'Creeping fascism': What Subramanian Swamy had said about RSS in 2000

If the last few days, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has shown that he, as an ally, is as dangerous as an enemy. On Friday, Swamy issued a threat of a “bloodbath” on Twitter after being criticised for his recent remarks against outgoing RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian and Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das.

Though he did not name Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, he was obviously referring to the minister, who had earlier urged Swamy to exercise restraint and discipline. Swamy’s avatar of a loose cannon is not something new. Back in 2000, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was heading the NDA government, Swamy had written a scathing piece against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). [caption id=“attachment_2839770” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] BJP MP Subramanian Swamy had said in 2000 that RSS felt threatened by BJP’s rise. PTI[/caption] The RSS is the ideological backbone of the BJP. And this is what Swamy had written in Frontline about the RSS in 2000: “Today the creeping fascism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (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’.” In the article, Swamy also said that the 1999 general election victory for the BJP had caused “neurosis” in the RSS, which felt threatened by BJP’s victory. He also said that RSS leaders had developed a strategy called the “Final Solution” because they wanted to end the rule of the then NDA government. Swamy added that the RSS cadre was growing more impatient because India was not the Hindu Rashtra which the high command had promised, something “on which they had been weaned and brain-washed”. Swamy had also alleged that in the Bofors case, many Opposition leaders who had “vetted and signed the deal, or had even held secret negotiations on the ‘financial parameters’ with the Bofors company as representatives of Rajiv Gandhi” were prosecution witnesses and not the accused. “The motto is: ‘Join us and be free. Resist us and see you in court.’ By a series of such sham prosecutions and managed associate media leaks, the RSS expects to undermine the democratic Opposition in India,” Swamy had written. Swamy had also, in fact criticised Hindutva. He had alleged that an RSS activist, who had defended his credentials by stating that he had shot dead a Muslim girl while she was being gangraped by a Hindu youth during Partition to protect her honour, had been promoted to the post of selector of teachers in the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT). “That, of course, is Hindutva justice: that is, the minorities can best look forward to liberation through mercy killing,” Swamy had written. He had also said that the RSS planned to replace the current bicameral Parliament with a three-tier structure, which would be headed by a Guru Sabha of sadhus and sanyasis. (With inputs from PTI)