Few characters in Indian politics are as compelling, arresting and exasperating as Subramanian Swamy. Impossible to predict and difficult to typecast, he is the quintessential Delhi insider who most other politicians want to keep at a distance. It’s not because he can’t be entertaining company — of course he can. It’s just that you can never be sure when he’ll decide to make you his entertainment.

Most recently Swamy was in the news for a series of attacks on Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Subramanian and Shaktikanta Das, respectively Reserve Bank governor, chief economic adviser in the finance ministry, and secretary, department of economic affairs. The fusillade culminated in nasty tweets — including by proxy handles run by the Swamy army — against finance minister Arun Jaitley. Eventually it took a public rebuke from the Prime Minister and a talking to from the BJP leadership to quieten Swamy.

Having a laugh… But at whose expense?

Nevertheless Swamy is bound to be back. His is a life of storms, with the occasional lull thrown in. As Mani Shankar Aiyar, an old friend turned foe, famously put it: “Swamy doesn’t desert causes. Causes desert Swamy.” Yet, that is getting ahead of the story.

How does one categorise Swamy? Indeed, there are so many Swamys. There is the economist who worked with Paul Samuelson at Harvard, earning a PhD and a reputation for expertise on China. In the mid-1970s, he wrote the then counter-intuitive Economic Growth in China and India, 1952–70: A Comparative Appraisal (University of Chicago Press). The book said India’s and China’s growth rates were nearly the same, at about 3.5%, as were per capita GDPs. This was at a time when fellow-traveller economists — including, Swamy says, his eternal bugbear Amartya Sen — were ascribing much higher numbers to China.

In the 1980s, after Deng Xiaoping took office, the Chinese government undid the window-dressing of the Cultural Revolution years and validated Swamy’s findings. There are other examples. Over much of the past decade, Swamy has been warning of a demand problem and an imminent banking crisis in China, even when business analysts wanted to hear no bad news about the Chinese super-growth cycle. Again he proved prescient.

It says something about the man and about our politics and public discourse that when the Chinese economy is discussed on prime-time television, it is not Swamy who is asked for his views. Rather, he is content painting himself as the spokesperson for the loony right, advocating an abundance of crazy causes, announcing the hunt for the alleged KGB origins of Sonia Gandhi, denouncing the sartorial preferences of Indian ministers… It never ends.

To be fair the man has had his successes. Ramakrishna Hegde was felled in a phone-tapping case thanks to Swamy. His corruption allegations are still troubling Jayalalithaa. On 2G, he has the DMK clan on the mat. On Aircel-Maxis, the Chidambaram family faces investigation. In the National Herald case, there was enough material to at least bring the Gandhi family to court.

These are no mean achievements. Even so, those with old memories will remember a particular December day in 1990 when the Chandra Shekhar government was in power, backed by the Congress. The CBI case on Bofors was being heard in court. Suddenly the government lawyer — the then additional solicitor general (ASG) of India, no less — began arguing against the CBI.

Aghast, a senior CBI official had to jump in, interrupt and shout down the lawyer in open court. The then ASG was a close friend and appointee of the law minister. The law minister was Swamy. Today, like the then ASG, he is a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha. Today, unlike back then, he is no longer a friend of the Congress, insisting his friendship died with Rajiv Gandhi.

While Swamy’s Twitter regiments rarely bother with such details, the fact is this immensely intelligent and talented man has a history of inconsistency. He was a hero of the Emergency (as it happens, so was his current hate, Jaitley). Swamy became a cult figure when he escaped under Indira Gandhi’s nose, slipping out of Parliament after making dissenting remarks, and hiding himself dressed as a Sikh. In 1977, he should have been a minister in the Janata Party government but found himself on the wrong side of the Nanaji Deshmukh-Atal Bihari Vajpayee divide, and later lost out trying to play off Morarji Desai against Vajpayee.

That instinct for factional intrigue has never left him. As Pramod Mahajan reputedly told L K Advani in 2005, when the latter suggested bringing Swamy into the BJP, “Advaniji, hamari party mein Subramanian Swamyiyon ki kami hai kya, ki aap asli Swamy ko bhi laana chahte hain …”

Well, he’s in now — and in Parliament for six years. Enjoy the war; with Swamy, it’s the peace that’s terrible.

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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