The search for a Hindu agenda

By Subramanian Swamy Organiser Home > 2005 Issues > November 20, 2005 Dr Subramanian Swamy will write a monthly column in Organiser.

I am happy to be invited by the Editor to return to writing a column for Organiser. In 1970s I had written with “missionary” zeal in these columns about the Swadeshi Plan which was about self-reliance and not taking foreign aid, about achieving a 10 per cent growth rate in the economy by giving up socialism, and the feasibility of acquiring nuclear weapons. These were radical ideas in those days that angered Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her KGB benefactors. She denounced me on the floor of Parliament and her minister of education ensured that not only I but my wife were both sacked from our professorships at the IIT, Delhi. Today, those radical ideas of the 1970s have become mainstream and I stand vindicated. But the mission is incomplete, because India becoming a global economic power is not enough.

To count internationally and get her due place in the world order, India must become thoroughly united with a virile mindset without self-doubt, and undergo a renaissance to cleanse the dirt and unwanted baggage acquired over the past thousand years. Otherwise foreign forces already alerted by India’s recent economic successes and it’s implications will leverage our internal weaknesses and self-doubt to derail the country.

• Look at the fate of Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Brazil, the shining hope of the 1960s. They are in one crisis after another today and in shambles.
• And East Asia, the much publicised “Tigers”, had a blowout in 1997, and still to recover.
• Soviet Union is in 16 separate pieces, a happy development but a warning nonetheless.
• What happened to Yugoslavia ? It is in four warring pieces.

It had happened to us earlier in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when we were balkanised. It can therefore happen again. Hence we need a new agenda for change to weld the Indian into one corporate mind and entity. This I shall expound in these columns. Our nation is, in fact, at a crossroads of history today. To find our destiny and direction all Hindustanis with a patriotic mindset have to come together to combat a common unseen but alien enemy, and not to traverse again the unfortunate and tragic chapter of our past history when we helped the foreigner to get a grip on the nation in order to settle our own petty squabbles.

Earlier challenges were single dimensional—at the physical conquest level. Today the challenge is highly sophisticated, multi-dimensional and deceptive. The last time we set aside our political and personal differences and came together was to fight the Emergency during 1975-77. Had we not done that, in particular Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai had not teamed up with the RSS, despite all their past differences, dictatorship would have prevailed and been legitimised through the ballot box in 1977. We came together and triumphed, and restored democracy. Even if that unity did not last long, the main task of restoring democracy was achieved and the nation saved.

Today, the challenge is much more formidable than it was ever in our history. More important the threat to our national integrity embedded in this challenge is not obvious or crude as was when Mohammed Ghori attacked or Robert Clive plundered the nation. These earlier challenges were single dimensional—at the physical conquest level. Today the challenge is highly sophisticated, multi-dimensional and deceptive. What is happening today is a very subtle fragmentation of our national consciousness and an induced acquiesance in our outlook to condone or be impervious to whatever wrong is going on. There is, for example, no national will to enforce accountability on the leaders who make patently wrong decisions, which harm the nation. Or bring to book their lifestyle that is inconsistent with the national spiritual ethos. The Soviet model weakened the Indian economy, set us back, and introduced corruption in India as a way of life. This has made us vulnerable again to the foreigner.

Home > 2005 Issues > December 04, 2005 This renaissance has to be holistic: that is, an assertive global political outlook, a national defence preparedness of long reach, an active awareness of the nation’s true continuing history and it’s Hindu foundation, rapid economic development of more than 10 per cent growth rate, and unshakeable uncompromising resolve to defend the nation come what may, which five commitments must blend into our national consciousness to create a new mind set dedicated to the goal of recovering India’s global pre-eminence in our life time. That goal, however, can be achieved only by first undoing completely the Nehru legacy. It is a minimum pre-condition because Nehruvian ideas are ill-suited for national synergy.

The Nehru legacy is constituted today by the remnants of socialistic economic policy, a moth-eaten tilted ‘non-alignment’ foreign policy, a fraudulent one-way secularism, and an apologetic disdain for the quintessence Hindu tradition, all of which are embodied in the vice-like grip on the Congress Party of the rump descendants of the Nehru family. Hence, the search for a Hindu Agenda must begin with the exorcism of Nehruism and his legacy to the nation.