If there ever was a thorn in the side of Narendra Modi right now, it wouldn’t be Arvind Kejriwal. It would be Subramaniam Swamy. Astonishingly, Swamy is a BJP MLA; a loud-mouthed BJP MLA.
Swamy became famous, or infamous, depends on which way you look at it, when he took on Indira Gandhi during the 1970s. He has called Atal Bihari Vajpayee a ‘drunk’ and Sonia Gandhi a ‘smuggler’. He took on former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan with a vengeance, accusing him of hurting India’s economy.
Now he has started attacking Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramaniam. When Finance Minister Arun Jaitley came to Arvind’s defence, Swamy attacked him too. He uses Twitter liberally, recently tweeting about how Indian ministers dressed in suits “look like waiters.”
There is a lot of speculation as to why Swamy is acting like this. He has RSS backing no doubt, but there has to be a lot of frustration or chutzpah when it comes to taking on your own people in the BJP.
What does Swamy see happening in the future? If he aspires to the RBI Governor seat, then he’s definitely not really helping his cause by taking on Modi’s cabinet. The BJP has distanced themselves from Swamy’s comments, but it’s clear that they need to do more than talk when it comes to handling him.
