Ram Swarup Agarwal was born in 1920 to a banker father in Sonipat, now a part of the state of Haryana. He graduated in Economics at Delhi University in 1941. He participated in the Indian independence movement, and helped freedom fighters like Aruna Asaf Ali. He started the Changer's Club in 1944, members of which included Lakshmi Chand Jain, Raj Krishna, Girilal Jain and historian Sita Ram Goel. In 1948-49, he worked for Mahatma Gandhi's disciple Mira Behn. Swarup worked for the DRS,, where he wrote a book on the Communist party that was published under an assumed name. In 1949, he founded the Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia. The Society published books, reviewed in the West, that criticised both the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet-mouthpiece Izvestia as well as Pravda, another mouthpiece for that same foreign power's Communist Party. The Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia ceased operations in 1955. His early book Gandhism and Communism from around this time had some influence among American policymakers and members of Congress. Swarup also wrote for mainstream Indian weeklies and dailies, like the Telegraph, The Times of India, Indian Express, Observer of Business and Politics, Hindustan Times and Hinduism Today. In 1982, Swarup founded the non-profit publishing houseVoice of India, which has published works by Harsh Narain, A. K. Chatterjee, K.S. Lal, Koenraad Elst, Rajendra Singh, Sant R.S. Nirala and Shrikant Talageri, among others. American author and fellow Hindutva supporter David Frawley writes :
Views
Swarup's early works took a critical stance on communism and were reviewed and praised in the West and in India by people like Bertrand Russell, Arthur Koestler, Sri Aurobindo, Ashoka Mehta, Sardar Patel, Suzanne Labin and Philip Spratt. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell praised his book Russian Imperialism: How to Stop It as "excellent". Some of his early influences were Aldous Huxley and George Bernard Shaw. Ram Swarup's book The Word As Revelation: Names of Gods on polytheism was published in 1980 and was reviewed by Dr. Sisir Kumar Maitra in the Times of India. His books were also reviewed favourably by M. P. Pandit and C. Rajagopalachari. In his later life, Swarup used to meditate for many hours. Swarup was influenced by Sri Aurobindo, whom he held to be the greatest exponent of the Vedic vision in our times. Sita Ram Goel described Swarup as a person who "had no use for any conventional morality or code of manners and could see clearly how they were mostly used to put the other fellow in the wrong." Ram Swarup was "most responsible for reviving and re-popularizing" the Hindu critique of Christian missionary practices in the 1980s, according to Chad Bauman. He insisted that monotheistic religions like Christianity "nurtured among their adherents a lack of respect for other religions". In the 1980s, he and Goel were involved in a "vigorous debate" with the Christian Ashram movement represented by Bede Griffiths. Swarup has been named one of the most important thought leaders of the Hindu revivalist movement, and the most important Hindu philosopher of independent India's first half-century. Frawley wrote that he "is probably the most important and cogent writer on Hinduism in the last half of the twentieth century." The Prime Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, spoke of him as "a representative of India's rishi tradition in the modern age." Arun Shourie called him one of the deepest thinkers he has come across, whose work is foundational.
European paganism
Swarup also had an interest in European Neopaganism, and corresponded with Prudence Jones and the Pagan author Guðrún Kristín Magnúsdóttir. Under the influence of Ram Swarup, other Hindu revivalists also took an interest in European paganism. Christopher Gérard said: "Ram Swarup was the perfect link between Hindu Renaissance and renascent Paganism in the West and elsewhere." Swarup has also advocated a "Pagan renaissance" in Europe, saying He argued that the European Pagans "should compile a directory of Pagan temples destroyed, Pagan groves and sacred spots desecrated. European Pagans should also revive some of these sites as their places of pilgrimage."
