Doctor Swamy and the US Tamils

On 26 April 1999, an Indian organization called The Sword of Truth announced what they called ‘Turkey Awards’, under several categories. The one for Comic Relief went to Dr. Subramanian Swamy, the president and the only active member of the Janata Party in India.

On 24^th July, The Hindu published a news item that Dr. Swamy is forming an organization in New York of Tamil expatriate professionals who are opposed to the LTTE, to fight for Tamil rights. A week later on 30 July 2001, the same newspaper published a similar story, this time with Dr. Swamy speaking from Boston.

Angry Tamils from all over the world have since been calling and writing to the sangam. They want to know, ‘what is happening in the US?’ The short answer is nothing.

It is all a figment of Dr. Swamy’s imagination. Dr. Swamy, who entered Indian politics in the early seventies, has spent a good part of his political career spreading canards of this sort.

In April this year, for example, he accused Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul of being KGB agents. He said, “Recent credible evidence has surfaced that indicates that Sonia Gandhi’s son Rahul Gandhi functioned as a conduit between the Italian branch of the family and the KGB and was for all practical purposes a KGB agent.” Rahul Gandhi acted as a KGB agent in 1989, the time he went to Harvard University, he claimed. [Tehelka.com; 3 April 2001]. Copy of his letter to the Indian government on this is given below.

On 5 August 1998, he floated a rumor that the Indian PM Mr. Vajpayee is seriously ill and ‘will soon be traveling to Sloane Kettering Memorial (Cancer) Hospital in New York.’ This forced the Indian government to make a formal denial.

He has even accused Mrs. Sonia Gandhi of having played a role in her husband’s assassination!

His off-on trysts with Tamil Nadu chief minister, Jayalalitha Jayaram is well known. In the early nineties, he spearheaded a campaign against Jayalalitha [Oust Jayalalitha Campaign]. In June 1997, he forgot all this and struck a close alliance with her. The alliance culminated in his influencing Jayalalitha to defeat the BJP government [The famous tea party]. When this maneuver backfired on Jayalalitha, he was kicked out by her [July 1999], and has since then become her sworn enemy again.

This is not the only instance where Dr. Swamy betrayed a ‘former friend’. Two years ago he was an admirer of Sonia Gandhi. When he turned against her, he accused her of corruption in collusion with the Italian businessman, Mr. Ottavio Quattrocchi, ‘keeping money in Swiss banks’ and that she was ‘soft on the LTTE!’ He also charged Sonia’s parents and sisters with benefiting from the sale of Indian-made artifacts and antiquities in letters to Minister of State for Personnel Vasundhara Raje.

In 1975-76, during the emergency rule Dr. Swamy went underground allegedly with the help of the RSS, but turned against this organization in the nineties.

He has also been accused of committing fraud in the Indian courts and during the Jain Commission of Inquiry. The Jain Commission referred to him as ‘an unreliable witness’ and directed further enquiry into his role in the Rajiv Gandhi Assassination. He responded by writing a book titled ‘The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi: Unanswered Questions and Unasked Queries’.

Dr. Swamy is also known for his bizarre pronouncements. Last December he said that the Italian businessman, Mr. Ottavio Quattrocchi had been aiding the LTTE to procure weapons! In May 2000 he sent the Sri Lankan nationalists into a conniption by suggesting that Sri Lanka should merge with India just as Sikkim was merged in 1974!

As to Dr. Swamy’s’ claim of a meeting with Sri Lankan Tamil expatriates in Boston, the only Sri Lankan Tamil gathering he attended in Massachusetts in the last week was a child’s birthday party. At this party he invited his friend, a well-known Tamil activist in Boston, to help him form a Sri Lankan Tamil group to oppose the LTTE, who politely but decisively declined. There were no presentations or political discussions as reported in The Hindu, says the host.

People who called and wrote to the sangam have also asked about a possible Chandrahasan-Swami nexus. According to sources close to Chandrahasan there is none. They know each other they say, ‘but they are in the US for separate reasons – Chandrahasan to attend a wedding, and Swamy to teach summer school at Harvard.’ They met each other at the ‘party’ in New York. However, those close to Chandrahasan are concerned that such rumor could hurt his work in caring for the Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu.

Those he has hurt in the past have called Dr. Swamy by all kinds of names. Jayalalitha once referred to him a ‘blackmailer’. In September 1998, the then Urban Development Minister Ram Jethmalani called him a ‘liar’ and a ‘dunce’. Indian PM Mr. Vajpayee, when asked a question about Swamy at an interview, published in the Outlook magazine [10 May 1999] said, “I don’t comment on him”

One of his friends, V.N. Narayanan, had this to say about Dr. Swamy –

“I had been meeting him off and on over the past 20 years and the one trait that marked Swamy out was his cocksureness. He never entertained any doubt about his being a man of destiny, someone sure to become Prime Minister. “But, you don’t have a party”. Well, that’s why. A party, said Swamy, would be a millstone round your neck. You had to feed it out of power and in power. And ‘in a party, you have rival claimants to power, and they never let you live in peace.’

The secret was to be in public focus and in the media limelight. The image of the maverick helped, the instinct for political vandalism fostered the image. He chose unlikely targets and flung horrendous charges at them. First, it was Atal Behari Vajpayee and his weakness for the so-called good things in life; then it was Ramakrishna Hegde and his land deals - I once asked him whether he had any documentary proof. Swamy’s reply was typical: ‘Why should I provide proof. It’s for him to disprove my charges.’ But, his greatest campaign of all was against Jayalalitha whom he vowed to destroy and came very close to achieving that. To a great extent, the dip in Hedge’s political career began with Swamy’s attack.

Subramanian Swamy is what Dickens would call ‘a fernomenon.’ For someone who could spell danger as both friend and foe, his ability to collect an admiring political audience is phenomenal. Politicians of impotent rage cluster round him, for they vicariously discover their potency in his company. He is at home in the company of both the sophisticate and the guttersnipe - by knowledge he is with the former, by instinct he is with the latter.

Undeniably, Subramanian Swamy is a maverick to end all mavericks. As a one-man demolition squad, he has found a place for himself in the polity. If all that brilliance, boundless energy, rare courage were used in a constructive way... well... Swamy would say... no one would take notice of him and the media first of all...

Perhaps destruction for the sake of destruction has its place in history. Considering the quality of all those who play politics within the rules of the game and are prospering, one could even say Indian democracy needed a Swamy; whether it deserves him is another matter.”

His hosts in Boston told Sangam, “don’t pay attention to Dr. Swamy.” Nobody does.

SANGAM RESEARCH [2 August 2001]

Text of the letter by Subramanian Swamy

March 31, 2001.
Ms. Vasundara Raje,
Minister of State in charge of Personnel
3, Suneribagh Road,
New Delhi - 110 001.

Dear Vasundara:
Following my earlier letters to you and your reply dated March 12, 2001 stating that my complaints of criminal offences committed by Ms. Sonia Gandhi and her Italians had been sent to the agencies for enquiry. What needs to be done as required under Supreme Court judgements is that the CBI register a FIR and carry out proper and procedurally correct investigation. Any lethargy on behalf of the CBI would invite a High Court monitoring of the investigation.
More information is coming in about some of the charges I had made in the suggested charge sheet. In connection with the charge that the Mainos, i.e., Ms. Gandhi’s Italian family, had received commissions on Indo-Soviet trade deals arranged by the KGB and part of which was then spent by the Mainos to finance select Congress Party candidates in the elections. I have now located where the letter of the then KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov addressed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) can be accessed. The letter is a part of the KGB Archives which are available for perusal by any government. This particular letter is referenced in the KGB Archives as F.5, OP. 6, POR. No. 12, D 131 T.I., L.T. 103-4.
Harvard University has a large collection of the KGB Archives. Since at present I hold a faculty position at Harvard I can assist the CBI get a true copy of the said letter provided a formal request comes from you.
Some parts of the said letter have already appeared in a book written by the well known Russian journalist Ms. Yevgenia Albats whose excellent book on the KGB has now been translated into English and published under the title The KGB: The State within a State, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, and can be ordered online through amazon.com. On page 223 of this book, it is not only confirmed that such a letter of Chebrikov exists containing the aforesaid content, but what is more grave is that portion of Chebrikov”s letter which states blandly that the “KGB maintains contact with R. Gandhi, the son of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi...”, and goes on to add an even more damaging revelation of Chebrikov that “R. Gandhi expresses deep gratitude for benefits accruing to the Prime Minister”s family from commercial dealings of Indian firms he controls in cooperation with Soviet foreign trade organizations. R. Gandhi reports confidentially that a substantial portion of the funds obtained through this channel are used to support the party of R. Gandhi.”
Interestingly, during this period (1986-91) Rahul Gandhi was a student at Harvard University (he failed to complete the course, so no degree). But it is a practice of Intelligence agencies to compromise children of those in high office especially of those countries with a dynastic tradition and nepotism. At Harvard, Rahul would have been easily accessible, and depending on his habits, as vulnerable.
The upshot of this letter is that Rahul Gandhi was the KGB conduit for the Mainos and functioned as their Agent of Influence, and is tantamount to making the Mainos traitors in the eyes of patriotic Indians. Who else the Mainos are hiding from the Indian people, at the moment God only knows. In this context, it is important to investigate Ms. Sonia Gandhi”s past especially the hidden years of 1963-68 when she was in England and prior to her marriage with Rajiv Gandhi. She has bluffed Parliament in the Who”s Who wherein she states (p. 291) that she was educated in Cambridge University. Actually she had gone to the town of Cambridge to learn English in a teaching shop which was preyed on by Intelligence agencies of many countries. Ms. Sonia Gandhi is Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and the nation has no clue about who she really is.
The nation thus has no time to waste. I hope you will not.
Best regards.
Yours Sincerely
Subramanian Swamy

Indian Express [29 June 1997]

Power is the name of the game for Swamy

K M Thomas

CHENNAI, June 28: Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy whom AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha had once described as a `black mailer’, was all smiles after he struck an alliance with her on Thursday.

Justifying the alliance, he said both parties intended to fight a common enemy (DMK). But judging from his utterances and actions in the past six years, what he left unsaid could be that the only ideology in politics was to gain power.

Subramanian Swamy’s press meets, court battles and public meetings had hogged a lot of news space and kept the law enforcing agencies on tenterhooks several times during the AIADMK regime. The then Madras police commissioner lost his post because of his failure to arrest Swamy in a case registered against him by Jayalalitha government.

The acid attack on the woman IAS officer V S Chandralekha in 1992 was exploited to the hilt by Swamy to further his `oust Jayalalitha campaign’. But Swamy accepted the support of Jayalalitha for the very same Chandralekha in the Chennai Mayoral election against DMK leader M K Stalin in October last year.

The people of Tamil Nadu began to take serious note of Swamy when he came out strongly against the then chief minister Jayalalitha in September 1991. When everyone believed that Jayalalitha could do no wrong, Swamy came out openly castigating her. ``She is developing dictatorial tendencies which some of us, who made it possible for her to come to power will not tolerate,’’ he said.

He went to the extent of declaring that TN would have a new chief minister after January 1993. He even shifted his residence to Madras to lead the anti-Jayalalitha campaign. His movement got a fillip when the acid attack victim Chandralekha had quit the IAS and joined him in November that year.

Swamy became such an irritant to the rulers that the then chief secretary T V Venkataraman announced that even those who published the statements of Swamy were liable to be prosecuted. Then there were a series of petitions by Swamy to various Constitutional authorities against Jayalalitha.

He submitted a memorandum to the then chief election commissioner T N Seshan, seeking disqualification of Jayalalitha, since she purchased government owned TANSI land while in power. Another petition went to the Governor seeking permission to prosecute Jaya under the prevention of corruption act.

The Jaya government hit back by slapping a case on Swamy under the protection of civil rights for having described the LTTE chief as an international `pariah’. Although arrangements were made by the police to capture Swamy when he came out of the Madras High Court, he gave the slip to police and escaped to Delhi.

The Hindu Report [30 July 2001]

Sri Lankan Tamils in U.S. to form group

BOSTON, JULY 30. After New York, the Sri Lankan Tamils residing in several States of the United States of America met in a Boston suburb last Saturday and decided to form an international group committed to non-violence as a creed in the struggle for justice and human rights of the suffering Tamils of Sri Lanka.

The Janata Party president, Dr. Subramanian Swamy, addressed the gathering.

Dr. Swamy later told mediapersons that the gathering consisted of software engineers, bank executives and retired officials of the Jaffna-based Red Cross and their wives.

The general consensus was to constitute a 21-member international group by October to explicitly commit itself to non-violence and multi-party democracy, and that it would settle for a federal constitution as the second-best solution in Sri Lanka.