Swamy, who once warned against ‘RSS fascists’, must rethink strategy

Subramanian Swamy wasn’t always like this; an extreme right-wing, hyper-national, hardline Hindutva proponent and a loose cannon. There was a time when none of these adjectives fitted him and many considered Swamy as a visionary who often spoke about a ‘mother India’ free from the evil of fascist forces. But, that was before Swamy took a dramatic turn in his ideological journey and put on the garb of a full-time saffron idol.

Today, Swamy is the most popular political icon of Hinduvta hardliners, even above some of his high-ranked well-wishers in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and in Sangh Parivar. Swamy is Guruji to thousands of his followers. His Twitter account @Swamy39 has a following of 2.8 million. A Twitter group of his followers, which call itself @swamy_sena , states the making of ‘virat Hindustan’ as its aim and has declared ‘yuddha’ (war) against Naxalites/Islamists/Anglicised. Swamy is their ‘Senapati’ (commander).

Swamy’s followers consider him as the saviour of the Hindutva cause. And he lives up to their expectations, whether pushing for the cause of Ayodhya Ram temple or drawing a ‘lakshman rekha’ to free Indian literature from left ideology. Recently, Swamy attacked two top officials in the government institutions (RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan and chief economic advisor, Arvind Subramanian) for their alleged anti-India activities, digging out their past and measuring their ‘patriotism’ levels using the ‘Swamy meter’. Just the other day, Swamy exhorted the BJP to direct its ministers wear ‘traditional and modernised Indian clothes while abroad.

But, a look at his decades-long political career would tell an observer that Swamy never had lasting loyalty to any ideology, including his links to the Sangh Parivar. In his political career, Swamy has taken major U-turns guided by his political objectives. He made his own rules and lived by them. There was a time when Swamy was the foremost critic of the same RSS and VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad), who now hails him as the ‘poster boy’ of their cause. A February, 2000, piece written by Swamy for the Frontline magazine , titled as ‘The RSS game plan’, gives us interesting insights to his radically different views on Sangh Parivar and BJP at that point.

Swamy Vs RSS

Swamy then compared the threat of “creeping fascism of the RSS” to British imperialism (1750-1947) and, later, to the emergency period (1975-77) the country witnessed during the Indira Gandhi regime. “Today the creeping fascism of the RSS is coming upon us not as gradually as imperialism did, nor as suddenly as did the Emergency. Its spread is being calibrated adroitly by seven faceless men of the RSS, the RSS ‘high command’. We barely feel it,” Swamy wrote then.

That was the time when the Vajpayee government had just returned to power for the third time, after Swamy brought down the 13-months old second Vajpayee government in mid-1999 , grouping “three great ladies” Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati, whom he described as ‘Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga’.

One who reads Swamy’s Frontline article in early 2000, wouldn’t have ever imagined that years later, the ‘friend’ would emerge as a Hinduvta-sympathiser and fight bitter battles with Gandhi and Jayalalithaa. Swamy’s concern on the ‘creeping fascism of RSS’ in the country was such that he “hoped” RSS’ plan to saffronise India wouldn’t work since the ‘vibrations of mother India’ will cause RSS’ undoing. “The RSS is our counter-culture,” Swamy then said. “The vibrations of Mother India will, I hope, be its undoing.”

In the article, Swamy warned of RSS’ three-pronged strategy to implement its Hindutva agenda in the country.

First, “discredit the RSS’ opponents but protect its converts”. Swamy cited the Bofors case as a classic example of RSS strategy of protecting the ‘converts’. “In that FIR (Bofors), Rajiv Gandhi’s name figures in the list of accused. But those cabinet ministers who vetted and signed the deal, or had even held secret negotiations on the “financial parameters” with the Bofors company as representatives of Rajiv Gandhi are prosecution witnesses. Naturally we can guess what they will say in the witness box,” Swamy said.

Swamy then cites the case of politician Arun Nehru, “whose hand has been in every cookie jar of every deal of that period”. “He is our swadeshi Quattrocchi, but then he has now bathed in the Ganga jal of the BJP. He too is a witness, not an accused. The motto is: “Join us and be free. Resist us and see you in court,” Swamy wrote.

Secondly, the RSS ‘game plan’, Swamy said, was designed to shake public confidence in every institution that comes in its way. The then HRD minister, Swamy said, elevated an RSS activist in the National Concil of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), who defended his credentials by saying he once shot dead a Muslim girl to protect her honour while she was being gang-raped by Hindus during partition. “That, of course, is Hindutva justice: that is, the minorities can best look forward to liberation through mercy killing,” Swamy said.

Not just that, the RSS also targeted Christian minorities, who were easy targets, since there wasn’t anyone to defend them, Swamy said. “As the period of the Emergency clearly demonstrated, the RSS is astute enough to know when to hunt with the hounds and when to run with the hares.” RSS, thus, is smarter than the German fascists in this respect, Swamy noted. Today, one wonders whether Swamy is experimenting this old RSS game plan by targeting institutions like the RBI and finance ministry to shake public confidence to achieve his yet-to-be-known objectives.

Thirdly, Swamy quoted a draft circulated at the 1998 October conference of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to prove that RSS had plans to topple the existing bicameral parliament with a new three-tie structure, where the apex body will headed by Sadhus and Sanyasis of VHP, which will pass all legislations and money bills before being sent to Lok Sabha and even nominate Supreme Court judges and impeach them. “India would be, it seems, converted into a state which is a cross between the Taliban and the Vatican,” Swamy said.

How did Swamy, the RSS-hater, visionary and a secularist, dramatically change himself to the blue-eyed boy of Hindutva hardliners that he is today? Only Swamy knows the real answer. Swamy’s new avatar is difficult to comprehend and considering his past, one can’t be sure whether the 76-year-old will have yet another change of mind that will pit him against the RSS and BJP.

Barely a few months after Swamy took over as a BJP MP, the political tide in Delhi has clearly turned against him from the moment he targeted Arun Jaitley and attacked his trusted aides in the government. The RSS too is unlikely to back Swamy in his fight against Jaitley. But the bigger problem Swamy will have to face will come if his enemies, within BJP, employ the Swamy strategy — attacking the opponent by digging out his past to implicate him — on Swamy himself.

In other words, Swamy’s enemies could very well tweet out a Swamy-style question one morning: “Who acted against BJP and RSS in the 1990s? Who warned against the RSS fascism in the Frontline article? Swamy! Sack him!!!”, just to give him a taste of his own medicine. May be, Swamy should rethink his battle strategy.