Sita Ram Goel (16 October 1921 – 3 December 2003) was an Indian historian, religious and political activist, writer, and publisher in the late twentieth century. He had Marxist leanings during the 1940s, but later became an outspoken anti-communist and also wrote extensively on the damage to Indian culture and heritage wrought by expansionist Islam and missionary activities of Christianity. In his later career he emerged as a commentator on
Indian politics
Politics of India works within the framework of the country's Constitution. India is a parliamentary democratic secular republic in which the president of India is the head of state & first citizen of India and the prime minister of India is t ...
Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
, in 1921; though his childhood was spent in
Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
nirguna
''Para Brahman'' ( sa, परब्रह्म, translit=parabrahma, translit-std=IAST) in Hindu philosophy is the "Supreme Brahman" that which is beyond all descriptions and conceptualisations. It is described as the formless (in the sense th ...
saint comparable to
Kabir
Kabir Das (1398–1518) was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint. His writings influenced Hinduism's Bhakti movement, and his verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Guru Granth Sahib, the Satguru Granth Sahib of Saint Garib Das ...
and
Nanak
Gurū Nānak (15 April 1469 – 22 September 1539; Gurmukhi: ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ; pronunciation: , ), also referred to as ('father Nānak'), was the founder of Sikhism and is the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. His birth is celebrated wor ...
, as its patron saint and his verses, "Granth Saheb", were often recited at their home.Goel, Sita Ram "How I became a Hindu" , Chapter 1
Goel graduated in history from the
University of Delhi
Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate Central university (India), central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and ...
in 1944. As a student, he was a social activist and worked for a
Harijan
Dalit (from sa, दलित, dalita meaning "broken/scattered"), also previously known as untouchable, is the lowest stratum of the castes in India. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and were seen as forming ...
Ashram in his village. His sympathies for the Arya Samaj, the Harijans and the
Indian freedom movement
The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947.
The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged from Bengal. ...
, along with his strong support for
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...
, brought him into conflict with many people in his village;Goel, Sita Ram "How I became a Hindu" Chapter 2 Goel also learned to speak and write
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
Direct Action Day
Direct Action Day (16 August 1946), also known as the 1946 Calcutta Killings, was a day of nationwide communal riots. It led to large-scale violence between Muslims and Hinduism in India, Hindus in the city of Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) ...
riots in Calcutta that were instigated by the
Muslim League Muslim League may refer to:
Political parties Subcontinent
; British India
*All-India Muslim League, Mohammed Ali Jinah, led the demand for the partition of India resulting in the creation of Pakistan.
**Punjab Muslim League, a branch of the organ ...
shortly before Partition of India, Goel, his wife and their eldest son narrowly escaped with their lives. In his autobiography, '' How I became a Hindu'', Goel writes that he "would have been killed by a Muslim mob" but his fluent
Urdu
Urdu (;"Urdu" '' Goel, Sita Ram "How I became a Hindu" Chapter 4 He subsequently wrote and circulated a lengthy article on the riots, titled "The Devil Dance in Calcutta", in which he held Hindus and Muslims equally responsible for the tragedy.Goel, Sita Ram Chapter 5 His friend
Ram Swarup
Ram Swarup (Hindi: राम स्वरूप ; – ), 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 ...
, however, criticised him for equating Muslim violence with Hindu violence, claiming that Muslim violence was "aggressive and committed in the furtherance of a very reactionary and retrograde cause, namely the vivisection of India".
Communism to anti-communism
In mid-1940s Goel met members of the CSP (
Congress Socialist Party
The Congress Socialist Party (CSP) was a socialist caucus within the Indian National Congress. It was founded in 1934 by Congress members who rejected what they saw as the anti-rational mysticism of Gandhi as well as the sectarian attitude of th ...
), translated writings by
Narendra Deva
Acharya Narendra Deva (; also Dev; 30 October 1889 – 19 February 1956) was one of the leading theorists of the Congress Socialist Party in India. His democratic socialism renounced violent means as a matter of principle and embraced the ''saty ...
and
Jayaprakash Narayan
Jayaprakash Narayan (; 11 October 1902 – 8 October 1979), popularly referred to as JP or ''Lok Nayak'' ( Hindi for "People's leader"), was an Indian independence activist, theorist, socialist and political leader. He is remembered for l ...
into English, and was offered a position as an editor of a CSP publication. But his first editorial for the weekly was deemed to be pro-communist, and he had to stop writing for the weekly.
Sita Ram Goel had developed a strong Marxist leaning during his student days and was on the verge of joining the Communist Party of India in 1948. The Communist Party, however, was banned in
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
on the day he planned to officially become its member. He read
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
Das Kapital
''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in materialist phi ...
,
Harold Laski
Harold Joseph Laski (30 June 1893 – 24 March 1950) was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of ...
's "Communism", and "came to the conclusion that while Marx stood for a harmonised social system, Sri Aurobindo held the key to a harmonised human personality." Later, books by
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxle ...
, Victor Kravchenko, and Suzanne Labin ("Stalin's Russia") convinced him to abandon communism.Goel, Sita Ram "How I became a Hindu" Chapter 6 Subsequently, he wrote many books critical of communism in Calcutta, and worked for the anti-communist ''"Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia"'' (SDFA).Goel, Sita Ram , Chapter 7Elst, Koenraad, "Ram Swarup (1920–98): outline of a biography /ref> According to Goel, when he wanted to apply for a passport in 1955, he was told that his case was receiving attention from the Prime Minister himself, and his application was not granted.
'Nehruism' and censorship
Goel wrote regularly for the "Organiser" weekly, whose editor K. R. Malkani was his friend. In 1961–1962 he used the pseudonym Ekaki (solitary) while writing the series ''In Defence of Comrade
Krishna Menon
Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon (3 May 1896 – 6 October 1974) was an Indian academic, politician, and non-career diplomat. He was described by some as the second most powerful man in India, after the first list of Prime Ministers of In ...
'', critical of
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British E ...
leader
Jawaharlal Nehru
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat—
*
*
*
* and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20t ...
.Goel, Sita Ram "How I became a Hindu" , Chapter 9 Although the series was widely read and praised, he was later admonished by a leader of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ( ; , , ) is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation. The RSS is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar (Hindi for "Sangh family ...
(RSS) for being too focused on Nehru, and the series was discontinued. The collected series was published in December 1963 by Vaidya Gurudatta and an updated version released as ''Genesis and Growth of Nehruism'' thirty years later. However Goel's writings about Nehru in the Organiser cost him his jobGoel, Sita Ram "How I became a Hindu" Chapter 8 and disillusioned him of the RSS.
According to Goel, he was under surveillance by the Indian government during the 1962
Sino-Indian War
The Sino-Indian War took place between China and India from October to November 1962, as a major flare-up of the Sino-Indian border dispute. There had been a series of violent border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibet ...
. He was not arrested, even though this was according to him demanded by some government leaders, including future Prime Minister I. K. Gujral.Elst, Koenraad, "India's only communalist – A short biography of Sita Ram Goel" In November 1962, he was recruited to participate in a guerrilla war against communist China, but he refused, saying "that so long as Pandit Nehru was the Prime Minister of the country, I could be only a traitor to it."
During the 1980s, Goel worked on a series titled ''Muslim Separatism: Causes and Consequences'', but some passages from his articles were censored by the Organiser. He discovered that his series was considered too controversial by the RSS leadership who thought that it was alienating Muslims from the party, and Goel had to stop writing for the Organiser after the completion of the series ''Perversion of India's Political Parlance''. K.R. Malkani, who was the editor for the Organiser for three decades, was sacked because of his support for Goel.Goel, Sita Ram, "Freedom of expression: Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy" Goel also noted that on other occasions that some of his articles, e.g. his article on the Vedapuri Iswaran Temple controversy, were suppressed in the Indian media.
Publisher and writer
Goel founded the publishing house Biblia Impex India (Aditya Prakashan) in 1963, which published books by authors such as
Dharampal
Dharampal ( hi, धरमपाल) (19 February 1922 – 24 October 2006) was an Indian thinker. He authored ''The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century'' (1983), ''Indian Science and Technology in the Eight ...
, Ram Swarup,
K. D. Sethna
Kaikhosru Dhunjibhoy Sethna (26 November 1904 – 29 June 2011) was an Indian poet, scholar, writer, philosopher, and cultural critic. He published more than 50 books. He was known by the diminutive Kekoo, but wrote his poetry under nom de ...
and K.R. Malkani. Sita Ram Goel joined the non-profit publishing house Voice of India in 1982.
Voice of India
Voice of India (VOI) is a publishing house based in New Delhi, India, that specialises in Hindu nationalist books and serves as one of the most important tools in the development of Hindutva ideologies.
History
Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel tr ...
was founded in 1982 by Ram Swarup, and published works by Harsh Narain, A.K. Chatterjee,
K.S. Lal
Kishori Saran Lal (1920–2002), better known as K. S. Lal, was an Indian historian. He is the author of several works, mainly on the medieval history of India.
Career
He obtained his master's degree in 1941 at the University of Allahabad. In ...
,
Koenraad Elst
Koenraad Elst (; born 7 August 1959) is a Flemish right wing Hindutva author, known primarily for his support of the Out of India theory and the Hindutva movement. Schola ...
,
Rajendra Singh
Rajendra Singh (born 6 August 1959) is an Indian water conservationist and environmentalist from Alwar district, Rajasthan in India. Also known as "waterman of India", he won the Magsaysay Award in 2001 and Stockholm Water Prize in 2015. He ...
, Sant R.S. Nirala, and
Shrikant Talageri
Indigenous Aryanism, also known as the Indigenous Aryans theory (IAT) and the Out of India theory (OIT), is the Belief, conviction that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages radiated out from ...
among others .
Early versions of several of Goel's books were previously published as a series in periodicals like ''
Hinduism Today
''Hinduism Today'' is a quarterly magazine published by the Himalayan Academy, a nonprofit educational institution, in Kapaʻa, Hawaiʻi, USA. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally, currently in 60 nations. Founded by ...
'', ''Indian Express'' or the ''Organiser''. Goel speculates that a series of articles he published in
Indian Express
''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split be ...
in 1989 regarding the destruction of Hindu temples by Muslims may have contributed to the firing of its editor,
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie (born 2 November 1941) is an Indian economist, journalist, author and politician. He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the ''Indian Express'' and ''The Times ...
, the following year. In August 1990, while releasing two books published by
Voice of India
Voice of India (VOI) is a publishing house based in New Delhi, India, that specialises in Hindu nationalist books and serves as one of the most important tools in the development of Hindutva ideologies.
History
Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel tr ...
,
Bharatiya Janta Party
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...
leader
L. K. Advani
Lal Krishna Advani (born 8 November 1927) is an Indian politician who served as the 7th Deputy Prime Minister of India from 2002 to 2004. Advani is one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He is a longtime memb ...
chided Goel for using "strong language".
Goel also worked as a part-time secretary for the ''All India Panchayat Parishad'' whose manager was his friend
Jayaprakash Narayan
Jayaprakash Narayan (; 11 October 1902 – 8 October 1979), popularly referred to as JP or ''Lok Nayak'' ( Hindi for "People's leader"), was an Indian independence activist, theorist, socialist and political leader. He is remembered for l ...
. Narayan was impressed by Goel's Hindi book ''Samyak Sambuddha'' and said to Goel, "If Sanatana Dharma is what you say it is, I am all for it. You can count me as a Sanatanist from today. You can say to whomsoever you please that JP has become a Sanatanist."
Goel was fluent in Hindi, Urdu,
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
, English and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
, and read Persian."Koenraad Elst ''Who is a Hindu?'' (2001)
Opinions
On rewriting of history books
Goel claimed that there was a systematic distortion of India's history which the Marxist historians of Aligarh and the JNU had undertaken.Goel: How I became a Hindu, ch.9 In particular, he claims that the history of medieval India and the Islamic invasions is being rewritten. He described it as an "experiment with Untruth" and an exercise in suppressio veri suggestio falsi. According to him, the Ministry of Education has extended this experiment to school-level text-books of history. Goel called it "an insidious attempt at thought-control and brainwashing" and argued that the NCERT guidelines are "recommendations for telling lies to our children, or for not telling to them the truth at all."
On Indian secularism
Goel has criticised Indian secularism, alleging that "this concept of Secularism is a gross perversion of the concept which arose in the modern West as a revolt against Christianity and which should mean, in the Indian context, a revolt against Islam as well."Goel:How I became a Hindu. ch.9
On media bias
Goel claimed that there is a
media bias
Media bias is the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of many events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening of J ...
in India, in particular with regard to criticism of Islam or people like Nehru. In 1955 Goel asked one of his friends, who was supportive of Nehru and who had published in many international and national journals, to write an article critical of Nehru's policies. But the Indian publications didn't accept his critical article, and he claims that his standing as a scholar in India suffered thereby.
Goel described an incident during a seminar on "Hurdles To Secularism" in 1963 which Goel attended, and which was presided over by
Jayaprakash Narayan
Jayaprakash Narayan (; 11 October 1902 – 8 October 1979), popularly referred to as JP or ''Lok Nayak'' ( Hindi for "People's leader"), was an Indian independence activist, theorist, socialist and political leader. He is remembered for l ...
. As Goel tells it, most participants in the seminar criticised only "Hindu communalism." But when one Muslim speaker took up the issue of Muslim communalism, he was shouted down by the other Muslims of the seminar, and had to stop talking.
On Indian nationalist organisations
Goel criticised Hindu nationalist organisations like the RSS. He claimed that with few exceptions they "shared the Nehruvian consensus on all important issues", and that "the RSS and the BJS stalwarts spent almost all their time and energy in proving that they were not Hindu communalists but honest secularists." He also claimed that RSS members are worried almost only about the reputation of their organisation and their leaders, and are rather ignorant to Hindu causes. When a
Bharatiya Jana Sangh
The Bharatiya Jana Sangh ( BJS or JS, short name: Jan Sangh, full name: Akhil Bharatiya Jana Sangh; ) ( ISO 15919: '' Akhila Bhāratīya Jana Saṅgha '' ) was an Indian right wing political party that existed from 1951 to 1977 and was the po ...
(BJS) leader asked him to write a book about the BJS, Goel replied that his book "would be pretty critical on the score of their policies."
Goel edited the book "Time for Stock-Taking", a collection of papers critical of the RSS. According to Belgian writer Koenraad Elst, Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel wrote in defence of Hinduism, never of "Hindutva".
On Christianity
Goel was outspoken in his criticism of Christianity. He was critical of missionaries' attempts to indigenize Christianity by adopting aspects of Hinduism, particularly as they have also demonized it, in attempts to gain new followers. Goel also held the belief that Jesus was the intellectual author behind Western imperialism and
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, as he was "no more than an artifice for legitimizing wanton imperialist aggression. He does not symbolize spiritual power or moral uprightness."
He made his case based on the gospels, which he thought cast too dark a shadow on unconverted Jews (see for instance ). From there he drew parallels between Jesus and Adolf Hitler, the latter of whom was, in Goel's words, the first to "completely grasp the verdict passed on the Jews by the Jesus of the gospels".
Goel also ridiculed what he termed "the cult of the disentangled Christ", whereby Christian revisionism attempts to salvage the figure of Jesus from the atrocious historical outcomes he inspired — and only from the bad ones — as though missionary proselytism and Western expansionism were to be perceived in the separate as mere coincidence.
He wrote several works on the topic of Christianity and in 1995, sent
Pat Robertson
Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson (born March 22, 1930) is an American media mogul, religious broadcaster, political commentator, former presidential candidate, and former Southern Baptist minister. Robertson advocates a conservative Christian ...
his book ''Jesus Christ: An Artifice for Aggression'', and a letter in protest to Robertson's remarks towards the religion of Hinduism.S.R. Goel:History of Hindu-Christian Encounters, 1996
Goel received criticism for his works and standpoints on Christianity. Goel specifically responded to related criticism and reaffirm his stance and viewpoints towards Christianity. Preface to Goel's "Catholic Ashrams". 1994.
On Islam and Muslims
Goel has criticised the history and doctrines of Islam in some of his writings. His works are also cited by critics of Islam like Robert Spencer and
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie (born 2 November 1941) is an Indian economist, journalist, author and politician. He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the ''Indian Express'' and ''The Times ...
.
Despite his criticism of Islam, he said that he is not opposed "to an understanding and reconciliation between the two communities. All I want to say is that no significant synthesis or assimilation took place in the past, and history should not be distorted and falsified to serve the political purposes of a Hindu-baiting herd."Goel, Sita Ram, The Story of Islamic Imperialism He argues that the Muslims should evaluate the Islamic history and doctrines in terms of
rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy ...
and
humanism
Humanism is a philosophy, philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and Agency (philosophy), agency of Human, human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical in ...
"without resort to the
casuistry
In ethics, casuistry ( ) is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. This method occurs in applied ethics and ju ...
marshalled by the mullahs and sufis, or the apologetics propped up by the
Aligarh
Aligarh (; formerly known as Allygarh, and Kol) is a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. It is the administrative headquarters of Aligarh district, and lies northwest of state capital Lucknow and approximately southeast of the cap ...
and Stalinist schools of historians", just as the European Christians did centuries earlier with Christianity.
He believed that the "average Muslim is as good or bad a human being as an average Hindu", and warned:
:Some people are prone to confuse Islam with its victims, that is, the Muslims, and condemn the latter at the same time as they come to know the crudities of the former. This is a very serious confusion, which should be avoided by all those who believe in building up a broad-based human brotherhood as opposed to narrow, sectarian, self-centred, and chauvinistic nationalism or communalism.
On decline of Buddhism
Arun Shourie wrote about Goel:
"Marxists cite only two other instances of Hindus having destroyed Buddhist temples. These too it turns out yield to completely contrary explanations. Again Marxists have been asked repeatedly to explain the construction they have been circulating -- to no avail. Equally important, Sita Ram Goel invited them to cite any Hindu text which orders Hindus to break the places of worship of other religions -- as the Bible does, as a pile of Islamic manuals does. He has asked them to name a single person who has been honoured by the Hindus because he broke such places -– the way Islamic historians and lore have glorified every Muslim ruler and invader who did so. A snooty silence has been the only response ".
Literary influences
He wrote and published books in English and
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
1984
Events
January
* January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888.
* January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...
'', three ''Dialogues of Plato'', Denis Kincaid's ''The Great Rebel'' (about
Shivaji
Shivaji Bhonsale I (; 19 February 1630 – 3 April 1680), also referred to as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, was an Indian ruler and a member of the Bhonsle Maratha clan. Shivaji carved out his own independent kingdom from the declining Adil ...
) and other books into Hindi.
Goel was well-read in Western and Eastern literature, and among his most favourite writers or works were Thomas Hardy,
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
's
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
,
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (also Chattopadhayay) CIE (26 or 27 June 1838 – 8 April 1894) was an Indian novelist, poet, Essayist and journalist.Staff writer"Bankim Chandra: The First Prominent Bengali Novelist" ''The Daily Star'', 30 June 2011 ...
,
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxle ...
,
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
,
Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resha ...
Vaishnava
Vaishnavism ( sa, वैष्णवसम्प्रदायः, Vaiṣṇavasampradāyaḥ) is one of the major Hindu denominations along with Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. It is also called Vishnuism since it considers Vishnu as the ...
and
Baul
The Baul ( bn, বাউল) are a group of mystic minstrels of mixed elements of Sufism, Vaishnavism and Tantra from Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam's Barak Valley and Meghalaya. Bauls cons ...
poets, the
Kathamrita
''Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita'' ( bn, শ্রীশ্রীরামকৃষ্ণ-কথামৃত, , ''The Nectar of Sri Ramakrishna's Words'') is a Bengali five-volume work by Mahendranath Gupta (1854–1932) which recounts conve ...
written by
Mahendranath Gupta
Mahendranath Gupta ( bn, মহেন্দ্রনাথ গুপ্ত) (14 July 1854 – 4 June 1932), (also famously known as শ্রীম, Master Mahashay, and M.), was a disciple of Ramakrishna (a great 19th-century Hindu mystic) and ...
(Sri M.) and
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his '' Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,'' published in 1751.
G ...
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the s ...
, which he would read in its original language Sanskrit.
Sita Ram Goel was influenced by Indian writer and philosopher
Ram Swarup
Ram Swarup (Hindi: राम स्वरूप ; – ), 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 ...
. He said that his masters have been "
Vyasa
Krishna Dvaipayana ( sa, कृष्णद्वैपायन, Kṛṣṇadvaipāyana), better known as Vyasa (; sa, व्यासः, Vyāsaḥ, compiler) or Vedavyasa (वेदव्यासः, ''Veda-vyāsaḥ'', "the one who cl ...
,
Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in L ...
and Sri Aurobindo, as elucidated by Ram Swarup."Interview in The Observer, February 22, 1997 /ref> He was also influenced by Bal Gangadhar Tilak,
Dayananda Sarasvati
Dayanand Saraswati () (born Mool Shankar Tiwari; 2 February 1824 – 30 October 1883) also known as Maharshi Dayanand is an Indian philosopher, social leader and founder of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. His Magnum Opus is the book ...
and
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...
.
Banned books
''Understanding Islam through Hadis''
In 1983, Goel reprinted
Ram Swarup
Ram Swarup (Hindi: राम स्वरूप ; – ), 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 ...
's ''Understanding Islam through Hadis''. The book was a summary of the
Sahih Muslim
Sahih Muslim ( ar, صحيح مسلم, translit=Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim), group=note is a 9th-century ''hadith'' collection and a book of '' sunnah'' compiled by the Persian scholar Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj (815–875). It is one of the most valued b ...
Hadith and consisted of extracts from the Hadiths. In 1987, he again reprinted the book, but the copies of a Hindi translation were seized by the police and Goel was arrested briefly.Freedom of expression – Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy (1998, edited by Sita Ram Goel)
In due course, some Muslims and the Jamaat-e-Islami weekly ''Radiance'' claimed that the book was offensive. In 1990, the Hindi translation of the book was banned. In March 1991, the English original was banned as well. The "criminal case" against Goel for printing the book was dismissed after some years on 5 May 1997, but the book still remains banned.
Indian intellectuals protested against the arrest of Goel.
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie (born 2 November 1941) is an Indian economist, journalist, author and politician. He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the ''Indian Express'' and ''The Times ...
commented on the criminal case:
:No one has ever refuted him on facts, but many have sought to smear him and his writing. They have thereby transmuted the work from mere scholarship into warning. (...)The forfeiture is exactly the sort of thing which had landed us where we are: where intellectual inquiry is shut out; where our traditions are not examined, and reassessed; and where as a consequence there is no dialogue. It is exactly the sort of thing too which foments reaction. (...)"Freedom of expression which is legitimate and constitutionally protected," it
he Supreme Court
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
declared last year, "cannot be held to ransom by an intolerant group or people."
''Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1993)''
In 1993 the MP
Syed Shahabuddin
Syed Shahabuddin (4 November 1935 – 4 March 2017) was an Indian politician and diplomat from Gaya, Bihar. He began as a diplomat working for the Indian Foreign Service, but later became well known as one of the most articulate Muslim poli ...
, who in 1988 asked for the ban on ''
The Satanic Verses
''The Satanic Verses'' is the fourth novel of British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism ...
'', demanded a ban on Ram Swarup's book '' Hindu View of Christianity and Islam''. Goel and Swarup went into hiding because they feared that they could get arrested. The court accepted a bail and the authors came out of hiding.S.R. Goel, ed.: Freedom of Expression, 1998K. Elst: "Banning Hindu Revaluation", Observer of Business and Politics, 1 December 1993
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie (born 2 November 1941) is an Indian economist, journalist, author and politician. He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the ''Indian Express'' and ''The Times ...
and K. S. Lal protested against the ban.
Colin Maine's ''The Dead Hand of Islam''
In 1986, Goel reprinted Colin Maine's essay ''The Dead Hand of Islam' Some Muslims filed a criminal case against Goel, alleging that it violated Sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code and similar articles of the Indian Customs Act.
The judge discharged Goel and referred to the earlier court precedent "1983 CrLJ 1446". Speaking of the importance of that precedent, the judge in his discussion said: "If such a contention is accepted a day will come when that part of history which is unpalatable to a particular religion will have to be kept in cold storage on the pretext that the publication of such history would constitute an offence punishable under Sec. 153A of the Penal Code. The scope of S-153A cannot be enlarged to such an extent with a view to thwart history. (...) Otherwise, the position will be very precarious. A nation will have to forget its own history and in due course the nation will have no history at all. (...) If anybody intends to extinguish the history (by prohibiting its publication) of the nation on the pretext of taking action under the above sections, his act will have to be treated as malafide one."
''The Calcutta Quran Petition''
Goel published '' The Calcutta Quran Petition'' with Chandmal Chopra in 1986. On 31 August 1987, Chopra was arrested by the police and kept in custody until 8 September for publishing the book with Goel. Goel absconded to avoid arrest.
''Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them''
There were proposals in November 1990 in
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...
to ban Goel's book ''
Hindu Temples - What Happened to Them
''Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them'' is a two-volume book by Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi and Ram Swarup. The first volume was published in the Spring of 1990.
Contents
The first volume includes a list of 2,00 ...
''.
Legacy
Sita Ram Goel has been described by
Koenraad Elst
Koenraad Elst (; born 7 August 1959) is a Flemish right wing Hindutva author, known primarily for his support of the Out of India theory and the Hindutva movement. Schola ...
as an "intellectual kshatriya".
David Frawley
David Frawley (born 1950) is an American author, astrologer, teacher (''acharya'') and a proponent of Hindutva.
He has written numerous books on topics spanning the Vedas, Hinduism, Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology. His works have been popula ...
said about Goel that he was "modern India's greatest intellectual kshatriya", and "one of India's most important thinkers in the post-independence era". According to Frawley, "Sitaram followed a strong rationalistic point of view that did not compromise the truth even for politeness sake. His intellectual rigor is quite unparalleled in Hindu circles..."
Books and booklets
English
Author
* ''The China debate; whom shall we believe?'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1953, 50 p.
* ''Mind Murder in Mao-land'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1953, 53 p.
* ''Communist Party in China: a study in treason.'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1953, 106 p.
* ''China is red with peasants' blood'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1953, 92 p.
* ''CPI conspires for civil-war: analysis of a secret document'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1953, 56 p.
* ''Red brother or yellow slave ?'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1953, 82 p.
* ''Nehru's fatal friendship'', New Delhi: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1955, 29 p.
* ''Netaji and the CPI'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1955, 72 p.
* ''In defence of Comrade Krishna Menon : a political biography of Pandit Nehru'', New Delhi: Bharati Sahitya Sadan, 1963, 272 p. A reprint with changes would appear in 1993 as the Volume I of ''Genesis and growth of Nehruism''.
* ''Hindu society under siege'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1981, 48 p. A revised edition released in 1994.
* ''How I Became a Hindu'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1982, 67 p. A third enlarged edition would appear in 1993, 106 p.
* ''The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1982, 126 p. A second enlarged edition would appear in 1994, 138 p.
* ''Defence of Hindu Society'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1983, 96 p. A second edition would appear in 1987 and a third enlarged one in 1994, 118 p.
* ''Muslim separatism : causes and consequences'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1983, 123 p. A second revised edition will appear in 1995, 128 p.
* ''Perversion of India's political parlance'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1984, 60 p.
* ''History of heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1984, 48 p. Another edition would be released in 1994, 58 p.
* ''The emerging national vision'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1984, 15 p.
* '' St. Francis Xavier : the man and his mission'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1985, 16 p.
* ''Papacy, its doctrines and history'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1986, 118 p.
* '' Catholic Ashrams : adopting and adapting Hindu dharma'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1988, 100 p.
* ''History of Hindu–Christian Encounters, AD 304 to 1996'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1989, 405 p. A second revised and enlarged edition would appear in 1996, 530 p.
* ''Hindus and Hinduism : Manipulation of meanings'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1993, 24 p.
* ''Islam vis-a-vis Hindu temples'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1993, 66 p.
* ''Genesis and growth of Nehruism. vol. 1, Commitment to Communism'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1993, 231 p. Reprint with changes of the 1963 book ''In defence of Comrade Krishna Menon''.
* ''Stalinist "historians" spread the big lie'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1993, 38 p.
* ''Jesus Christ : an artifice for aggression'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1994, 114 p.
Editor
* '' Hindu temples, what happened to them : Vol. I, A preliminary survey'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1990, 191 p. With
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie (born 2 November 1941) is an Indian economist, journalist, author and politician. He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the ''Indian Express'' and ''The Times ...
et al. Volume II would be released in 1993, 440 p.
* ''Freedom of expression : secular theocracy versus liberal democracy'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1998, 179 p. Mostly articles.
* ''Time for stock taking, whither
Sangh Parivar
The Sangh Parivar (translation: "Family of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh" or the "RSS family") refers, as an umbrella term, to the collection of Hindu nationalist organisations spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which r ...
?'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1997, 468 p. Criticisms of the
BJP
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Mo ...
and RSS, including their responses.
* '' Vindicated by Time: the Niyogi Committee report on Christian missionary activities'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1998, 1006 p. A reprint, with an introduction by Goel, of the official report on the missionaries' methods of subversion and conversion, from 1956.
Prefaces, introductions or commentaries
* Introduction to
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
's ''World Conquest in Instalments'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1952, 56 p.
* Commentary of
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
's ''The conquest of China'', Calcutta: Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia, 1954, 276 p.
* Preface to Chandmal Chopra's '' The Calcutta Quran Petition'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1986, 71 p. A third revised and enlarged edition would appear in 1999, with more writing by Goel, 325 p.
* Preface to ''
Tipu Sultan
Tipu Sultan (born Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu, 1 December 1751 – 4 May 1799), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore based in South India. He was a pioneer of rocket artillery.Dalrymple, p. 243 He i ...
: Villain Or Hero? : an Anthology'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1993, 85 p.
* Preface to the reprint of Mathilda Joslyn Gage's ''Woman, Church and State'' (1997, ca. 1880). A feminist critique of Christianity.
Hindi
Author
* ''Pathabhṛshṭa'', 1960.
* ''Saikyularijma : deśadroha kā dūsrā nāma'', 1983.Yashpal Sharma would translate it into English as ''India's secularism, new name for national subversion'', New Delhi: Voice of India, 1999, 107 p.
* ''Udīyamāna raṣṭra-dṛṣṭi'', 1983.
* ''Hindū samāja : saṅkeṭoṃ ke ghere meṃ'', 1988.
* ''Saptaśīla'', 1999.
Translator
* ''Satyakama Socrates'', three dialogues of
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
Crito
''Crito'' ( or ; grc, Κρίτων ) is a dialogue that was written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It depicts a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito of Alopece regarding justice (''δικαιοσύνη''), inj ...
and
Phaedo
''Phædo'' or ''Phaedo'' (; el, Φαίδων, ''Phaidōn'' ), also known to ancient readers as ''On The Soul'', is one of the best-known dialogues of Plato's middle period, along with the '' Republic'' and the '' Symposium.'' The philosophica ...
I Chose Freedom
''I Chose Freedom: The Personal Political Life of a Soviet Official'' is a book by the Soviet Ukrainian defector Viktor Kravchenko. It was a bestseller in the United States and Europe. The book was written in 1946 and published in 1947. A review ...
''
*
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his '' Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,'' published in 1751.
G ...
's poem ''Elegy.''
*
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (also Chattopadhayay) CIE (26 or 27 June 1838 – 8 April 1894) was an Indian novelist, poet, Essayist and journalist.Staff writer"Bankim Chandra: The First Prominent Bengali Novelist" ''The Daily Star'', 30 June 2011 ...
's ''Ramayaner Alochona''
* '' The God that Failed, a testimony on Communism by
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
,
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism ...
and others.''
*
Ram Swarup
Ram Swarup (Hindi: राम स्वरूप ; – ), 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 ...
Nineteen Eighty-Four
''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and fina ...
''
* ''Shaktiputra
Shivaji
Shivaji Bhonsale I (; 19 February 1630 – 3 April 1680), also referred to as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, was an Indian ruler and a member of the Bhonsle Maratha clan. Shivaji carved out his own independent kingdom from the declining Adil ...
'', Denis Kincaid's ''The Grand Rebel''
* ''Panchjanya'',
Taslima Nasrin
Taslima Nasrin (born 25 August 1962) is a Bangladeshi-Swedish writer, physician, feminist, secular humanist, and activist. She is known for her writing on women's oppression and criticism of religion. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh ...
* India's only communalist: In commemoration of Sita Ram Goel; Edited by Koenraad Elst; Voice of India, New Delhi. (2005) (With contributions by
Subhash Kak
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharlal N ...
,
David Frawley
David Frawley (born 1950) is an American author, astrologer, teacher (''acharya'') and a proponent of Hindutva.
He has written numerous books on topics spanning the Vedas, Hinduism, Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology. His works have been popula ...
Shrikant Talageri
Indigenous Aryanism, also known as the Indigenous Aryans theory (IAT) and the Out of India theory (OIT), is the Belief, conviction that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages radiated out from ...
Ram Swarup
Ram Swarup (Hindi: राम स्वरूप ; – ), 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 ...
*
Koenraad Elst
Koenraad Elst (; born 7 August 1959) is a Flemish right wing Hindutva author, known primarily for his support of the Out of India theory and the Hindutva movement. Schola ...
Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an anonymous author critical of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and used to be a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. ...
Oriana Fallaci
Oriana Fallaci (; 29 June 1929 – 15 September 2006) was an Italian journalist and author. A partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution ...