Ram Swarup Memorial Lecture, Los Angeles, Saturday, 18th November 2006 @ 7 Pm

[Guest guest]

You are cordially invited to attend the First Annual Ram Swarup

Memorial Lecture to be held in Los Angeles, CA, on Saturday,November

18th @ 7:00 PM. The lecture will be delivered by Dr. Koenraad Elst

titled "Historicity and Hinduism". Please find attached an abstract

and Ram Swarup's short biographical sketch.

 

This is an invitation only event. If you are interested in attending

please send a note to <satinder.trehan (AT) vhs-net (DOT) com> or give me a

call at 714-225-3318.

 

Sincerely yours,

Satinder Trehan

Los Angeles, CA

Tel. 714-225-3318

E-Mail: satinder.trehan (AT) vhs-net (DOT) com

 

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Abstract

 

An issue that pits the religious-minded against those of scientific

temper is the historicity of Hindu scripture. Scholars historicize

e.g. Sanskrit as not the mother of all languages, nor of all Indo-

European languages, nor even of all Indo-Aryan languages; the Vedas

as not God-given but the creation of a human tribe living in the

Saraswati region in a particular (fairly recent) millennium, and as

not even the wellspring of Hinduism but one among several religious

traditions which together make up Hinduism; "Hindu" as a fairly

recent Persian loan word with a history; or "Seshvara

Sankhya", "Sankhya-with-God", as a back-projection by theists of a

God notion onto Patanjali's agnostic Yoga philosophy. Religious

devotees have several problems with all this. Some take scripture

as literal history, hence e.g. a recent open letter to the Andhra

government protesting against wordings like "legend has it" and "it

is said" when referring to Ramayana episodes linked with sites of

pilgrimage. Others, by contrast, deny any historical meaning to

scripture; e.g. the Arya Samaj translations of the Vedas give a

symbolic meaning to all mundane personal or geographical names. This

symbolic reading is entirely apt at the level of mythology, as

explored by Ram Swarup, but it is a sad mistake to impose it on

historical narratives. It can be argued that alongside the

historical reading, there is nonetheless still plenty of room for

the metaphorical or otherwise figurative reading, as favored by Sri

Aurobindo. Comparative mythology has also shown how historical

events sometimes get translated into heavenly myths (Euhemerism) or

how conversely, mythological motifs get translated into or imposed

upon historical events. At any rate, where a historical reading is

called for, Hindus ought not to take refuge in an irrational

rejection. Indeed, it can be shown that historicity adds a lot to

the greatness of the Rishis and of Hindu civilization.

 

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About Ram Swarup

 

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.

 

Ram Swarup was born in 1920 as the son of a rais/banker in Sonipat,

Haryana, in the Garg gotra of the merchant Agrawal caste. He was a

good student and earned a degree in Economics from Delhi University

in 1941. He joined the Gandhian movement and acted as the overground

contact ("postbox") for underground activists including Aruna Asaf

Ali during the Quit India agitation of 1942. He spent a week in

custody when a letter bearing his name was found in the house of

another activist, the later homeopath Ram Singh Rana. After his

release, and until the end of the war, he worked as a clerk in the

American office in Delhi which had been set up in the context of the

Allied war effort against Japan.

 

Just around the time of Independence, Ram Swarup developed strong

opinions about the ideology which was rapidly gaining ground among

the intelligentsia around him: Communism. His first doubts developed

in connection with purely Indian aspects of Communist policy. When

the CPI defended the Partition scheme with contrived socio-economic

arguments, he objected that the Partition would only benefit the

haves among the Muslims, not the have-nots. His doubts deepening, he

moved in a direction opposite to the ideological fashion of the day,

and became one of India's leading anti-Communists. 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 (1950,

but only published in 1954); Gandhism and Communism (1954);

Foundations of Maoism (1956). His Gandhism and Communism, which

emphasized the need to raise the struggle against Communism from a

military to a moral and ideological level, was brought to the

attention of Western anti-Communists including several US

Congressmen, and some of its ideas were adopted by the Eisenhower

administration in its agenda for the Geneva Conference in 1955.

 

Initially, Ram Swarup saw Gandhism as the alternative to Communism,

and he has never really rejected Gandhism. He continued to explore

the relevance of Gandhism to real-life problems, e.g. in his booklet

Gandhian Economics (1977). Gandhian inspiration is also palpable in

his The Hindu View of Education (1971), the text of a speech given

before the convention of the RSS student organization Akhil

Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. But gradually, he moved from the

Gandhian version of Hinduism to a more comprehensive understanding

of the ancient Hindu tradition. His first booklet on Hindu religion

was written just after Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism

in 1956: Buddhism vis-àis Hinduism (1958, revised 1984). It took a

moderate view of the much-debated relation of Buddhism to its mother

tradition, affirming that the Buddha was a Hindu (just as Jesus was

a Jew), but conceding that Buddhism had a typical atmosphere setting

it apart from the Hindu mainstream. By the late 1970s, his focus had

decisively turned to religious issues. Apart from a large number of

articles published in Organiser, in Hinduism Today (Honolulu), and

in some mainstream dailies (in the 1980s the Telegraph, the Times of

India and the Indian Express, in recent years mostly the Observer of

Business and Politics and the Birla family's paper Hindustan Times),

Ram Swarup's contribution to the religious debate consists of the

following books: The Word as Revelation: Names of Gods (1980), on

the rationale of polytheism; Hinduism vis-àis Christianity and Islam

(1982, revised 1992); Christianity, an Imperialist Ideology (1983,

with Major T.R. Vedantham and Sita Ram Goel); Understanding Islam

through Hadis (1983 in the USA by Arvind Ghosh, Houston; Indian

reprint by Voice of India, 1984); in 1990, the Hindi translation was

banned; 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); Woman in Islam (1994); Hindu Dharma, Isaiat aur Islam

(1985, Hindi: "Hindu Dharma, Christianity and Islam"); Hindu View of

Christianity and Islam (1993, a republication of the above-mentioned

forewords to books on Mohammed by Muir and Margoliouth plus an

enlarged version of Hinduism vis- àis Christianity and Islam);

Ramakrishna Mission. Search for a New Identity (1986), a critique of

the RK Mission's attempt to redefine itself as "non-Hindu"; Cultural

Alienation and Some Problems Hinduism Faces (1987); Foreword to

Anirvan: Inner Yoga (1988, reprint 1995); Hindu-Sikh Relationship

(1985); Foreword to the republication of Sardar Gurbachan Singh

Talib, ed.: Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab,

1947 (1991; the original had been published in 1950 by the Shiromani

Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, Amritsar), also separately published

as Whither Sikhism? (1991); Hindu-Buddhist Rejoinder to Pope John-

Paul II on Eastern Religions and Yoga(1995), a rejoinder to a papal

statement opposing yogic spirituality.

 

Ram Swarup was a quiet and reflective type of person. He never

married, never went into business, hardly ever had a job, never

stood for an election, never joined an organization or party. He had

been in rather good health when unexpectedly, he was found dead on

his bed after his afternoon nap on 26 December 1998. The family

doctor gave brain hemorrhage as the cause of death. He left no

children but many Hindus felt orphaned when the flames consumed Ram

Swarup's earthly remains.

 

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