Who Does Subramanian Swamy Represent? A 2011 Article Might Provide the Clue

Moment of truth

The third lesson to be learnt is that whatever and however small the terrorist incident, the nation must retaliate—not by measured and ‘sober’ responses but by massive retaliation. Otherwise what is the alternative? Walk meekly to death expecting that our ‘sober’ responses will be rewarded by our neighbours and their patrons? We will be back to 1100 AD fooled into suicidal credulity. We should not be ghouls for punishment from terrorists and their patrons. We should retaliate.

For example, when Ayodhya temple was sought to be attacked, this was not a big terrorist incident but we should have massively retaliated by re-building the Ram temple at the site.

This is Kaliyug, and hence there is no room for sattvic responses to evil people. Hindu religion has a concept of apat dharma and we should invoke it. This is the moment of truth for us. Either we organise to survive as a civilisation or vanish as the Persian, Babylonian, and Egyptian civilisations did centuries ago before the brutal Islamic onslaught. For that our motto should be Saam, Dhaam, Bheda, Danda.

Poverty is no factor

What motivates the Islamic terrorists in India? Many are advising us Hindus to deal with the root ‘cause’ of terrorism rather than concentrate on eradicating terrorists by retaliation. And pray what is the root ‘cause’?

According to bleeding heart liberals, terrorists are born or bred because of illiteracy, poverty, oppression, and discrimination. They argue that instead of eliminating them, the root cause of these four disabilities in society should be removed. Only then terrorism will disappear. Before replying to this, let us understand that I have serious doubts about the integrity of these liberals, or more appropriately, these promiscuous intellectuals. They seek to deaden the emotive power of the individual and render him passive (inculcate ‘majboori’ in our psyche). A nation state cannot survive for long with such a capitulationist mentality.

It is rubbish to say that terrorists who mastermind the attacks are poor. Osama bin laden for example is a billionaire. Islamic terrorists are patronised by those states that have grown rich from oil revenues. In Britain, the terrorists arrested so far for the bombings are all well-to-do persons. Nor are terrorists uneducated. Most of terrorist leaders are doctors, chartered accountants, MBAs and teachers. For example, in the failed Times Square New York episode, the Islamic terrorist Shahzad studied and got an MBA from a reputed US university. He was from a highly placed family in Pakistan. He certainly faced no discrimination and oppression in his own country. The gang of nine persons who hijacked four planes on September 11, 2001 and flew them into the World Trade Towers in New York and other targets were certainly not discriminated or oppressed in the United States. Hence it is utter rubbish to say that terror is the outcome of the poverty terrorists face.

If we accept the Left-wing liberals argument, does it mean that in Islamic countries, the non-Islamic religious minority who are discriminated and oppressed can take to terrorism? In the Valley, where Muslims are in majority, not only Article 370 of the Constitution provides privileges to the majority but it is the minority Hindus who have been slaughtered, or raped, and dispossessed. They have become refugees in squalid conditions in their own country.

It is also a ridiculous idea that terrorists cannot be deterred because they are irrational, willing to die, and have no ‘return address’. Terrorist masterminds have political goals and a method in their madness. An effective strategy to deter terrorism is therefore to defeat those political goals and to rubbish them by counter-terrorist action. How is that strategy to be structured? In a brilliant research paper published by Robert Trager and Dessislava Zagorcheva this year (‘Deterring Terrorism’ International Security, vol 30, No 3, Winter 2005/06, pp 87-123) has provided the general principles to structure such a strategy.

Goal-strategy

Applying these principles, I advocate the following strategy to negate the political goals of Islamic terrorism in India, provided the Muslim community fail to condemn these goals and call them un-Islamic:

Goal 1: Overawe India on Kashmir.

Strategy: Remove Article 370, and re-settle ex-servicemen in the Valley. Create Panun Kashmir for Hindu Pandit community. Look or create opportunity to take over PoK. If Pakistan continues to back terrorists, assist the Baluchis and Sindhis to struggle for independence.

Goal 2: Blast our temples and kill Hindu devotees.

Strategy: Remove the masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple complex, and 300 others in other sites as a tit-for-tat.

Goal 3: Make India into Darul Islam.

Strategy: Implement Uniform Civil Code, make Sanskrit learning compulsory and singing of Vande Mataram mandatory, and declare India as Hindu Rashtra in which only those non-Hindus can vote if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors are Hindus. Re-name India as Hindustan as a nation of Hindus and those whose ancestors are 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 Hindu religion to any other religion. Re-conversion will not be banned. Declare caste is not birth-based but code of discipline based. 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, northern one-third from Sylhet to Khulna can be annexed to re-settle the 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 (see my new book Hindutva and National Renaissance, Haranand, 2010).

India can solve its terrorist problem within five years by such a deterrent strategy, but for that we have to learn the four lessons outlined above, and have a Hindu mindset to take bold, risky, and hard decisions to defend the nation. If the Jews can be transformed from lambs walking meekly to the gas chambers to fiery lions in just 10 years, it is not difficult for Hindus in much better circumstances (after all we are 83 per cent of India), to do so in five years.

Guru Gobind Singh has shown us the way already, how just five fearless persons under spiritual guidance can transform a society. Even if half the Hindu voters are persuaded to collectively vote as Hindus, and for a party sincerely committed to a Hindu agenda, then we can forge an instrument for change. And that ultimately is the bottom line in the strategy to deter terrorism in a democratic Hindustan at this moment of truth.

Seema Mustafa, editor of The Citizen had written a rejoinder at the time that was also published in DNA:

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/comment-dr-subramanian-swamy-has-inflamed-passions-through-blatant-falsehoods-1567155

I have known Dr Subramanian Swamy for decades. While always a maverick on the extreme right side of the fence, he used to exercise some restraint in his writings. It was thus surprising to see his byline on an article that is not just totally bigoted and communal, but speaks of a paranoid and senile mind.

The language that the politician who heads the one-man Janata Party has used is reprehensible to say the least and I am sure there are laws in this country that can be invoked to take him to task for inflaming passions through complete falsehoods.

The Mumbai police are no closer to solving the Mumbai blasts today than they were when the terror attack took place. A poor grocer has died while being questioned by the police in custody with his shocked family attributing it to torture.

But instead of writing responsibly at this sensitive point in time, a politician who claims to be a legitimate representative of the people pens an article hurling accusations at Muslims, insisting that their goal is to kill Hindus in a “halal fashion” and take over India unless the “Hindus” react and act against the Constitution of India and the laws of this democratic land.

Swamy’s article has drawn absolutely excellent responses from the people of this country, mostly non-Muslims, to put him and his exhortations in their place.

But even so he reflects a minuscule mindset that delights in provoking violence by trying to consolidate the natural anger that stems from a terror attack. He has tried to use the moment not to unite the people through a language of peace, but to rouse passions by putting together a senseless tirade against Muslims and Islam.

The Hindus, he keeps insisting, are the targets. But when blasts take place in crowded market places in Mumbai or any other part of India, the targets are the people of India, Dr Swamy. Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs and Christians and Parsis and Jains and Brahmins and Dalits and all those who are at the spot die because the bomb cannot differentiate among religions and castes. India, as we have grown up to understand it, is a secular, democratic country belonging to all who are its citizens.

It is home to all religions, and it is a vibrant democracy that thrives on plurality and diversity. The terrorists, al-Qaeda, Lashkar or the Aseemanands, thus strike over and over again to convert this diversity into divisiveness so that India somehow emerges from the embers of death and destruction as Hindu and Muslim.

And thereby plunges into senseless violence that will erode its secular fabric and sovereignty, and retard its progress and development.

Individuals like Swamy are a terrorist’s delight, because they speak the language of the bomb, they vocalise the terrible destruction into words of hate and anger. In case anyone has missed the point behind the terror attack, there are the Swamys who quickly translate the blast into words like “every Hindu must become a virat Hindu” to stand against the “Islamic terrorist.”

In other words, the Hindus alone can defend India that in the Swamy jargon is “Hindu India”, and Muslims here exist to pursue their collective goal to “overawe India”, to “blast temples and kill Hindus. And that the “nation”, as he perceives it, should retaliate by destroying mosques and building temples.

Swamy speaks in his ignorance, or his deviousness and his cunning (he must edify us), of this huge Muslim plot to take over India. But it seems that it is people like him who are out to convert India into a theocratic state by trying to use terror attacks to push through this aim.

Muslims, he says, can be accepted only if they acknowledge their “Hindu legacy” as “India is a nation of Hindus”. Swamy claims to be educated, but clearly he has not read the Constitution of India, and has no idea of the laws that rule this country. He can be challenged in court for his remarks that are subverting the Constitution that does not distinguish between religion, caste and creed.

Fortunately our freedom fighters were men and women with the vision of giants, not rats, and firmly rejected the move to declare India a Hindu state with reasons that have withstood the test of time. Unlike Pakistan, that embraced Islam as a state religion, and saw successive rulers like Zia-ul-Haq remove the markers between religion and terrorism.

I am not a Hindu or a Muslim but an Indian, Dr Swamy. And this nationalist fervour of yours has such a jingoistic, ugly touch to it that it can only burn what it comes into contact with. The people of India are standing up to the terrorists by remaining united, by refusing to succumb to the kind of fires you and your ilk are stoking, and by raising a united —- and not a Hindu or a Muslim — voice against terrorism in all its forms. You are not required, and voices like yours have to perish if India is to remain a sovereign, secular, democratic republic.