Q: Swamy, let’s come to the concept of ‘Hindu Rashtra’. Can you explain what do you mean by ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and how will it be different from today’s Secular India?
Swamy: Let me start with this. This election was an amalgam of three issues.
One was Narendra Modi’s governance record. People were convinced that this man can rule the country. And it was a big plus for us because on the other side was the ‘buddhu’. There was no match.
Second was the fight against corruption which I led. People got convinced that yes these people can remove corruption. There was not a single corruption charge either against me or Modi. So the people were convinced and there was support for BJP as party of honest people.
Third, the cadre of the BJP which had gone to sleep after 2004, after 6 years of secularism of NDA, they suddenly got fired up that Modi means Hindutva with RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat putting the entire weight behind him. So Hindutva was the third factor. And all three factors are important. You can’t just do governance and expect people to support you. There is large number of Hindus who believe that they have got a raw deal. And it also includes particularly educated young people.
Now coming back to your question of ‘Hindu Rashtra’, it does not mean that only a Hindu can be a prime Ministry. ‘Hindu Rashtra’ does not mean only Hindus can occupy public office. That is a ‘Muslim Rashtra’, ‘Christian Rashtra’ but never a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.
All through history, even Shiva ji, who spoke about Hindu Rashtra, had a Muslim as commander-in-Chief. In 1857, we made Bahadur Shah Zafar as emperor who appointed a Hindu his Prime Minister. If your secularism is that the church and the state are to be separate, and that is the original definition, then we have already done that throughout the history.
Second, the Hindu concept of secularism is ‘Sarva Dharma Sam-bhava’ and it means that all religions lead to God. So we show respect to all religions. The Jews came, we looked after them. The Parsis came, we looked after them. The Arab Muslims came and we looked after them in Kerala. But will the Muslims say that all religions lead to God? No, they’ll never say that. They’ll say if you don’t believe in Islam, you are Kaafirs. And you are fit for either conversion or killing. Christians will say that you are pagans if not Christians and that devil has got your souls. You are to be saved and in extreme form like crusade they will kill also. So the only religion in the world that has practiced Sarva Dharma Sam-bhava is Hinduism.
Q: My question is how would this Hindu Rashtra be different from the secular India that we have today?
Swamy: We’ll teach Sanskrit. We’ll teach them the correct history of India. We’ll say that all Hindus are one. That varna is not birth based. Its discipline and duty based.
Q: You had written an article in DNA for which Harvard had dropped your courses. In that article you wrote that those Muslims who don’t accept Hindu ancestry should be disenfranchised. Do you still stand by that?
Swamy: First of all, my courses had nothing to do with that. The courses related to Economics.
Yes, I stand by that statement because it’s drawn out of the partition of India. India was one country, there was no country called Pakistan. So the British had to create a legal entity called Pakistan. So they had introduced a bill in parliament that was called “Indian independence Act”. It was passed in June 1947 after a big debate.
In the debate, they said that there are Muslims who say that we have no connection with Hindus except for the fact that we ruled over them and we don’t want to live with them. The British said that we can’t abandon them and it’s our job to protect them. So we’ll partition India into two countries – India and Pakistan.
For Muslims who said that they have no connections with India and that they didn’t want to live with Hindus, partition was created. Therefore, Muslims who wanted to live separately went to Pakistan. But those Muslims who stayed on were people who accepted that they are willing to live with Hindus and they had connections with Hindus. And what is that connection? That is the ‘Scientific study on DNA’, published in the University of Cambridge, Journal of Genetics. There were studies in Houston, Mysore University as well. All these DNA studies show that the Hindu DNA and Muslim DNA is the same. So what does it mean and that’s what I had said. And if you don’t want to identify with Hindus, Pakistan is there for you.
Q: You are also supposed to be an authority on foreign relations, how do you look at what is happening in middle-east especially the way ISIS is marching ahead with vengeance? According to some media reports, the ISIS has the vision of an Islamic state that stretches up to Gujarat in India. How serious is that from Indian perspective.
Swamy: Serious enough for us to prepare for war. We’ll have a war.
Q: War with whom?
Swamy: War with the Islamic caliphate that will be set up very soon which will include Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Q: What should the Government of India do?
Swamy: Start preparing. Send troops to Afghanistan. Make friends with Iran because they are Shiites and those militants are all Sunnis.
Q: You want India to send troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq?
Swamy: Yes, to Iraq to save our people and I’m happy that India has send its warship there. India should send at least 200,000 troops to Afghanistan.
Q: There is a fear that once these Americans leave, these Talibans will get upper hand and they will turn their focus towards Kashmir.
Swamy: There is no fear, it’s a certainty. Americans will hand over Afghanistan to Taliban and go. And their appetite is Jehad and Kashmir is the obvious place. So we should be ready to go to war. You don’t start the war. They’ll start it and you finish it.
Q: A related question is, what, according to you, would be the solution for Kashmir dispute because it’s lingering for quite a long time.
Swamy: Military solution as there is no peaceful, democratic solution. We have to disown Jawaharlal Nehru and say that he took this matter to UN without the sanction of the cabinet and therefore, it’s an illegal application. Withdraw the application from the UN and put Pakistan on notice and clear out.
Q: Do you think India has the military might to defeat Pakistan?
Swamy: We can acquire the military might. We have the man power for that .
Q: Till the time we acquire that, what should we do?
Swamy: How much time do you want? Have you studied the problem? I have studied it. We need two years only.
Actually, we can defeat Pakistan even today. But we have to neutralize China.
Q: But Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state.
Swamy: So what? Let them use nuclear weapons. We’ll use it on them. There will be no Pakistan left. May be 100 million will die, no problem.
Somebody misled Modi to say nation needs 'bitter medicine', says Subramanian Swamy (India TV Exclusive)
psycho!
