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"An informative and a must-visit site for every Hindu who wishes to rediscover his roots and dharma."

"The members of the Voice of India group themselves are inspired only by democratic texts when they invoke contemporary European thought to justify their anti-Muslim crusade, and they deliberately leave out anything that has an extreme right appearance .... (It is) the appearance of cosmopolitan and sometimes extremely sophisticated intellectuals, like Girilal Jain, former editor-in-chief of the Times of India, Swapan Dasgupta, who works in the same newspaper or Arun Shourie ex-editor-in-chief of the Indian Express who mark the scene. Some are former members of Socialist parties or the Congress (notably Jay Dubashi). There are also former Communists. Many ... have notably gathered around the publishing house Voice of India of Sita Ram Goel, this new avatar of Hindu nationalism. He loses, in a way, any traditional side. He ... takes up all that is possible from secular and democratic polemicists .."

"One wonders too at the relevance of his next rather irrational comment: “Ironically, many of those expressing these anti-migrational views are emigrants themselves, engineers or technocrats like N S Rajaram, S Kak and S Kalyanaramam, who ship their ideas to India from US shores”. What indeed has this absurd statement to do with facts and evidence?… Then, it continues in the same tone of irrelevance and contempt, forgetting how many Universities and Journals spend enormous funds on useless hypotheses and ostracise all non-immigrationists: “They find allies in a broader assortment of home-grown nationalists including university professors, bank employees, and politicians (S. S. Misra, S. Talageri, K. D. Sethna, S. P. Gupta, Bh. Singh, M. Shendge, Bh. Gidwani, P. Chaudhuri, A. Shourie, S. R. Goel). They have even gained a small but vocal following in the West among "New Age" writers or researchers outside mainstream scholarship, including D. Frawley, G. Feuerstein, K. Klostermaier, and K. Elst. Whole publishing firms, such as the Voice of India and Aditya Prakashan, are devoted to propagating their ideas”. Here two further points are worthy of note: first, Prof Witzel obviously does not know what “New Age” writers are; second, the whole passage has the shrill tones of McCarthyism or any totalitarian dogmatism (and censorship). Instead of emitting such strident emotional cries and witch-hunt slogans, Prof Witzel and his followers had better re-examine their unfounded linguistic assumptions and recall the words of Edmund Leach, who was neither an Indian nationalist technocrat, nor a New-Age writer, but a solid, mainstream pillar of the academic establishment"

"The militants of VOI are adamantly opposed to the idea that all religions deserve equal respect. Even paying lip-service to this ideal, as RSS and BJP do, appears like an unbearable betrayal of the Hindu cause to them."

"Ram Swarup is one of those rare souls whose vision exceeds that of those around them, whose mind is so clear it can bring clarity to others. For us, the editorial staff at Hinduism Today, his writings were a treat - always bold, incisive, unapologetic, targeting strategic issues with uncanny precision. Our personal meetings with him and with his friend and student Sita Ram Goel were always a delight. His passionate intellect was incandescent and it was working in service to his deeper spirituality. If we could but hear him and heed him, our future would be as strong as our past."

"[Pirbhai is at his best when he sums up Voice of India thinking as devising an ideology] “rationally akin to the Enlightenment without falling prey to materialism”."

"Pirbhai is not too far off the mark when he writes: “Voice of India, in fact, was established to provide the Sangh Parivar ‘a full-blooded Hindu ideology of its own and process all events, movements, parties and public figures in terms of that ideology, rather than live on borrowed slogans or hand to mouth ideas invoked on the spur of the moment’.”... “Swarup puts it most succinctly in ‘A need to face the truth’, making what seems the most repeated statement in Voice of India writings, that ‘the problem is not Muslims but Islam’.”... Pirbhai is at his best when he sums up Voice of India thinking as devising an ideology “rationally akin to the Enlightenment without falling prey to materialism”. (p.52) For some reason he, along with the Sangh, he considers this a “staggeringly harsh theology”. (p.51) Maybe it is just “secular” in the real sense of the term."

"Ram Swarup, now in his seventies, is a scholar of the first rank.... Today, anyone reading those critiques would characterise them as prophetic. But thirty years ago so noxious was the intellectual climate in India that all he got was abuse, and ostracisation.... His work on Hinduism and on Islam and Christianity has been equally scholarly. And what is more pertinent to the point I want to urge, it has been equally prophetic. 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 [the Supreme Court] declared last year, "cannot be held to ransom by an intolerant group or people." To curtail it in the face of threats of demonstrations and processions or threats of violence "would amount," the Court said, "to the negation of the rule of law and surrender to blackmail and intimidation."

"Late in the afternoon on November 15, a police official visited the office of the Voice of India, a publication house that has been publishing works of academic excellence. ... The policeman brought with him a letter that Mr. Shahabuddin had written to Minister of State for Home P.M. Sayeed. Dated August 20, it asked that the government have the book ["Hindu View of Christianity and Islam"] examined "from the point of view of banning it under the law of the land." "This book is blatantly offensive to the religious sensibilities of Muslims and Christians," Mr. Shahabuddin had written. ... It is not the law these people rely on. They rely on intimidation, It is exactly by tactics of this kind that an earlier book of Mr. Swarup - Understanding Islam Through Hadis - was put out of circulation, The English edition was published in 1982 in the US and reprinted in India in 1983. ... Our response should be three fold. First, whenever an attempt such as this from quarters such as Mr. Shahabuddin is made to stifle free speech, to kill even scholarly inquiry, we must go out of our way and immediately obtain the book.... Secondly, whenever the intimidators prevail and such a book actually comes to be banned large numbers should take to reprinting it, photocopying it, to circulating it, and discussing its contents. The third thing is more necessary, and in the long run will be the complete answer to the intimidators. As long as scholars like Mr. Swarup are few, intimidators can bully weak governments into shutting them one by one. But what will they do if 1,000, scholars are to do work of the same order? This is the way to deal with intimidators. Let 1,000 scholars carry on work Mr. Swarup has pioneered."

"One final reason for being confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, and Rajiv Malhotra the corpus is now reaching a critical mass. So, that we can think that within few years we will have a library for India and a library of India."

"This book is also a tribute to all those scholars who have served, and are still serving, as benefactors of the nation, foremost among them being the Voice of India family of scholars who will ever remain the intellectual focal point for exercises in rejuvenation of the innermost spirit of India."

"Our only weapon is truth."

"In 1982, Ram Swarup (1920–1998) established Voice of India, a publishing house that over the next decades published a great deal of literature critical of Christianity in India. Though he shared Gandhi’s conception of religion and repeated many of Gandhi’s general criticisms of Christian proselytization, Swarup did so with more bombast and sarcasm than the frank but generally civil Mahatma. In addition, while Gandhi regularly criticized Christians’ obsession with conversion, he frequently spoke admirably of Christ and of Christian ethics. Swarup would have none of it..."

"Gandhi can be credited with having established and/​or popularized many of the basic arguments against conversion to Christianity, but it was Ram Swarup who brought those arguments back to life at the end of the twentieth century. In 1982, Swarup established a publishing house, Voice of India, which has since then published a significant amount of literature in defense of Hinduism, including many of the texts referenced in this chapter. One of the stated goals of Voice of India, according to Swarup, was to “show to its own people that Hinduism is not that bad and other religions not so wonderful as they are painted by their theologians and televangelists”. With Voice of India’s publication of his own Hinduism vis-​à-​vis Christianity and Islam, Swarup inspired a new generation of anti-​Christian critics, as we will see in the next section on Sita Ram Goel. Though many of his arguments may have been Gandhi’s originally, the assertive, orotund, and confrontational style was distinctly Swarup’s, and the influence of that style can be felt in the writings of nearly all the other authors profiled in this chapter.... Trained as an historian at the University of Delhi, Sita Ram Goel had an active career as a social activist, fighting for various causes throughout his career. As he describes it, a narrow escape from a murderous Muslim mob in 1946 appears to have moved him in a more conservative direction, particularly with regard to his views on Islam. After 1982, he became involved, with Swarup, in establishing Voice of India."

"The epochal 1980s up to the fall of the Babri Masjid and later is also notable for a resurgence that’s truly breathtaking: there was a sudden public interest in such obscure and “boring” disciplines as archeology and linguistics. For the first time since independence, the Leftists were being challenged on their own turf, especially in history. Sita Ram Goel’s Voice of India alone published... groundbreaking works, still definitive classics in their own right. ... the quality and quantity of work produced by Voice of India during this period in this genre remains comparably unsurpassed. These works provided the solid and indisputable raw material for Hindu activist and other organisations working on the ground and in other realms."

"Conversely, banning this book would send a signal that the present establishment will do what it can to prevent Hinduism from rising up, from regaining self-confidence, from facing the challenge of hostile ideologies."

"The Voice of India authors deliberately avoid the term “Hindutva”, a clumsy neologism combining the Persian root Hindu with the Sanskrit suffix –tva, and properly designating only the specific Hindu nationalist line embodied in the Hindu Mahasabha (HMS, Hindu Great-Assembly) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Corps). They were never too enamoured of the brainless nationalism of the organizations properly described and self-described as championing Hindutva. Calling them a “school of Hindutva” is part of a widely-used terminological strategy of prejudicing the audience against anyone taking any pro-Hindu position, along with older Procrustean misnomers like “Hindu Right”, “Hindu fundamentalism” and “Hindu fascism”. In many cases it is not even a “strategy” but an instance of intellectual laziness: being on top of the world in an all too comfortable power position, the secularists don’t even take the trouble of using or coining an appropriate terminology specific to the Hindu revivalist phenomenon. At any rate, Voice of India is not a “school of Hindutva”... Her term triumphalism is as inept as could be: everything of value is vulnerable, and consequently Hinduism is no match for its challengers, just as Greek philosophy wasn’t. It has, according to Voice of India’s mission statement, only truth on its side. And whether Truth Shall Prevail, as India’s motto has it, remains to be seen... Voice of India is only secondarily an Indian nationalist movement. It is first of all a civilizational revivalism."

"What counts as “extreme” and “controversial” in India is Voice of India’s criticism of religions. There is nothing “Right-wing” about that; if anything, it should rather be called Left-wing, but it is principally just a scholarly pursuit."

"It is remarkable that all the writers who have published contributions to Hindu thought in the Voice of India series, are not members of any RSS front. The same thing counts for the scholars (except two) who have compiled the VHP evidence for the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir. Thought develops independently. But social and political movements may, or may not, provide intellectuals with a platform and a network to broadcast their ideas."

"The importance of Sitaram Goel's and Ram Swarup's work can hardly be over-estimated. There is 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 "science of religion" imposed by the monotheist world- conquerors, both at the level of historical fact (e.g. Sitaram Goel's "History of Hindu-Christian Encounters") and of fundamental doctrine (e.g. Ram Swarup's "Hinduism vis-a-vis Christianity and Islam"), both in terms of the specific Hindu experience (e.g. Sitaram Goel's "Hindu Society under Siege") and of a more generalized theory of religion free from prophetic-monotheistic bias (e.g. Ram Swarup's "The Word as Revelation: Names of Gods", a ground-breaking statement of Pagan doctrine)."

"Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel were witnesses to the untiring aggression against Hinduism by Christian missionaries, they deemed Christianity a serious problem, and so they took aim at Christianity. Not some mysterious force behind Christianity, but Christianity itself. They adopted the typically modern rejection of Christianity as exemplified by Bertrand Russell's book Why I Am Not a Christian. Their criticism focused mainly on three points: (1) the irrational basis of Christian theology; (2) the largely fabricated basis of early Christianity's sacred history as related in the New Testament; (3) the intolerant and inhumane record of Christianity in history. This has nothing whatsoever to do with "postmodernism" but is purely and consistently the modern approach to the Christian belief system and Church, in the footstep of the criticisms developed by Western secularists since the 18th century... The next one among the errors in this paragraph: Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel wrote in defence of Hinduism, never of "Hindutva"."

"In sharp contrast with the repetitive-nationalistic and Indocentric approach of Golwalkar and the RSS, Goel and Shourie (and Ram Swarup before them) have developed a historical and philosophical critique of Christianity and Islam that has universal validity. It is part of continuum with Western and other foreign critiques of the said religions. .... Of course, the approach pioneered by Ram Swarup is “hard-line” in the sense that it is not susceptible to change under the impact of changing political configurations. The BJP and RSS may decide one day that they need to build bridges with padres and mullahs, but that doesn’t alter the truth status of the latter’s belief systems. The Voice of India approach is unflinching in the same sense in which logic is sharper than diplomacy, or uprightness is tougher than compromise, or a diamond is hardier than mud."

"While Voice of India had a controversial reputation, I found nothing irrational, much less extreme about their ideas or publications... Their criticisms of Islam were on par with the criticisms of the Catholic Church and of Christianity done by such Western thinkers as Voltaire or Thomas Jefferson. In fact they went far beyond such mere rational or historical criticisms of other religions and brought in a profound spiritual and yogic view as well."

"Voice of India through Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel and Koenraad Elst provided the main intellectual defense of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement starting thirty years ago. Their contributions were very important in sustaining it."

"A single glance upon the map recalling to mind the vast extent of the empire we hold, the various classes and interests it includes, the wide distances which separate the several points at which hostile attack may at any time be expected; the perpetual risk of such hostility in quarters where it is least expected; the expenditure of time, of treasure and of life that are involved in even the ordinary routine of military movements over such a tract… will suffice to show how immeasurable are the political advantages to be derived from the system of internal communication, which would admit of full intelligence of every event being transmitted to the Government,… at a speed exceeding fivefold its present rate; and would enable the Government to bring the main bulk of its military strength to bring to bear on any given point in as many days as it would now require months, and to an extent which at present is physically impossible. The commercial and social advantages which India would derive from their establishment are, I believe, beyond all present calculation. Great tracts are teeming with produce which they cannot dispose of. Others are scantily bearing what they would carry in abundance, if only it could be conveyed whither it is needed. England is calling aloud for the cotton which India does already produce in some degree, and would produce sufficient in quality, and plentiful in quantity, if only there were provided the fitting means of conveyance to it from distant plains to the several ports adopted for its shipment. Every increase of facilities for trade has been attended… with an increased demand of European produce in the most distant markets of our Empire… ships of every part of the world crowd our ports in search of produce which we have or could obtain in the interior, but which at present we cannot possibly fetch to them, and new markets are opening to us on this side of the globe under circumstances which defy foresight of the wisest to estimate their probably value, or calculate their future extent… the first object must be, then, to lay down the great trunk lines, with a view to the broadest future ramification, and on a principle that shall ensure the most profitable permanent working of the lines generally, bearing upon the intercourse of India with Europe. It needs but little reflection on such facts to lead us to the conclusion that the establishment of a system of railways in India, judiciously selected and formed, would surely and rapidly give rise within this Empire to the same encouragement of enterprise, the same multiplication of produce, the same discovery of latent resource, and the same increase of national wealth, and to some similar progress of social improvement, that have marked the improved and extended communications in various kingdoms of the Western world."

"While it is gratifying to me to be thus able to state that the moral and social questions which are engaging attention in Europe have not been neglected in India during the last eight years, it is double gratifying to record, that these years have also witnessed the first introductions in the Indian Empire of the three great engines of social improvement, which the sagacity and science of recent times had previously given to Western nations — I mean Railways, uniform postage, and the Electric Telegraph."

"It might have been supposed that the building of 30,000 miles of railways would have brought a measure of prosperity to India. But these railways were built not for India but for England; not for the benefit of the Hindu, but for the purposes of the British army and British trade."

"They [third-class railway carriages] are discreditable-looking places where there is no order, no cleanliness but utter confusion and horrible din and noise. Passengers have no benches or not enough to sit on. They squat on dirty floors and eat dirty food. They are permitted to throw the leavings of their food and spit where they like, sit how they like and smoke everywhere. The closets attached to these places defy description. I have not the power adequately to describe them without committing a breach of the laws of decent speech. In neglecting the third class passengers, opportunity of giving a splendid education to millions in orderliness, sanitation, decent composite life and cultivation of simple and clean tastes is being lost. Instead of receiving an object lesson in these matters third class passengers have their sense of decency and cleanliness blunted during their travelling experience. Among the many suggestions that can be made for dealing with the evil here described, I would respectfully include this: let the people in high places, the Viceroy, the Commander-in-Chief, the Rajas, Maharajas, the Imperial Councillors and others, who generally travel in superior classes, without previous warning, go through the experiences now and then of third class travelling. We would then soon see a remarkable change in the conditions of third class travelling and the uncomplaining millions will get some return for the fares they pay under the expectation of being carried from place to place with ordinary creature comforts."

"Thailand has railways and the British never colonised the country,... In 1885, when the British invaded Burma, the Burmese king was already building railways and telegraphs. These are things Indians could have done themselves."

"...but even after Dalhousie had put his hand to the work, and the Company had responded to his efforts, it was the more general belief that railway communication in India would be rather a concern of Government, useful in the extreme for military purposes, than a popular institution supplying a national want. It was thought that Indolence, Avarice, and Superstition would keep the natives of the country from flocking to the Railway station. But with a keener appreciation of the inherent power of so demonstrable a benefit to make its own way, even against these moral obstructions, Dalhousie had full faith in the result. He was right. The people now learnt to estimate at its full worth the great truth that Time is Money; and having so learned, they were not to be deterred from profiting by it by any tenderness of respect for the feelings of their spiritual guides. That the fire-carriage on the iron road was a heavy blow to the Brahmanical Priesthood is not to be doubted."

"The most powerful teacher was the Indian railway, which despite some gloomy prophecies, had attained immediate popularity and necessarily tended to break down the barriers of ages, to stimulate movement, and exchange of thought. In railway carriages Brahmans and Sudras, Muslims and Sikhs, peasants and townspeople sat side by side. As early even as 1867-8 the total number of railway passengers was 13,746,000, of whom 95% travelled third class. Reflection, observation, interest in the outside world were stimulated; journeys from villages to towns; emigration from India itself became more common; life and prosperity grew more secure; new impulses were given to commerce, to industry and to agriculture. It should not be forgotten that to English capital India owes the sinews of her railway development."

"Though the initial proposal for building railways in India was mooted in 1844 by East Indian Railway and subsequently by GIPR the actual nod from rulers in Britain came many years later. By 1840s the East India Company was fast losing its grip over control of India and many more agents had already started operating in India with governmental support. The dominant group was determined to hold on to remaining power of appointments in India as long as they could. The directors of East India company were more than properly cautious and British government consulted any matter relating to India with the group. The proposals were pushed aside in the beginning but by the time they realised and were eager to do business with the railway companies, the 1847-49 depression had hit England and it was very difficult to raise funds. It was at this juncture that the promoters insisted that the government must put the new railway companies in a position to guarantee the railway stockholders an annual return. The promoters were able to mobilise London merchants aspiring exports and imports to and from large Indian market and finally in 1849, East India Company signed contract and gave the railway companies better term than they had originally asked in 1844. The contract provided in essence that , private companies would raise the funds for the railways and manage their operations, while the Government of India would exercise high-level supervision of railway policy and guarantee the private companies against risk of loss"

"In the second half of the nineteenth century, railway fever had infected Russia, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. In India, the first lines connecting Bombay, Calcutta and Madras opened in the early 1850s. Ten years later, the sub-continent had a railway network of 2,500 miles, nearly 4,800 in the 1870s, and 16,000 miles in 1890. For Marx, the development of Indian railways was a powerful illustration of his vision of traditional and archaic social forms shattered by the advent of modern, conquering industries. ‘Indian society’, he wrote in 1853 in the New York Daily Tribune, ‘has no history at all, at least no known history.’ Its providential destiny was to be ruled and, from this point of view, the British Empire, as violent and brutal as it was, would undoubtedly have more fruitful consequences than its competitors, the Russian and the Ottoman empires. In India the British colonizers had two missions, ‘one destructive, the other regenerating: the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia.’ Steam had severed the sub-continent from ‘the prime law of its stagnation’ by connecting it with the advanced world. Very soon, he predicted, this joining with the West through ‘a combination of railways and steam-vessels’ would demolish the bases of Oriental despotism. Railroads were destroying the archaic social system of the country, which was grounded on the ‘self-sufficient inertia of the villages’. The article’s conclusion swept away any doubts: ‘The railway-system will therefore become, in India, truly the forerunner of modern industry."

"I feel assured, that in future ages the works of our English engineers on these ghats will take the place of their demigods, the Great Cave Temples of Western India, which have so long, to the simple inhabitants of these lands, been the type of superhuman strength, and of more than mortal constructive skill. Let us trust, Sir, that the blessing of God which has carried the work thus far may rest on the work, that it may be such a permanent monument to our rule as a thoughtful patriotic Englishman may wish to see raised by his nation, and as all who love India, whatever their race or creed, may rejoice to see completed, not merely uniting distant provinces in one bond of material prosperity, but knitting together distant peoples and races under our orderly and beneficent rule, and thereby advancing the cause of civilisation by means which may be blessed alike to India and to England.”"