Stig Wikander et le Männerbund indo-européen

Stig Wikander et le Männerbund indo-européen

par Joakim Andersen

Source: https://motpol.nu/oskorei/2025/03/20/stig-wikander-och-de...

Pour les historiens ayant abordé la thématique du Männerbund indo-européen, le Suédois Stig Wikander (1908-1983) est un nom devenu presque mythique, notamment en raison de sa thèse Der arische Männerbund: Studien zur indo-iranischen Sprach- und Religionsgeschichte publiée en 1938. Elle a été beaucoup plus difficile d'accès que l'œuvre tout aussi novatrice d'Otto Höfler, Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen, qui a d'ailleurs influencé Wikander. Ce dernier est ensuite devenu professeur de sanskrit. Cet iranologue et indologue semble avoir été un homme de droite ; il a écrit, entre autres, la préface à l'un des ouvrages de Bertil Lundman et était ami avec Georges Dumézil.

À l'occasion de la nouvelle année iranienne, nous avons plusieurs fois, ou au moins une fois, abordé différents aspects de la tradition et de l'histoire de nos cousins indo-européens d'Orient. Il peut donc être intéressant de signaler que Der arische Männerbund vient d'être traduit en anglais et est désormais disponible sur Amazon. Le traducteur, Tom Billinge, est d'origine anglaise et grecque, et a un parcours peu commun puisqu'il a étudié l'histoire et la mythologie tout en pratiquant les arts martiaux. Billinge a notamment publié WarYoga et Undying Glory: The Solar Path of Greek Heroes. Je ne les ai pas encore lus, mais qu'importe, c'est un projet prometteur (le site de Billinge est à recommander: https://tombillinge.com/). La traduction de Wikander est de bonne qualité, à une exception près (de longs passages en vieil-iranien et autres langues similaires n'ont pas été traduits).

Comparée à l'œuvre fascinante d'Höfler, la thèse de Wikander est plutôt un véritable casse-tête linguistique et mythologique. Wikander suit des termes obscurs comme merak et ziyanak à travers des documents historiques, il compare les marya védiques et les mairyo avestiques, et il explore les liens entre Agni, Rudra et Indra. Peu à peu, un tableau d'anciens cultes et de dieux plus anciens, qui ont été diabolisés au fil du temps, se dessine : "dans l'Avesta, Indra et les maryas ont été diabolisés", "nous voyons la lutte entre le cercle autour de Zarathoustra et certains représentants du culte mithraïque". Certains aspects de ce dernier culte ont été adoptés par les adeptes de Zarathoustra, d'autres non (comme l'Aesma). Intéressante est la reconstruction d'Aesma par Wikander, avec des éléments comme un culte haomatique extatique et une "chasse sauvage" ressemblant aux marut d'Indra (comparer à Odin et aux koryos). Son symbole cultuel est un gourdin sanglant, le drafsa ; Wikander écrit "il doit s'agir d'un culte dont les caractéristiques principales sont la vénération des morts, les festivals sacrificiels orgiaques, le lien avec les organisations martiales et une attitude positive envers les forces sombres et démoniaques de la vie". Ce culte semble avoir été particulièrement fort dans le nord-est de l'Iran.

Der arische Männerbund est une étude sur les transformations religieuses qui ont eu lieu dans l'espace irano-indien. Les dieux et les mythes sont "zoroastrianisés" au fil du temps, des représentants du Männerbund deviennent des dieux de la nature, des mots qui étaient chargés positivement deviennent négatifs et finissent par être oubliés. Même le Männerbund subit des transformations : "le chef ou le roi peut appartenir au Männerbund et occuper une position de leader en son sein ; il peut aussi complètement se subordonner au chef et il peut également être utilisé comme force de police ou garde du corps. Ou le Männerbund maintient sa position indépendante, ou, peut-être, exerce-t-il une certaine influence sur le pouvoir royal – ou, au contraire, entre en opposition hostile avec lui et la société, se dégradant en une organisation secrète et terroriste". Le rôle du Männerbund en tant que représentant de l'ordre politique et de la justice est mis en avant par Wikander, y compris son rôle en tant que faiseur de rois. L'État chez les Indo-Européens ne naît pas de la famille mais du Männerbund (même si ce dernier peut, comme on le sait, se retourner contre elle et contre le peuple).

Il est intéressant de noter que même lorsque l'ancien culte, relié entre autres à mairyo, Taxma Urupi, haomawarga et d'autres représentants du Männerbund, a sombré dans l'oubli, il est resté dans la mémoire. Lorsque Feredun a mené une révolte nationale, il a ordonné aux forgerons de lui fabriquer une "massue de combat à tête de taureau", "car il les connaissait grâce aux anciennes traditions". La massue, si semblable à l'arme sanglante d'Aesma, était aussi nécessaire que le bannière "drafs-i-kavyan" pour le succès du combat. Ce ne fut d'ailleurs pas la dernière fois que le Männerbund iranien joua un rôle décisif dans la liberté de la nation. Wikander note que nous avons affaire à une forme sociologique qui n'est pas nécessairement liée à un dieu spécifique. À ce sujet, il écrit que "la restauration de l'Iran au début du 16ème siècle a été, comme on le sait, réalisée par les Grands Maitres de l'Ordre Safavide". Les ordres et les Männerbünde ne sont pas des entités identiques, mais la similitude entre eux est significative (il faudrait comparer le Männerbund primitif à l'ordre qui a porté les Safavides au pouvoir en Iran et ensuite le Männerbund tardif aux ordres chevaleresques en Europe).

Dans l'ensemble, c'est une étude fascinante. On y trouve tout, des loups et des hommes-loups aux tueurs de dragons et aux dieux vengeurs. Les similitudes avec le Männerbund germanique sont évidentes, tout comme avec les dieux indiens. Wikander a identifié une tradition et une forme de culte qui ont été en partie refoulées mais qui ont subsisté dans l'inconscient collectif iranien. C'était de plus une tradition qui a contribué à l'indépendance de la nation en des moments cruciaux de l'histoire.

* * *

Annexe:

Euro-Synergies: L'indologue, sanskritologue et iranologue suédois Stig Wikander aurait publié plusieurs ouvrages sur les Kurdes, qui ont été traduits en langue kurde et semblent toujours circuler dans les milieux kurdes. Quelles sont les thèses sur l'histoire de ce peuple qu'a énoncées Stig Wikander et pourquoi sont-elles appréciées dans les milieux kurdes?

Stig Wikander, éminent indologue, sanskritologue et iranologue suédois, a effectivement contribué de manière significative à l'étude des Kurdes et de leur histoire, bien qu'il ne fût pas exclusivement spécialiste du peuple kurde. Il a abordé ce sujet à travers son expertise dans les langues et cultures iraniennes, et en particulier en se concentrant sur la période antique et médiévale de l'histoire du Moyen-Orient.

Les thèses de Wikander sur les Kurdes se basent en grande partie sur des travaux linguistiques et historiques, en particulier ceux concernant l'iranien ancien, les langues et les peuples qui occupaient la région historique de la Mésopotamie et du plateau iranien. Ses études ont souligné plusieurs points clés qui ont été appréciés dans les milieux kurdes pour plusieurs raisons :

1. Les racines anciennes des Kurdes :

Wikander a mis en évidence l'importance historique des Kurdes en tant que peuple ayant des racines profondes dans l'Antiquité et dans les civilisations mésopotamiennes. Il a souligné la continuité de leur présence dans des régions stratégiques du Moyen-Orient, notamment au Kurdistan, une zone marquée par les influences de grands empires anciens comme ceux des Mèdes, des Parthes et des Sassanides.

Cela a permis de réaffirmer une vision du peuple kurde comme ayant une histoire et une culture anciennes, et non comme un peuple "invisible" ou secondaire dans l'histoire du Moyen-Orient, une thèse qui résonne particulièrement dans les milieux kurdes qui cherchent à promouvoir leur identité historique et culturelle.

2. L'identité kurde et son lien avec les peuples iraniens :

L'une des thèses importantes avancées par Wikander concerne l'appartenance des Kurdes aux peuples iraniens. Il a soutenu que les Kurdes, tout comme d'autres groupes ethniques de la région, font partie intégrante du grand groupe des Iraniens. Cette perspective permet de contextualiser les Kurdes dans une tradition plus large d'empires et de civilisations iraniennes, ce qui est un aspect que beaucoup de Kurdes apprécient, en particulier ceux qui cherchent à se détacher des influences arabes ou turques qui ont dominé leur histoire plus récente.

3. Les Kurdes dans l'histoire des Mèdes et des Parthes :

Wikander a également mis l'accent sur la relation historique entre les Kurdes et les Mèdes, un ancien peuple iranien qui a joué un rôle central dans la fondation du premier empire iranien. Il a évoqué des liens entre les Kurdes modernes et les anciens Mèdes, contribuant à une idée de continuité culturelle et historique entre l'ancien et le contemporain, ce qui a renforcé un sentiment de fierté historique parmi les Kurdes, notamment dans les contextes politiques où ils revendiquent leur propre autonomie et indépendance.

4. Le rôle des Kurdes dans la dynastie des Sassanides :

Dans ses travaux, Wikander a également exploré les liens des Kurdes avec les dynasties sassanides, qui ont gouverné l'Iran pendant plusieurs siècles. Les Kurdes ont joué un rôle important dans l'armée et la politique de cet empire, et ces contributions historiques sont souvent soulignées par les Kurdes pour légitimer leur rôle dans les dynamiques régionales et pour renforcer leur identité en tant que groupe qui n'a pas seulement une histoire rurale ou marginale, mais aussi un passé politique et militaire important.

Pourquoi ces thèses sont appréciées dans les milieux kurdes :

Les milieux kurdes apprécient particulièrement les travaux de Wikander pour plusieurs raisons :

• Renforcement de l'identité historique kurde : Wikander a permis de mettre en lumière l'héritage ancien des Kurdes dans une région dominée par des narrations de puissances impériales arabes, turques et perses. En soulignant la longue présence des Kurdes dans les régions de la Mésopotamie et du Kurdistan, il a contribué à légitimer leur histoire et leur identité.

• Affirmation de la diversité culturelle kurde : Ses thèses ont renforcé l'idée selon laquelle les Kurdes ne sont pas un groupe homogène, mais qu'ils possèdent une identité complexe influencée par diverses cultures, notamment iranienne, arabe et turque. Cela a permis aux Kurdes de se voir comme une culture riche, avec des racines multiples et une grande diversité historique.

• Anticipation des revendications politiques kurdes : Dans un contexte où les Kurdes sont souvent en lutte pour leurs droits, leur autonomie ou leur indépendance, les recherches de Wikander sur les racines anciennes des Kurdes ont permis de soutenir des arguments politiques et territoriaux en faveur de la reconnaissance de la nation kurde. Elles ont également fourni un cadre académique pour soutenir les revendications des Kurdes dans les contextes contemporains.

En conclusion :

Les thèses de Stig Wikander sont appréciées dans les milieux kurdes parce qu'elles offrent une vision historique et culturelle qui renforce l'idée d'un peuple kurde ancien, enraciné dans l'histoire du Moyen-Orient et connecté aux grandes civilisations iraniennes. Elles permettent également de contrebalancer les narratives dominantes qui marginalisent l'importance historique des Kurdes. Par son approche, Wikander a contribué à offrir une meilleure compréhension des Kurdes, une reconnaissance de leur héritage historique et un argumentaire précieux pour leurs aspirations politiques.

 

 

India's only communalist A short biography of Sita Ram Goel

India's only communalist
A short biography of Sita Ram Goel

Ex; http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/

Koenraad Elst

1. Is there a communalist in the hall ?

A lot of people in India and abroad talk about communalism, often in grave tones, describing it as a threat to secularism, to regional and world peace. But can anyone show us a communalist? If we look more closely into the case of any so-called communalist, we find that he turns out to be something else.

Could Syed Shahabuddin be a communalist? After all, he played a key role in the three main "Muslim communalist" issues of recent years: the Babri Masjid campaign, the Shah Bano case and the Salman Rushdie affair (it is he who got The Satanic Verses banned in September 1988). Surely, he must be India's communalist par excellence? Wrong: if you read any page of any issue of Shahabuddin's monthly Muslim India, you will find that he brandishes the notion of "secularism" as the alpha and omega of his politics, and that he directs all his attacks against Hindu "communalism". The same propensity is evident in the whole Muslim "communalist" press, e.g. the Jamaat-i Islami weekly Radiance. Moreover, on Muslim India's editorial board, you find articulate secularists like Inder Kumar Gujral, Khushwant Singh and the late P.N. Haksar.

For the same reason, any attempt to label the All-India Muslim League as communalist would be wrong. True, it is the continuation of the party which achieved the Partition of India along communal lines. Yet, emphatically secularist parties like the Congress Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have never hesitated to include the Muslim League in coalitions governing the state of Kerala. No true communalist would get such a chance.

On the Hindu side then, at least the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, "National Volunteer Corps") could qualify as "communalist"? Certainly, it is called just that by all its numerous enemies. But then, when you look through any issue of its weekly Organiser, you will find it brandishing the notion of "positive" or "genuine secularism", and denouncing "pseudo-secularism", i.e. minority communalism. Moreover, in order to prove its non-communal character, it even calls itself and its affiliated organizations (trade-union, student organization, political party etc.) "National" or "Indian" rather than "Hindu". The allied political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, "Indian People's Party"), shows off the large number of Muslims among its cadres to prove how secular and non-communal it is. Even the Shiv Sena shows off its token Muslims. No, for full-blooded communalists, we have to look elsewhere.

There is only one man in India whom I have ever known to say: "I am a (Hindu) communalist." To an extent, this is in jest, as a rhetorical device to avoid the tangle in which RSS people always get trapped: being called "communalist!" and then spending the rest of your time trying to prove to your hecklers what a good secularist you are. But to an extent, it is because he accepts at least one definition of "communalism" as applying to himself, esp. to his view of India's history since the 7th century. Many historians try to prove their "secularism" by minimizing religious adherence as a factor of conflict in Indian history, and explaining so-called religious conflicts as merely a camouflage for socio-economic conflicts. By contrast, the historian under consideration accepts, and claims to have thoroughly documented, the allegedly "communalist" view that the major developments in medieval and modern Indian history can only be understood as resulting from an intrinsic hostility between religions.

Unlike the Hindutva politicians, he does not seek the cover of "genuine secularism". While accepting the notion that Hindu India has always been "secular" in the adapted Indian sense of "religiously pluralistic", he does not care for slogans like the Vishva Hindu Parishad's advertisement "Hindu India, secular India". After all, in Nehruvian India the term "secular" has by now acquired a specific meaning far removed from the original European usage, and even from the above-mentioned Indian adaptation. If Voltaire, the secularist par excellence, were to live in India today and repeat his attacks on the Church, echoing the Hindutva activists in denouncing the Churches' grip on public life in christianized pockets like Mizoram and Nagaland, he would most certainly be denounced as "anti-minority" and hence "anti-secular".

In India, the term has shed its anti-Christian bias and acquired an anti-Hindu bias instead, a phenomenon described by the author under consideration as an example of the current "perversion of India's political parlance". Therefore, he attacks the whole Nehruvian notion of "secularism" head-on, e.g. in the self-explanatory title of his Hindi booklet Saikyularizm: râshtradroha kâ dûsra nâm ("Secularism: the Alternative Name for Treason"). The name of India's only self-avowed communalist is Sita Ram Goel.

2. Sita Ram Goel as an anti-Communist

Sita Ram Goel was born in 1921 in a poor family (though belonging to the merchant Agrawal caste) in Haryana. As a schoolboy, he got acquainted with the traditional Vaishnavism practised by his family, with the Mahabharata and the lore of the Bhakti saints (esp. Garibdas), and with the major trends in contemporary Hinduism, esp. the Arya Samaj and Gandhism. He took an M.A. in History in Delhi University, winning prizes and scholarships along the way. In his school and early university days he was a Gandhian activist, helping a Harijan Ashram in his village and organizing a study circle in Delhi.

In the 1930s and 40s, the Gandhians themselves came in the shadow of the new ideological vogue: socialism. When they started drifting to the Left and adopting socialist rhetoric, S.R. Goel decided to opt for the original rather than the imitation. In 1941 he accepted Marxism as his framework for political analysis. At first, he did not join the Communist Party of India, and had differences with it over such issues as the creation of the religion-based state of Pakistan, which was actively supported by the CPI but could hardly earn the enthusiasm of a progressive and atheist intellectual. He and his wife and first son narrowly escaped with their lives in the Great Calcutta Killing of 16 August 1946, organized by the Muslim League to give more force to the Pakistan demand.

In 1948, just when he had made up his mind to formally join the Communist Party of India, in fact on the very day when he had an appointment at the party office in Calcutta to be registered as a candidate-member, the Government of West Bengal banned the CPI because of its hand in an ongoing armed rebellion. A few months later, Ram Swarup came to stay with him in Calcutta and converted him as well as his employer, Hari Prasad Lohia, out of Communism. Goel's career as a combative and prolific writer on controversial matters of historical fact can only be understood in conjunction with Ram Swarup's sparser, more reflective writings on fundamental doctrinal issues.

Much later, in a speech before the Yogakshema society, Calcutta 1983, he explained his relation with Ram Swarup as follows: "In fact, it would have been in the fitness of things if the speaker today had been Ram Swarup, because whatever I have written and whatever I have to say today really comes from him. He gives me the seed-ideas which sprout into my articles (...) He gives me the framework of my thought. Only the language is mine. The language also would have been much better if it was his own. My language becomes sharp at times; it annoys people. He has a way of saying things in a firm but polite manner, which discipline I have never been able to acquire." (The Emerging National Vision, p.1.)

S.R. Goel's first important publications were written as part of the work of the Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia:

·        World Conquest in Instalments (1952);

·        The China Debate: Whom Shall We Believe? (1953);

·        Mind Murder in Mao-land (1953);

·        China is Red with Peasants' Blood (1953);

·        Red Brother or Yellow Slave? (1953);

·        Communist Party of China: a Study in Treason (1953);

·        Conquest of China by Mao Tse-tung (1954);

·        Netaji and the CPI (1955);

·        CPI Conspire for Civil War (1955).

Goel also published the book Blowing up India: Reminiscences of a Comintern Agent by Philip Spratt (1955), who, as an English Comintern agent, had founded the Communist Party of India in 1926. After spending some time in prison as a convict in the Meerut Conspiracy case (1929), Spratt had come under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, and ended as one of the best-informed critics of Communism.

Then, and all through his career as a polemical writer, the most remarkable feature of Sita Ram Goel's position in the Indian intellectual arena was that nobody even tried to give a serious rebuttal to his theses: the only counter-strategy has always been, and still is, "strangling by silence", simply refusing to ever mention his name, publications and arguments.

An aspect of history yet to be studied is how such anti-Communist movements in the Third World were not at all helped (in fact, often opposed) by Western interest groups whose understanding of Communist ideology and strategy was just too superficial. Most US representatives starkly ignored the SDFA's work, and preferred to enjoy the company of more prestigious (implying: fashionably anti-anti-Communist) opinion makers. Goel himself noted in 1961 about his Western anti-Communist contacts like Freda Utley, Suzanne Labin and Raymond Aron, who were routinely dismissed as bores, querulants or CIA agents: Communism was "opposed only by individuals and groups who have done so mostly at the cost of their reputation (...) A history of these heroes and their endless endeavour has still to be written." (Genesis and Growth of Nehruism, p.212)

3. Sita Ram Goel and the RSS

In the 1950s, Goel was not active on the "communal" battlefield: not Islam or Christianity but Communism was his priority target. Yet, under Ram Swarup's influence, his struggle against communism became increasingly rooted in Hindu spirituality, the way Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's anti-Communism became rooted in Orthodox Christianity. He also co-operated with (but was never a member of) the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and he occasionally contributed articles on Communism to the RSS weekly Organiser. In 1957 he contested the Lok Sabha election for the Khajuraho constituency as an independent candidate on a BJS ticket, but lost. He was one of the thirty independents fielded as candidates by Minoo Masani in preparation of the creation of his own (secular, rightist-liberal) Swatantra Party.

In that period, apart from the said topical books in English, Goel wrote and published 18 titles in Hindi: 8 titles of fiction and 1 of poetry written by himself; 3 compilations from the Mahabharata and the Tripitaka; and Hindi translations of these 6 books, mostly of obvious ideological relevance:

·        The God that Failed, a testimony on Communism by Arthur Koestler, André Gide and other prominent ex-Communists;

·        Ram Swarup's Communism and Peasantry;

·        Viktor Kravchenko's I Chose Freedom, another testimony by an ex-Communist;

·        George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

·        Satyakam Sokratez ("Truth-lover Socrates"), the three Dialogues of Plato centred round Socrates' last days (Apology, Crito and Phaedo);

·        Shaktiputra Shivaji, a history of the 17th-century Hindu freedom fighter, originally The Great Rebel by Denis Kincaid.

There is an RSS aspect to this publishing activity. RSS secretary-general Eknath Ranade had asked Goel to educate RSS workers about literature, and to produce some literature in Hindi to this end. The understanding was that the RSS would propagate this literature and organize discussions about it. Once Goel had set up a small publishing outfit and published a few books, he had another meeting with Ranade, who gave him an unpleasant surprise: "Was the RSS created to sell your books?" Fortunately for Goel, his friend Guru Datt Vaidya and son Yogendra Datt included Goel's books in the fund of their own publishing-house, Bharati Sahitya Sadan. This is Goel's own version, and Ranade is not there to defend himself; but Goel's long experience in dealing with the RSS leadership translates into a long list of anecdotes of RSS petty-mindedness, unreliability and lack of proper manners in dealing with fellow-men.

In May 1957, Goel moved to Delhi and got a job with a state-affiliated company, the Indian Cooperative Union, for which he did research and prospection concerning cottage industries. The company also loaned him for a while to the leading Gandhian activist Jayaprakash Narayan, who shared Goel's anti-Communism at least at the superficial level (what used to be called "anti-Stalinism": rejecting the means but not the ends of Communism).

During the Chinese invasion in 1962, some government officials including P.N. Haksar, Nurul Hasan and the later Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, demanded Goel's arrest. But at the same time, the Home Ministry invited him to take a leadership role in the plans for a guerrilla war against the then widely-expected Chinese occupation of eastern India. He made his co-operation conditional on Nehru's abdication as Prime Minister, and nothing ever came of it.

In 1963, Goel had a book published under his own name which he had published in 1961-62 as a series in Organiser under the pen name Ekaki ("solitary"): a critique of Nehru's consistent pro-Communist policies, titled In Defence of Comrade Krishna Menon. An update of this book was published in 1993: Genesis and Growth of Nehruism. The serial in Organiser had been discontinued after 16 installments because Eknath Ranade and A.B. Vajpayee feared that if any harm came to Nehru, the RSS would be accused of having "created the climate", as in the Gandhi murder case.

In it, Goel questioned the current fashion of attributing India's Communist-leaning foreign policy to Defence Minister Krishna Menon, and demonstrated that Nehru himself had been a consistent Communist sympathizer ever since his visit to the Soviet Union in 1927. Nehru had stuck to his Communist sympathies even when the Communists insulted him as Prime Minister with their unbridled scatologism. Nehru was too British and too middle-class to opt for a fully authoritarian socialism, but like many European Leftists he supported just such regimes when it came to foreign policy. Thus, Nehru's absolute refusal to support the Tibetans even at the diplomatic level when they were overrun by the Chinese army ("a Far-Eastern Munich", according to Minoo Masani: Against the Tide, Vikas Publ., Delhi 1981, p.45.), cannot just be attributed to circumstances or the influence of his collaborators: his hand-over of Tibet to Communist China was quite consistent with his own political convictions.

While refuting the common explanation that the pro-Communist bias in Nehru's foreign policy was merely the handiwork of Minister Krishna Menon, Goel also drew attention to the harmfulness of this policy to India's national interests. This critique of Nehru's pro-China policies was eloquently vindicated by the Chinese invasion in October 1962, but it cost Goel his job. He withdrew from the political debate, went into business himself and set up Impex India, a company of book import and export with a modest publishing capacity.

In 1964, RSS general secretary Eknath Ranade invited Goel to lead the prospective Vishva Hindu Parishad, which was founded later that year, but Goel set as his condition that he would be free to speak his own mind rather than act as a mouthpiece of the RSS leadership; the RSS could not accept this, and the matter ended there. Goel's only subsequent involvement in politics was in 1973 when he was asked by the BJS leadership to mediate with the dissenting party leader Balraj Madhok in a last attempt at conciliation (which failed); and when he worked as a member of the think-tank of the Janata alliance before it defeated Indira's Emergency regime in the 1977 elections. As a commercial publisher, he did not seek out the typical "communal" topics, but nonetheless kept an eye on Hindu interests. That is why he published books like Dharampal's The Beautiful Tree (on indigenous education as admiring British surveyors found it in the 19th century, before it was destroyed and replaced with the British or missionary system), Ram Swarup's apology of polytheism The Word as Revelation (1980), K.R. Malkani's The RSS Story (1980) and K.D. Sethna's Karpasa in Prehistoric India (1981; on the chronology of Vedic civilization, implying decisive objections against the Aryan Invasion Theory).

4. Sita Ram Goel as a Hindu Revivalist

In 1981 Sita Ram Goel retired from his business, which he handed over to his son and nephew. He started the non-profit publishing house Voice of India with donations from sympathetic businessmen, and accepted Organiser editor K.R. Malkani's offer to contribute some articles again, articles which were later collected into the first Voice of India booklets.

Goel's declared aim is to defend Hinduism by placing before the public correct information about the situation of Hindu culture and society, and about the nature, motives and strategies of its enemies. For, as the title of his book Hindu Society under Siege indicates, Goel claims that Hindu society has been suffering a sustained attack from Islam since the 7th century, from Christianity since the 15th century, this century also from Marxism, and all three have carved out a place for themselves in Indian society from which they besiege Hinduism. 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.

Apart from numerous articles, letters, contributions to other books (e.g. Devendra Swarup, ed.: Politics of Conversion, DRI, Delhi 1986) and translations (e.g. the Hindi version of Taslima Nasrin's Bengali book Lajja, published in instalments in Panchjanya, summer 1994), Goel has contributed the following books to the inter-religious debate:

·        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, Râshtradroha kâ Dûsrâ Nâm (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 Agrression (1994);

·        Time for Stock-Taking (1997), a collection of articles critical of the 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).         

Goel's writings are practically boycotted in the media, both by reviewers and by journalists and scholars collecting background information on the communal problem. Though most Hindutva stalwarts have some Voice of India publications on their not-so-full bookshelves, the RSS Parivar refuses to offer its organizational omnipresence as a channel of publicity and distribution. Since most India-watchers have been brought up on the belief that Hindu activism can be identified with the RSS Parivar, they are bound to label Sita Ram Goel (the day they condescend to mentioning him at all, that is) as "an RSS man". It may, therefore, surprise them that the established Hindu organizations have so far shown little interest in his work.

It is not that they would spurn his services: in its Ayodhya campaign, the Vishva Hindu Parishad has routinely referred to a "list of 3000 temples converted into or replaced by mosques", meaning the list of nearly 2000 such cases in Goel, ed.: Hindu Temples, vol.1. Goel also published the VHP argumentation in the government-sponsored scholars' debate of 1990-91 (titled History vs. Casuistry), and he straightened and corrected the BJP's clumsily drafted White Paper on Ayodhya. But organizationally, the Parivar is not using its networks to spread Ram Swarup's and Sita Ram Goel's books and ideas. Twice (1962 and 1982) the RSS intervened with the editor of Organiser to have ongoing serials of articles (on Nehru c.q. on Islam) by Goel halted; the second time, the editor himself, the long-serving arch-moderate K.R. Malkani, was sacked along with Goel. And ideologically, it has always turned a deaf ear to their analysis of the problems facing Hindu society.

Most Hindu leaders expressly refuse to search Islamic doctrine for a reason for the observed fact of Muslim hostility. RSS leader Guru Golwalkar once said: "Islam is a great religion. Mohammed was a great prophet. But the Muslims are big fools." (Delhi ca. 1958) This is not logical, for the one thing that unites the (otherwise diverse) community of Muslims, is their common belief in Mohammed and the Quran: if any wrong is attributed to "the Muslims" as such, it must be situated in their common belief system. Therefore, Goel's position is just the opposite: not the Muslims are the problem, but Islam and Mohammed.

In the Ayodhya dispute, time and again the BJP leaders have appealed to the Muslims to relinquish all claims to the supposed birthplace of the Hindu god Rama, arguing that destroying temples is against the tenets of Islam, and that the Quran prohibits the use of a mosque built on disputed land. In fact, whatever Islam decrees against building mosques on disputed property, can only concern disputes within the Muslim community (or its temporary allies under a treaty). Goel has demonstrated in detail that it is perfectly in conformity with Islamic law, and established as legitimate by the Prophet through his own example, to destroy Pagan establishments and replace them with (or turn them into) mosques. For an excellent example, the Kaaba itself was turned into a mosque by Mohammed when he smashed the 360 Pagan idols that used to be worshipped in it.

Therefore, S.R. Goel is rather critical of the Ayodhya movement. In the foreword to Hindu Temples, vol.2, he writes: "The movement for the restoration of Hindu temples has got bogged down around the Rama Janmabhoomi at Ayodhya. The more important question, viz. why Hindu temples met the fate they did at the hands of Islamic invaders, has not been even whispered. Hindu leaders have endorsed the Muslim propagandists in proclaiming that Islam does not permit the construction of mosques at sites occupied earlier by other people's places of worship (...) The Islam of which Hindu leaders are talking exists neither in the Quran nor in the Sunnah of the Prophet. It is hoped that this volume will help in clearing the confusion. No movement which shuns or shies away from truth is likely to succeed. Strategies based on self-deception stand defeated at the very start."

Goel's alternative to the RSS variety of "Muslim appeasement" is to wage an ideological struggle against Islam and Christianity, on the lines of the rational criticism and secularist politics which have pushed back Christian self-righteousness in Europe. The Muslim community, of course, is not to be a scapegoat (as it is for those who refuse to criticize Islam and end up attacking Muslims instead), but has to be seen in the proper historical perspective: as a part of Hindu society estranged from its ancestral culture by Islamic indoctrination over generations. Their hearts and minds have to be won back by an effort of consciousness-raising, which includes education about the aims, methods and historical record of religions.

5. Conclusion

One of the grossest misconceptions about the Hindu movement, is that it is a creation of political parties like the BJP and the Shiv Sena. In reality, there is a substratum of Hindu activist tendencies in many corners of Hindu society, often in unorganized form and almost invariably lacking in intellectual articulation. To this widespread Hindu unrest about the uncertain future of Hindu culture, Voice of India provides an intellectual focus.

The importance of Ram Swarup's and Sita Ram Goel's work can hardly be over-estimated. I for one have no doubt that future textbooks on comparative religion as well as those on Indian political and intellectual history will devote crucial chapters to their analysis. They are the first to give a first-hand "Pagan" reply to the versions of history and "comparative religion" imposed by the monotheist world-conquerors, both at the level of historical fact and of fundamental doctrine, both in terms of the specific Hindu experience and of a more generalized theory of religion free from prophetic-monotheistic bias.

Their long-term intellectual importance is that they have contributed immensely to breaking the spell of all kinds of Christian, Muslim and Marxist prejudices and misrepresentations of Hinduism and the Hindu Revivalist movement.