. Worse, very few of them acknowledge—or even read—Goel’s works.

The skills required for reading, writing, research, exposition, analysis and argument are sorely lacking in Indian society. Goel is a victim of this glaring deficit

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What is, however, noteworthy is how different Goel was from these latter-day crusaders in one important aspect. Though he believed that Mahatma Gandhi had misunderstood and underestimated the threat of political Islamism, Goel never denounced him as a British stooge, charlatan, father of Pakistan, let alone a paedophile. Nor, in fact, did he advocate a Savarkarite Hindutva. Goel’s position remained firmly liberal, rational, democratic, and spiritual. He never preached hatred toward or between communities, nor did he wish to demonise any group of citizens because of their religion or ethnicity. Instead, he was interested in truth-seeking and truth-telling, holding the state and the political class accountable to the first principles of the republic, not playing havoc with the future of the nation with appeasement, favouritism, or identity politics.

Readers, especially those who are quick to typecast the right wing, would be surprised to know that he had quite a few run-ins with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates, though he was sympathetic, overall, to their role in Hindu character-building and nationalism. Though he wrote often for Organiser and Panchajanya, he often found the RSS outlook narrow-minded, not to speak of muddled. He accused them of confusion and double-speak, using the same tired and dishonest clichés about secularism and national integration which falsified both history and ground reality. Unlike them, Goel had the guts to call a spade a spade.

His astonishing output during this phase, which lasted right till the end of his days, borders on the incredible; he was an intellectual giant and his was a giant’s labour. It is not possible to engage seriously with his enormous output in these two pages, let alone do justice to it. Suffice it to say that there is enough published material by him to support several PhDs. Here is a list, drawn up by Elst, of his major writings. It does not include essays or chapters published in books edited by others or, indeed, the first Hindi translation of Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja, published in instalments in Panchajanya. I have already mentioned some of his works earlier, but a more detailed listing is salutary: Hindu Society Under Siege (1981, revised 1992); Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1982); How I Became a Hindu (1982, enlarged 1993); Defence of Hindu Society (1983, revised 1987); The Emerging National Vision (1983); History of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders (1984); Perversion of India’s Political Parlance (1984); Saikyularizm, Rashtradroha ka Dusra Nam (Hindi: “Secularism, another name for treason”, 1985); Papacy, Its Doctrine and History (1986); Preface to The Calcutta Quran Petition by Chandmal Chopra (a collection of texts alleging a causal connection between communal violence and the contents of the Quran; 1986, enlarged 1987, and again 1999); Muslim Separatism, Causes and Consequences (1987); Foreword to Catholic Ashrams, Adapting and Adopting Hindu Dharma (a collection of polemical writings on Christian inculturation; 1988, enlarged 1994 with new subtitle: “Sannyasins or Swindlers?”); History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1989, enlarged 1996); Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them (1990 vol 1; 1991 vol 2, enlarged 1993); Genesis and Growth of Nehruism (1993); Jesus Christ: An Artifice for Aggression (1994); Time for Stock-Taking (1997), a collection of articles critical of RSS and BJP; Preface to the reprint of Mathilda Joslyn Gage: Woman, Church and State (1997, ca 1880), an early feminist critique of Christianity; Preface to Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998), a reprint of the official report on the missionaries’ methods of subversion and conversion (1955).

Though polemical, even provocative and pugilistic, each of these books is thoroughly researched and comprehensively argued. Very unlike today’s TV debaters and other credit-hogging activists who pretend that they have come up with ‘original’ ideas and arguments which are already found in plenty of Goel’s writings. Without reading Goel or citing him, they repeat these ideas and arguments in a much worse and less persuasive manner. Indeed, the idea of the intellectual Kshatriya itself originates in Goel, though others now appropriate it as if they pioneered it. Thus, they end up doing injustice to Goel and a disservice to the cause that they profess to champion—performing the same “U-turn” manoeuvre that they condemn in others.

Mainstream academics and media, of course, continue completely to ignore Goel’s work. But Hindu organisations too, far from engaging with his massive output, also neglect to give him adequate credit. One might wonder why. In my view, the answer is simple. No one has Goel’s intellectual calibre, stamina, or capacity. In the prevailing anti-intellectual climate, politics, slogan-shouting, and ideological posturing become much easier to friend and foe alike. The skills required for reading, writing, research, exposition, analysis, and argument are sorely lacking in Indian society. Goel is a victim of this glaring deficit.

Moreover, during the heyday of his intellectual activism, there was no internet, Wikipedia, or ‘Google Baba’. Indians were so brainwashed by sarva dharma samabhava— regarding all religions equally—that they understood neither the basic texts or the intent of the two imperialistic Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Islam. Goel acquainted a large body of naïve and mistaken members of the public with the historically verifiable theology and teleology of these proselytising faiths. Which was to exterminate Sanatana Dharma, as they had other pagan traditions that they had encountered. Also, the naked admission of global conquest and dominance.

A posthumous Padma Award for Sita Ram Ji? That is the least we can do to honour the memory and legacy of this scholar extraordinaire.

About The Author

Makarand R Paranjape

Makarand R Paranjape is an author and columnist. Views are personal.

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