The video interview begins:
“..No, Pakistan is mad, we know that already…. What is there to cry about, we have to teach it a lesson, the lesson to teach is that earlier we had divided them into two, this time we would divide them into four. [We] have to get ready for that. I had said, fix China [first], and it has been to some extent, it has already started talking, it is saying to Pakistan to resolve with India, don’t fight. So as soon as our preparations were complete, our Army would move in a country [Pakistan] that is run by an exploitative [system], meaning Balochi, Sindhi and Pakhtuni are kept as slaves, in bondage, who need to be freed, after their freedom the story of Pakistan would be finished. There is no benefit from crying.….. I think we would be ready by March-April 2018, and then we should break Pakistan into four.”
The above interview, which has gone viral on the social media, is of a sitting member of the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) of Indian Parliament, Mr. Subramanian Swamy, who belongs to ruling BJP. A very accomplished politician-academic, and economist/mathematician with a doctorate from Harvard University, he has held senior academic positions in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). He shaped right wing politics, starting his career with Jana Sangh and later was among the founders of Janata Party, where he was its President until it merged with the ruling BJP in 2013. He has been elected three times to Lok Sabha (Lower House) and an equal number to the Rajya Sabha, on the tickets of Jana Sangh and Janata Party. Presently, he occupies a nominated seat. He briefly served as Commerce and Industry Minister under the premiership of Chandra Shakhar in 1990-91.
Paradoxically, he carries (or has carried) a number of liberal stripes. While at Harvard, he met his wife Roxna, a Parsi, doing a PhD in Mathematics. They have two daughters from the marriage and the younger one, who is a diplomatic editor at Hindu, has married to Nadeem Haider, son of Salman Haider, a former foreign secretary/minister of India. He also enjoyed proximity with General (R) Ziaul Haq and often claimed himself to be an emissary of Indian Prime Minister Rajive Gandhi.
A maverick in Indian politics, Swamy is filled with unfulfilled ambitions. So, he makes up the void by doing things out of the ordinary. After failing to rise to a decent political office (he, in fact, considered himself eminently qualified to be the Prime Minister) he took to litigation against the most notable political figures, including Jayalalitha, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, and against the infamous Union Minister A. Raja on 2-G spectrum auction and numerous other cases. In all these cases, he was a ruthless pursuer of the respondents.
Dr. Swamy then moved to espouse extreme positions. After Mumbai 2011 bombings (allegedly by Indian Muslim extremists, where 26 people were killed) he wrote an editorial where he made the following remarks and outlined the goals of the Islamic terrorists and the strategies for dealing in Daily News and Analysis (DNA) dated 16 July 2011:
“It is also a ridiculous idea that terrorists cannot be deterred because they are irrational and willing to die. Terrorist masterminds have political goals and a method in their madness. An effective strategy to deter terrorism is to defeat those political goals and to rubbish them by counter-terrorist action.Thus, I advocate the following strategy to negate the political goals of Islamic terrorism in India. [Emphasis added]
Goal 1: Overawe India on Kashmir. Strategy: Remove Article 370 and resettle ex-servicemen in the valley. Create Panun Kashmir [by relocating Hindus who left the valley] for the Hindu Pandit community. Look for or create an opportunity to take over PoK. If Pakistan continues to back terrorists, assist the Baluchis and Sindhis to get their independence.
Goal 2: Blast temples, kill Hindu devotees. Strategy: Remove the masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites.
Goal 3: Turn India into Darul Islam. Strategy: Implement the uniform civil code, make learning of Sanskrit and singing of Vande Mataram mandatory, and declare India a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus. Rename India Hindustan as a nation of Hindus and those whose ancestors were Hindus.
Goal 4: Change India’s demography by illegal immigration, conversion, and refusal to adopt family planning. Strategy: Enact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion. Re-conversion will not be banned. Declare that caste is not based on birth but on code or discipline. Welcome non-Hindus to re-convert to the caste of their choice provided they adhere to the code of discipline. Annex land from Bangladesh in proportion to the illegal migrants from that country staying in India. At present, the northern third from Sylhet to Khulna can be annexed to re-settle illegal migrants.
Goal 5: Denigrate Hinduism through vulgar writings and preaching in mosques, madrassas, and churches to create loss of self-respect amongst Hindus and make them fit for capitulation. Strategy: Propagate the development of a Hindu mindset.”
No matter how reproving and reprehensible the strategies proposed by Dr. Swamy may be, we are thankful to him for laying bare the soul of a true Brahmin and RSS worker toward Muslims and Pakistan, both here and in his video interview cited above.
It is incredible that Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah is routinely labeled as a communalist. Dr. Swamy’s outburst is an unadulterated testimony to the foresight of Mr. Jinnah when he emphatically refused the idea of a united India and demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims of India.
When a man, so well accomplished, educated from best American universities and having taught at IIT, may nurse such base emotions about his fellow citizens, how will his co-religionists behave? It is not surprising, therefore, that violence against Muslims in India is on the rise.
While it is acknowledged that Dr. Swamy was widely condemned, the fact that he was nominated to Rajya Sabha in 2016 shows he continues to inhabit the center stage in politics. This is the real worry. A politics that was on the fringe at the time of Independence has startlingly moved to the mainstream and has occupied the center stage. This is entirely in conflict with the ideals of independence movement as well as Indian Constitution. One has to give the way to the other.
Finally, we would like to remind Dr. Swamy that Pakistan is a nuclear power and its armed forces are fully prepared to face any challenges that may be posed to its territorial integrity and sovereignty