The Hindu far right’s defenders of freedom: Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup’s anti-communism in Cold War India, 1952–1955

This article argues that the anti-communist literature of Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup, published through their short-lived organisation, the Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia (SDFA), contributed to the discourse of far-right politics in India while being firmly situated within the broader global context of propaganda production during the Cold War. Arguing for seeing the Soviet Union and Communist China as imperialist forces that ‘enslaved’ both territories and minds, Goel and Swarup’s texts reproduced a characteristically American perspective of the Red Scare in their bid to warn Indian readers of an impending civil war. Even though they are often celebrated in far-right circles as lone intellectual warriors, analysing their anti-communist texts reveals that the knowledge production of the Hindu far-right has more complex trajectories than may appear at first glance. The SDFA operated in the context of the Cultural Cold War: its texts barely utilised Hindu Nationalist ideas, speaking mainly about individual liberty and freedom in the register of Cold War literary activism. This article, therefore, not only adds to the growing literature on the Cultural Cold War, especially in Afro-Asian countries, but also highlights the Hindu Far Right’s ability to speak in multiple tongues to different audiences.