In the next election whichever political party gets elected even then the worst condition of Bharat and Hindus will not change. To bring the change we have to continue our efforts for the establishment of Hindu Rashtra. - Dr. Athavle...When Governments consistently fail, it is Hindus who must get ready !...H.H.Dr. Jayant Athavale(Sanatan Sanstha)....There is no counter terror strategy except the one I have given in the DNA article...Dr. Swamy....Hindu vote must consolidate with those others who accept Hindu ancestry for a virat Hindustani sarkar...Dr.Swamy

Dr. Subramanian Swamy in support of Sant Shri Asaram Bapu

Don't negotiate with terrorists: Swamy


PUNE : Government authorities can fight terrorism and naxalism if they stop negotiating with them, Janata Party presidentSubramanian Swamy said here on Sunday.

He was speaking on 'Terrorism: Reasons and Solutions' at an event organised by the Savarkar Smruti Pratishthan and Pune Nagar Hindu Sabha to mark the 130th birth anniversary of Swatantryaveer Savarkar.
Swamy also released a book on Savarkar's school of thought titled 'Savarkardveshala Pratiuttar'.

Swamy said that the style and functioning of terrorists are changing day by day. Even the threat of naxalism is increasing in the country. People are getting kidnapped by terrorists and naxalites. The stand taken by authorities is important in such scenarios.

"The government should take a stand of not negotiating with terrorists and not fulfilling their demands. If the government keeps meeting their demands, the terrorists will gain power and their demands will increase," Swamy said.

Source : TOI

Bengali Singh appointed as Janata Party general secretary

PTI | 03:05 PM,May 26,2012
New Delhi, May 26 (PTI) The Central Parliamentary Board of Janata Party has appointed former Lok Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh Bengali Singh as a general secretary of the party. Singh, who is a prominent leader of the scheduled caste community, will be in charge of the party's SC and ST cell, party president Subramanian Swamy said in a statement. PTI MPB

Source : IBN Live

Subramanian Swamy to File Additional Complaint against Chidambaram

NEW DELHI, India


Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy on Saturday told a Delhi court hearing the 2G spectrum case that he would file a private complaint in the case relating to Aircel-Maxis deal.
 
He told Special CBI Judge O.P. Saini that the CBI is investigating the Aircel-Maxis deal but he wants to file an additional complaint in the case over which he had earlier leveled allegations against Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
 
The CBI is probing the alleged role of former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran in the Aircel-Maxis deal. The court posted hearing in the case for August 25.
 
Swamy had earlier told the Supreme Court, which is hearing the case, that the CBI probe into the Aircel-Maxis deal was focused only on Maran’s role in arm-twisting Aircel’s owner to sell his stake to the Malaysian firm Maxis.
 
"My matter is partially different from the CBI’s case. In the Aircel-Maxis matter, there is a separate FIR by the CBI. The Supreme Court has said that scope of the probe should be widened...I wish to file an additional complaint case before this court,” Swamy told the court.
 
When the judge said anyone can file a private complaint, Swamy said, “There is something related to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board.” As finance minister between 2004 and 2008,  Chidambaram served as the FIPB chairman.
Swamy, who was to argue on his plea leveling some fresh allegations against former Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja in the 2G case, sought adjournment in the matter saying an order on his plea is pending in the apex court.
 
Chidambaram and the union government have denied all the allegations made by Swamy.

Source : indiawest

Should have included Sonia Gandhi in the list, Subramaniam Swamy to Team Anna


Pune, May 27 (ANI): Team Anna should have included Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in their list of tainted ministers, 2-G scam petitioner Subramanian Swamy said on Sunday.

Swamy claimed that since Sonia Gandhi's permission was taken on every important government decision, Hazare aides should have included her name in the list.

"Why did they leave out Sonia Gandhi? Nothing happens without Sonia Gandhi's permission. She has got a cabinet rank as chairman of the National Advisory Council (NAC). Her opinion is taken on every issue," Swamy told reporters here.

Further, he said Team Anna should have approached the police and filed a First Information Report (FIR) against the listed ministers.

"Documents are not new. It had been better if Anna Hazare and his aides would have approached a police station and registered a FIR and demanded investigation," Swamy added.

Hazare aides have sought probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT), consisting of former judges, within six months against 15 cabinet ministers including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh till July 24.  

Source : Yahoo News

Swamy asks Jaya to support Kalam for Prez post


Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday asked Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa to support APJ Abdul Kalam for the post of President instead of NCP leader PA Sangma whom she had already chosen.

In a statement, Swamy said she should support Kalam for the post of president.

"She should phone him up and persuade him to become her candidate. Sangma has lost all moral authority to be a non Congress candidate after apologising to (Congress chief) Sonia Gandhi (for raking up her foreign origin issue)," he said.

In a coordinated move, Jayalalithaa and her Odisha counterpart Navin Patnaik had on May 17 announced their joint support to Sangma.

Jayalalithaa spoke to BJP leader LK Advani, Samajwadi chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and other non-Congress leaders, including Left parties, in support of Sangma.

The NCP leader is also doing rounds of several parties, seeking support for his Presidential bid.

Source : HT

Kashmir interlocutor report will mean disaster : Dr. Subramanian Swamy


This Interlocutor Report is for mischief and thus should be thrown into the waste paper basket

Dr. Subramanian Swamy
Dr. Subramanian Swamy
New Delhi : Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy on Thursday said the interlocutors report on Jammu and Kashmir has several prescriptions that mean a disaster for national unity.

"The so-called Jammu & Kashmir Interlocutors Report publicised today in the visual media has several prescriptions that mean a disaster for the national unity of India. There is nothing to discuss for the government in this Report since it prescribes weakening and deleting any provision in the Indian Constitution that strengthens national unity and proposing that would set in balkanisation of India.

There is no such thing as a "special status" for Jammu and Kashmir. In fact Jammu and Kashmir has suffered because Jawaharlal Nehru without Cabinet approval had rushed to the UN to make the state a disputed territory when in fact the Instrument of Accession signed by the Maharaja made its merger irrevocable. Questioning of this Instrument now, would mean the entire Indian Independence Act 1947 passed by the House of Commons UK creating Pakistan would be called into question, and de-legitimize Pakistan's existence. This would throw the entire undivided Indian sub-continent into a turmoil.

Hence this Interlocutor Report is for mischief and thus should be thrown into the waste paper basket, "  Dr Swamy said in a statement.

Source : Janata Party

24 May : Let us remember Maharana Pratap on his Birth Anniversary as per Hindu Almanac

Subramanian Swamy welcomes SC decision on Rajiv Gandhi killers


NEW DELHI: Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy welcomed the Supreme Court decision to adjudicate itself the pleas of Rajiv Gandhi killers against their death penalty as there was a delay in clearing their mercy petitions by the President.
In a statement, he said he has decided to seek impleadment in the case in Supreme Court to oppose any further leniency to the convicts who came to India to carry out the assassination.
"They must be given death penalty at the earliest," he said.
Source : ET

Swamy criticizes Jaya for spending Rs 25 crore to celebrate her one year in office


Chennai, May 16 (TruthDive): Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday criticized Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for spending Rs 25 crore to celebrate her one year in office which went on an overdrive with front page advertisements in almost all national dailies.
Today’s edition carried a full-page advertisement highlighting the one year achievements of the AIADMK Supremo J Jayalalithaa.
The Janata party president while condemning the act of the AIADMK said that the money could have been spent for some other good cause. ‘ When the state was facing several problems, what was the necessity to spend such a huge amount for such purpose? Where did the money come from?, Swamy questioned.
When Swamy was asked by the reporters about the achievements of the AIADMK government, he said that he did not see any difference between the present government and the previous government.
The Janata Party president said that Tamil Nadu is going across acute power shortage, and as a result the growth of the agriculture has also come down. Farmers are facing severe problems to meet their end. He also pointed that, as the state government earlier backed the agitators against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, the commissioning of the plant also got delayed for a year.
On the other hand, the AIADMK party men while enjoying her one year in office of their supremo said that, most of the poor families, who are below average, seem to be happy. The government is giving 20 kg of free rice to the poor and 35 kg to the poorest.
Apart from four grams of golden mangalsutra, Rs 25,000 is also given at the time of weddings. The pension has been raised for the elders, poor, widows, and differently abled women to Rs 1,000 after Amma came to power; she enjoyed wide support in the state, at the same time the number of enemies is also on the  rise.
Source : truthdive

JP to reactivate party units to fight general election


New Delhi : Janata Party on Saturday decided to reactivate its party units across the country to fight Parliament elections, which it felt would be held later this year.



At a meeting of party general secretaries and 15 state presidents chaired by party chief Subramanian Swamy, it was also decided that the party should negotiate with NDA parties for seats.

"The party has finalised a list of 62 Lok Sabha constituencies where the party has units for which it will negotiate seat-adjustments with other constituents of the NDA," Swamy said in a statement.

He said it was decided to reactivate party units for the purpose of fighting the Parliament elections which could come later this year.

The meeting also decided to hold plenary session of the party in New Delhi in December to elect office bearers.

Source : Zee News

Dr. Swamy effect : Maxis CEO stares at arrest, Interpol Red Corner Notice


May 21, 2012


New Delhi : In a new twist to the controversial Aircel-Maxis deal, the Indonesian Police has issued arrest warrant against Ralph Marshall, the CEO of Maxis Group and Astro All Asia Network. Ralph Marshall’s name  figured as accused in the CBI’s FIR along with former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran.
Indonesian newspapers, quoting top National Police official Brig M Taufik, recently reported  that Marshall’s name figures in the Wanted List for cheating, forgery, fraud and money laundering.
Marshall, a Sri Lankan of Tamil origin,  holds Canadian citizenship and  is residing in Malaysia. He  is considered  No 2 in the vast business empire floated by the  Malaysian tycoon T Ananda Krishnan, popularly known as TAK. Both figured as No 3 and No  4 in the CBI’s FIR along with  Maran brothers in the Aircel-Maxis deal.
According to CBI, for facilitating the acquisition of Aircel by Maxis, Maran brothers received quid-pro-quo through Maxis subsidiary Astro. This company later invested around `600 crore in Maran brothers controlled Sun Networks, CBI’s FIR says.
“Headquarters of the Indonesian National Police (Police Headquarters) confirmed that the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Astro Malaysia, Ralph Marshall, entered the Wanted Persons List (DPO ) related to cases of alleged criminal forgery. Determination of DPO was issued since 18 April 2012 through a letter numbered DPO/05/IV/2012/DIT General Crime (Pidum) signed Ari Dono Sukmanto Brig,” reported Indonesian newspapers Republica and Antara News, quoting Chief of Bureau of Public Information Headquarters, Brig M Taufik.
In Indonesia, Wanted Persons List is known as DPO (Daftar Pencarian Orang) and it is issued on fugitives after police fails to arrest them.
The Indonesian Police officials also said hey have already sent arrest warrant against Marshall through diplomatic channels to Malaysia. The top cops also added they would soon approach Interpol to issue Red Corner Notice against “fugitive Marshall” to force the member countries to arrest him.
The same was confirmed in Malaysian newspapers like The Edge, Business Times and The Malaysian Insider. “Indonesian Police are looking to arrest Ralph Marshall, the right hand man of Malaysian multi-billionaire T Ananda Krishnan, over fraud and money laundering charges,” reported The Malaysian Insider, adding a report on the forthcoming  revamp of Maxis Group following  criminal charges faced by Marshall.
Astro All Asia Networks is the subsidiary of Maxis and have shareholding in several media organisations across the continent including  India. Astro has entered into an alliance with Indonesian media company Lippo Group and also has sizeable shares in it.
The problem started when Astro sold its shares to Saudi Global telecom, without consulting the Indonesian partner Lippo. The Indonesian police have charged Marshall with  money laundering, fraud and  forgery cases and sued him for a compensation to the tune of $300 mn.
“Their (Indonesian government) calculation is that if they can exploit the criminal law to cause confusion and fear, they can avoid paying the damages,” Astro’s lawyer Hafzan Taher said in the statement, reported by the Malaysian newspaper Edge.
CBI, which registered FIR, eight months ago has not been able to question foreign nationals Ananda Krishnan and Marshall. Last week, a CBI team visited  Malaysia and sources say Attorney General of Malaysia promised “all help” in relation to Aircel-Maxis deal.
However, the probe on Maxis violating the Indian foreign investment rules has reached no where. According to norms, maximum permissible level of foreign investment in telecom sector is 74 per cent. Contrary to the FIPB records, Maxis’ declaration to Malaysian stock exchange reveals that they have acquired almost 100 percent shares in Aircel in  violation to  Indian laws.
Source : Daily Pioneer

Ban IPL tournament, demands Dr. Swamy

Statement of Dr. Subramanian Swamy, President of the Janata Party.

I demand that the Government ban the IPL tournament forthwith since the game’s collateral consequences are a degeneration of a civilized game of Cricket into a vulgar display of black money, money laundering, immorality, fraud, and mafia involvement, all converging into a serious national security threat to the country.

The ban could be lifted later on after barring from the management or ownership of teams all persons actively involved in the cinema world or who hold an elective office in politics. The recent incident of vulgar, unruly, rowdy behaviour of some of the players, owners, and politicians make it necessary to impose this ban for a brief period in order to lift the ban on the game.

( SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY )



Source : Janata Party

New EVMs to give printout of votes cast



ECI takes special steps to tackle paid news menace
An innovative and state-of-the-art Electronic Voting machine (EVM) is going to be introduced into the stable of Election Commission of India (ECI) soon.
This EVM will show where your vote is cast (to which candidate) and also give a print out in three to four seconds like an ATM receipt.

Election Commissioner Harishankar Brahma who is in Hyderabad to review the by-poll preparations says he will be visiting the manufacturer Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) for a live demonstration on Saturday. “Hopefully we will put it up for demonstrations before 2014,” he said.

He said the validity and genuineness of the EVMs have been proved in all the elections and the ECI will never think of abandoning the EVMs.

Commenting on the by-polls, Brahma said the Election Process Information Collection cards and the voters slips issued by the EC will be the only authorised documents for empowering the voters in the ensuing by-elections on June 12.

The Election Commission on Friday issued notification for by-polls to one Lok Sabha and 18 Assembly seats. Nominations will be accepted till May 25 and May 28 for withdrawals. The results will be declared on June 15.

Brahma said nearly Rs 15 crore of unaccounted money and over one lakh litres of illegal liquor has been seized during checks as part of the poll code. “Election process in Andhra Pradesh is known for money and liquor play,” he said adding that all efforts would be made to curb these menace.

The ECI has also made special arrangements to tackle the paid news menace.
“We have found that all over country 30 per cent of the election expenses are in form of paid news. Andhra Pradesh was always on the top line of the problem due to its TV and newspaper explosion in the state, Brahma said.

Source : Deccan Herald

Kill me, don't question my integrity: Chidambaram


Kill me, don't question my integrity: Chidambaram

CNN-IBN | 14-May 13:03 PM

New Delhi: Home Minister P Chidambaram on Monday clarified yet again on the Aircel-Maxis deal, saying his family was not directly or indirectly related to the controversial issue. Chidambaram mounted a defence against allegations that his son Karthi benefited from the Aircel-Maxis deal. He said that the firm his son works for only provided consultancy. Chidamabram said he's open to a probe and denied any member of his family has any connection with Aircel or Maxis.
Chidambaram said the promoters of Osbridge do know the promoters of Advantage Consultancy. "Questions are being raised about transactions in 2005-2006 when Advantage raised a bill, for providing Aircel consultancy services," he said. ON his son's role, he said "My son had made a Rs 1.8 lakh investment in Osbridge and then had sold those shares to his friend and partner."
"My family has stated that they do not own any share in any telecom company any time, indirectly or directly. We have no connection with any telecom company. Advantage Strategic Consulting Pvt Ltd has categorically stated that it owns no equity in Aircel or Global Communications," the Home Minister said, while making a statement in Rajya Sabha.
"Don't question my integrity," Chidambaram made an emotional appeal defending himself in the Aircel-Maxis deal, saying he's open to a probe into the companies in question after BJP's Arun Jaitley questions his son's link. "It would be much simpler if somebody took a dagger and plunged it into my heart than questioning my integrity," he said.
"I have no problem if you wish to look into the accounts of Advantage Strategic Consulting and Aircel. Please go ahead. I will myself convey to the Finance Minister," Chidambaram told Jaitley.
The Opposition BJP on Monday targeted the Home Minister over the issue, alleging that the former finance minister had misused his office to help his son Karti acquire business interests in telecom operator Aircel. "Chidambaram is not answering what I have alleged. Why was Advantage Strategic Consulting PVT Ltd entered into financial transactions which was the investing company," Jaitley said.

Source : IBN Live

15 May : The inscrutable politics of Subramanian Swamy

15 May : 



TO SEE SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY in his natural habitat is emphatically not to see him thus: in the heart of a throng of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers, on a January morning, in the town of Dhar, in Madhya Pradesh. Mere minutes after Swamy, the president—and, frankly, the totality—of the Janata Party, hopped out of an SUV, he was


swallowed by the crowd. Somewhere within its crevices, he was inserted into a massive garland, and a vivid red tilak was smeared across his forehead like an angry wound. Then he reappeared atop a jalopy that had been converted, with the judicious aid of a silvered backboard, silvered side panels and a cloth-covered bench, into a motorised chariot. The crowd disciplined itself into a column and began to trickle through the streets of Dhar. A small boy sat sideways next to the driver of the chariot and gaped unceasingly at Swamy. Even in late January, Dhar had grown decidedly hot by 10 am, and Swamy looked uncomfortable and hassled. 

Late the previous night, standing near a baggage carousel at the Mumbai airport, Swamy had explained to me why we were headed to Dhar. A small delegation from the town had visited him in Delhi in early 2010 to ask if he would take up the case of the absent Vagdevi Saraswati, a striking 11th-century stone idol that had been transported, just over 100 years ago, from a Dhar temple to the British Museum in London. The idol used to occupy a temple within the Bhojashala, a school built by Bhoj, king of Malwa, around the year 1034 AD. “I got so busy with the 2G case, but these guys didn’t let me forget about it,” Swamy said. “And every Basant Panchami, they have this big rally in Dhar, so that’s where we’re going. I’m kind of a chief guest there.” 

The Basant Panchami rally every spring has, for a couple of decades now, thrummed with communal tension. On the grounds of the Bhojashala is a dargah, also several centuries old, one of its green-and-white walls pressing up against the sandstone perimeter of the ancient school. The local police and the Madhya Pradesh government have tried, with varying degrees of sincerity and opportunism, to regulate the entry of Hindu and Muslim pilgrims into this complex; at the moment, Hindus pray on Tuesdays and on Basant Panchami, while Muslims pray on Fridays. The RSS has demanded, through repeated agitations, that the Bhojashala remain permanently open to Hindus—and, implicitly, closed to Muslims. “There have been lathi charges, and people have been injured and even died. You’ll probably see more police than public there,” Sanjay Sisodia, a Dhar journalist who runs a slim and extraordinarily colourful local weekly, told me before the rally. In 2006, Friday and Basant Panchami fell on the same day; Dhar’s Muslims were supposed to pray until 1 pm, but the police could not hold back the swelling sea of Hindu worshippers, and the lathis had to be broken out. In 2013, Sisodia observed gloomily, Basant Panchami would again land on a Friday. 



Within this charged and emotional space, as is his wont, Swamy has managed to find for himself an angle that relies on his clinical knowledge of legal and bureaucratic procedure. At the Mumbai airport, Swamy had narrated to me the details of a case from his brief tenure as Union minister for commerce and law, in 1990-91. A Nataraja bronze had been scheduled for auction in London, bought off a farmer who found it in a disused temple; Indian authorities argued that, under Hindu law, a temple is always a temple, however disused. “If I build it, God is the owner. I am just the trustee,” Swamy told me. “The House of Lords surprisingly upheld our view.” He maintained also that the British Museum’s charter allowed it to return objects of religious significance “if you’re not bringing it back to put into your own museum”. I found no such reference in the British Museum Act of 1963, which governs the administration of the museum’s possessions; in fact, the Act stoutly emphasises its reluctance to return artefacts to the country of their origin. Nevertheless, Swamy had told me, with the bumptiousness he wears almost as a second skin, “I am going to Britain to bring the idol back.” 

At the parade in Dhar, Swamy’s chariot was preceded by another, bearing an enormous portrait of the Vagdevi, chugging through the tight streets. Antsy policemen lined either side of the road, and on the odd corner, idling Rapid Action Force vans exhaled sharp bursts of exhaust fumes, like sighs of impatience. When the procession entered the edges of Dhar’s Muslim quarter, I saw its residents peering down from balconies or sitting on the stoops of their shops, their faces carefully and stoically composed. There were, as seems almost mandatory with such events, trumpets and drums, their earsplitting notes of forced cheer barely able to mask the town’s sour sense of worry. Leading the procession, a clump of young men, their heads snugly hugged by saffron bandannas, raised one slogan repeatedly: “Bhojashala hamari hai”—The Bhojashala is ours. 

It seemed to be an act of cosmic wryness that Swamy had been pulled into the orbit of the legacy of Bhoj, who ruled Malwa for nearly half of the 11th century. Bhoj was known as a scholar of enviable talents; he wrote treatises—84 in all—on medicine, chemistry, civil engineering, Sanskrit grammar, shipbuilding and law, several of which have survived to the present day. He was, however, inept at building political alliances, and much of his life was spent campaigning against foes who had once been partners; he died, it is said, on a battlefield trapped between two enemies, harrying him from either side. 

The parallels of this life with Swamy’s are difficult to miss, as is the most notable difference: Swamy, with his doctorate in economics from Harvard and his deep knowledge of the law, has only ever occupied one ministerial post, for less than a year, in an active political career that stretches back nearly four decades. The Janata Party, once a grand alliance of India’s anti-Congress opposition, has withered into a mere vehicle for Swamy’s prickliness and ebullience. On paper, Swamy’s qualifications for politics and policymaking are striking, almost extravagant. In practice, they have been rendered inert by a process that says much about Swamy. “I’ve never known a politician to score as many self-goals as him,” the Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar told me. But Swamy’s story speaks also to the true nature of the ascent to Indian political power, which resembles not so much a long ladder as a greased pole. 

A remarkable concatenation of circumstances has now given Swamy a hotter national profile than he has enjoyed at any time since the mid-1970s, when he became famous as a sort of homegrown Simon Templar, nimbly avoiding arrest during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. He has reunited, with great fanfare and after nearly 30 years, with the RSS, which explains his billing as headliner in the rally at Dhar. His tireless enthusiasm for filing cases against corruption has, in a scam involving the misallocation of spectrum for 2G mobile services, deposed A Raja as telecommunications minister and may yet yank down P Chidambaram from the top of the home ministry. Swamy’s long tenure in the wilderness, allied permanently to no party and answering to no one but himself, has given him, despite his roots in the New Delhi establishment, the improbable status of an outsider. His Janata Party was inducted into the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in March, a senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member pointed out to me, not because it can deliver vast pools of votes—which it can’t—but because it delivers Swamy as an individual, bundled with his newfound and very valuable cachet as anti-corruption crusader. 

Swamy is not bashful about declaring himself to be the man of this cynical, vitiated moment, and he isn’t entirely incorrect; indeed, he may have even helped make this moment; equally, in other ways, the moment seems also to have been made especially for him. Over the years, Swamy’s declamations about the sinister workings of the Congress party and about the nexus between business and politics have sounded like fantastical conspiracies. But in this era of the Niira Radia tapes and the scandal-plagued Central government, his broadsides seem to be finding more purchase in the minds of a public that no longer knows how much it can trust its leaders, and that cannot figure out the dividing line, in its conception of corruption, between the possible and the outlandish. 

Swamy’s political career is rife with contradictions. Some of his admirers have been drawn to his championing of economic liberalisation, but they have also been dismayed by his stated allegiance to the Hindu right and his views on Muslims; most infamously, in a bizarre op-ed in DNA last summer, Swamy suggested that India’s Muslims not be permitted to vote unless they acknowledge their Hindu ancestry. He possesses a reputation as an intellectual—as an early and credentialled advocate of economic liberalisation, and even as the draughtsman of the blueprint for Manmohan Singh’s economic reforms in 1991. But this reputation has had to coexist with his fondness for airing theories that even his friends call kooky, and with the habits of a hectoring public persona. He compels himself, for instance, to always refer to the Congress party president using her Italian surname—“Sonia Màino”—and even in private conversations he will refer with the straightest of faces to Rahul Gandhi as “buddhu”, or “fool” (or, in another of Swamy’s snarky labels, as “Raúl Vinci”). (Swamy’s Twitter feed is a baroque and frenetic mash-up of all these traits. “Those mad people who hanged Galileo for telling what Hindus knew for several millennia,” he tweeted recently, “are born today as Congis [Congress] tweeples.”) He has repeatedly found allies in people whom he has previously attacked without relent—common enough in politics, but surprising for somebody often called inflexible and uncompromising. He is intelligent and incorruptible—descriptions almost reflexively assigned to him even by his most bitter critics—and yet, in a country that yearns constantly for intelligent and incorruptible politicians, Swamy has only ever been the man outside the window, thumping loudly on the glass and hollering to be let in. 



TWO

IN THE NARRATIVE OF HIS LIFE, as he likes to relate it, Subramanian Swamy was born to be a fighter; he views his career much as a boxer would, as a series of memorable bouts. His ancestors, he told me, were “a long line of fighting Brahmins”, one of whom led the pugnacious forces of Thirumalai Nayak, the ruler of Madurai in the mid-1600s. Swamy fought
his way to the top of his class in high school and at New Delhi’s Hindu College. He fought with his principal in school, and he fought later with PC Mahalanobis, his director at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Calcutta. At Harvard, he fought at least one important economic theory of the time which held that the statist model of development was effectively hauling China and India out of poverty. Then he returned to India and joined politics, the most bruising fight of them all. In Swamy’s eyes, he has always been alone in the ring, with no coaches or seconds or water-bottle-squeezers or brow-moppers in his corner; it has always only been his wits against the world. 

Soon after Swamy’s birth in 1939, his father Sitaraman, a mathematics professor, moved their family from Madras to New Delhi. Sitaraman Subramanian worked in the Indian Statistical Service, retiring as director of the Central Statistical Institute, in which capacity he was a statistical adviser to the Government of India; he was also an active member of the Congress, close to its foremost leaders: K Kamaraj, C Rajagopalachari and S Satyamurti. “All the ministers used to come home, because even though he was a civil servant, he was known as a Congress person,” Swamy said. “And they would talk economics all the time.” 

Swamy shares with his brother RR Subramanian, a nuclear strategist formerly with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, the tendency to talk about his parents as if they were ideologies first and human beings second. “My father was very left, and his economics would never have suited my brother,” Subramanian told me. “He was basically a Marxist. He never put the [Brahminical] sacred thread on his sons.” When I interjected, remarking that Swamy had told me a different story—of walking away in the middle of his thread ceremony, to the dismay of his parents and the bemusement of the priests—Subramanian grimaced: “He has given you a version, so let’s leave it at that. But my father didn’t believe in all of this.” 



Swamy’s mother Padmavati, on the other hand, was a devout Hindu; when I pressed him to explain why he had been “anti-communist from a very early age”, Swamy cited his mother’s deep faith and its incompatibility with the communist creed, as well as her profound influence on him. Subramanian, who professed to being far more in his father’s mould, said that their mother was so ritualistic and “irrational” about her beliefs that “my father used to make fun of her. She had no compunction in admitting her hatred for Muslims, and that had to do with having brought up her children near Turkman Gate in Delhi when the Partition riots were happening.” 

Some of the macabre consequences of Partition unfurled on the street right outside the family’s government-allotted house. “I remember dead bodies, trucks of bodies being taken away, Muslim mobs chasing Hindus, and then the Sikhs coming in from Pakistan and reversing it,” Swamy said. “The Madras troops were sent in, because they were neutral, but the regiment was shooting everybody because they couldn’t tell one from the other. I saw the looting of Connaught Place with my own eyes.” 

What Swamy did have in common with his father was an aptitude for mathematics. “One good piece of advice my father gave me: he said, ‘The way economics is taught in India, you won’t get very far. You do mathematics first,’” Swamy recalled. “So at Hindu College, I took mathematics, and that stood me in great stead. At Harvard, that was what distinguished me from everybody else, because … mathematics at that time was just infecting economics.” Swamy’s economic papers are concise, and they frequently bristled with data and equations; a typical paper—such as Consistency of Fisher’s Tests from the July 1965 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Econometrica, on the holes in one of the four most important neoclassical microeconomic theories—is so dense with mathematics that it is almost more symbols than words. “Mathematics is poetry. It’s language. You can use it to express whatever you want,” the sociologist MN Panini, an old friend, remembered Swamy once telling him. Then, Panini said, “He also thinks anybody who doesn’t know mathematics is not worth talking to. It’s a typical South Indian mentality.” 

Swamy’s talent for mathematics was responsible for placing him on the warpath against Mahalanobis, and thence for securing him an admission into Harvard’s doctoral programme in economics. Armed even then with his fealty to the free market, Swamy found it easy to be contemptuous of Mahalanobis, the chief designer of the statistical methodologies used by Jawaharlal Nehru to plan his economy. At the ISI in Calcutta, studying for a master’s degree in statistics, Swamy was convinced that Mahalanobis was targeting him for being his father’s son. “Mahalanobis and my father were dead opposed to each other … There was bitterness between them,” he said. Some of his Tamil professors would tell him that they were “under pressure” to grade him poorly. “Everybody was telling me: ‘Your career is over. You better go become an apprentice at the Bhilai Steel Plant.’ Those days, that was the great thing: Bhilai Steel Plant.” 

Instead, Swamy decided to embrace his reputation—already acquired, but not yet burnished—as a rebel. In a paper, ‘Notes on Fractile Graphical Analysis’, that he mailed off to Econometrica in 1963 in an envelope made out of a brown-paper bag, Swamy showed how a statistical analysis method, which Mahalanobis claimed to have invented, was only a differentiated form of an older equation. The article, Swamy said, “literally destroyed” Mahalanobis. But in the paper itself, Swamy was not nearly so scathing. He stated gently that Mahalanobis’s claim of having invented a new method was “not quite correct”; even more warmly, he called Mahalanobis’s approach “refreshingly new”. 

The Econometrica referee for this paper, the Amsterdam-born American economist Hendrik S Houthakker, happened also to be serving on Harvard’s admissions committee, and Swamy told me that, on the basis of this article alone, Harvard admitted him with a full Rockefeller scholarship. According to Swamy, Mahalanobis tried to persuade him to withdraw his paper; when that failed, he angrily wrote to Harvard predicting that Swamy would fail his Master’s. “Harvard wrote back, saying, ‘We admitted him on the basis of … his demonstrated capacity for research, and therefore it doesn’t matter if he gets an MA or not,’” Swamy said. “Now that is the Harvard I knew.” Then, thinking of Harvard’s decision to drop him as a Summer School instructor following the outcry over his DNA op-ed, he added a little morosely: “I don’t know if it is the same Harvard today.”