Subramanian Swami’s latest diatribe against the Narendra Modi government’s trusted lieutenants breaks to smithereens the myth that the Sangh Parivar is a monolith. Look at the manner in which Swamy targeted Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, and the government’s chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian both considered to be close to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
On wednesday, Jaitley snubbed Swamy and refused to join his attack on the CEA because of the discipline of the office he holds, this does provoke a genuine question – why is Swamy so against Arun Jaitley, and not others? The answer to this question lies in the factional feuds within the BJP.
Swamy was almost chosen for the Delhi seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, till he met his nemesis in Jaitley.
Right from the beginning, Jaitley was averse to Swamy’s entry into the BJP. Swamy, however, found sympathisers in Nitin Gadkari and a section of RSS leaders, who genuinely believed in the genius of Swamy’s intellect.
This does come through in casual conversations with Swamy, who does not bat an eye lid to claim that he would ultimately lead the BJP and India to glory.
But back to 2015-16. Swamy’s entry to the BJP was facilitated not only by Gadkari but also endorsed by the party’s patriarch LK Advani. Perhaps all this was done to balance the power equation within the party.
Since Swamy belongs to the Sangh’s seminary, he knows it too well that a section of the RSS was pathologically averse to foreign-educated economists, particularly when they are Indian. Incidentally, Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian fall into this category.
Swamy’s attacks on Rajan and Subramanian, and his endorsement of the weird utterances of maverick Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath on Mother Teresa, seem to be perfectly in sync with the thinking of a powerful section of the RSS leadership.
That Swamy is attacking Jaitley through Arvind Subramanian and Jung is unlikely to give a good impression about the functioning within the BJP and the Sangh Parivar.
Given Modi’s strong-headed approach about his own functioning, he is unlikely to be influenced by attacks from Swamy and his backers in the RSS.
Those who back him in the RSS may support him up to a stage for tactical reasons, but they will back down once they find Modi as an adversary.