Subramanian Swamy, Maneka and Varun Gandhi finally get their due as BJP takes cognisance of their antics

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the last political entity which anyone should try strongarming into submission. Of course, the BJP tolerates such behaviour of outsiders for some time before eventually bursting their balloon, but when it comes to its leaders, the saffron party ensures that such people fall from grace, forever. For example, the likes of Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie saw their political careers fall apart like a house of cards after being shown the door by the BJP for their rather brazen anti-party activities.

The BJP will go only as far as tolerating inner-party nonsense. It respects dissent, but beyond a point, dissenters are told that if they are so uncomfortable with the party, they might as well leave. Such leaders go on to become stalwarts for the opposition and liberals in India. They are perceived as men in shining armour who will be the death of the BJP. Of course, that has not happened so far, but Yashwant Sinha, Shatrugan Sinha and Arun Shourie are all people who to this day command more respect and adoration among liberal quarters than they do within their ‘inner circle’. Subramanian Swamy is the Yashwant Sinha-Arun Shourie combine of 2021. He has been dropped from the 80-member BJP National Executive. Essentially, Swamy is no longer among the top 80 BJP leaders of the country. 

In the past, BJP dissenters have gone on from being Hindutva proponents to absolute Dharam-virodhis. Whether that happens this time as well would only become clear as time passes by. Apart from Subramanian Swamy, the infamous mother-son duo of Maneka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi have also been chucked out of the BJP’s national executive. 

The Fall of Subramanian Swamy

Subramanian Swamy, until recently, commanded a decent amount of respect within ‘right wing’ circles and the larger pro-BJP community in India. However, his statements – especially since the Sino-Indian military standoff kickstarted last year have ensured that the man falls in the eyes of what were previously his vociferous supporters. In terms of national security, members of the BJP are supposed to lead by example and a conviction of unanimity. However, Subramanian Swamy has been making fallacious claims for the past one and a half years now, and almost all of them seek to undermine India’s position against China. 

Subramanian Swamy is an accomplished political veteran. He has been actively involved in national politics since the Emergency. And in the most recent years, his activism in the Ram Setu and Ram Janmabhoomi cases got applauded widely. However, things have been going south between the BJP top brass and Subramanian Swamy for a long time now. PM Modi is, of course, the tallest leader in the country today. Subramanian Swamy is himself a political heavyweight but for his age, and other red flags, he was denied a cabinet berth, which is perhaps due to a broad policy of the Modi government to keep age limits on its cabinet Ministers.

Once Nirmala Sitharaman was appointed as the finance minister in the Modi cabinet in 2019, it is safe to say that Swamy lost it. Even when late Arun Jaitley was the Union Finance Minister, Swamy had criticised his policies. Since 2019, the animosity between Swamy and the BJP top brass has widened beyond rapprochement, which has climaxed with him being dropped out of the party’s national executive. 

The Maneka-Varun Duo

Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi were misfits in the BJP. Even within the BJP, they represented a Congress-style of thinking. They were elitists, not in touch with ground realities and engulfed by a balloon of their own supposed importance and indispensability to the BJP. Being Sanjay Gandhi’s wife who had a terrible fallout with the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress, Maneka Gandhi’s entry into the BJP provided for good politics. However, things began going south soon after. Especially during her stint as Minister of Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi got herself into many controversies – most of which involved her foul mouthing just about anybody over the phone.

Read more: Rahul Gandhi wants “Bhai” Varun and “Chachi” Maneka in Indian National Congress

In June 2017, during a Facebook Live session, she commented that men do not commit suicide. Moreover, Maneka Gandhi is a well-known animal-rights activist. As such, she has earned the distinction of berating almost anybody who she thinks has misbehaved with animals. The BJP suffered as collateral for Maneka Gandhi’s antics. 

Her son, Varun Gandhi is no different. He has made it a mission to discredit the BJP from within – only that the top brass has removed him and his mother from the national executive now. Over the past few days, especially after the violence which struck UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri on Sunday in which nine people lost their lives, including farmers and BJP workers, apart from a journalist, Varun Gandhi has jumped on the bandwagon to make some far-fetched calls to have the CBI investigate the clashes, even while the UP police are working hard to nab those responsible for the deaths. 

The three-time BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh also said, “We should deal with them (farmers) with great restraint and patience. In any case, we should treat our farmers with sensitivity and only in Gandhian and democratic way within the ambit of law.”

Moreover, Varun also took to Twitter to lash out at those who glorified Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse. On the birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation, he tweeted, “India has always been a spiritual superpower, but it is the Mahatma who articulated our nation’s spiritual underpinnings through his being & gave us a moral authority that remains our greatest strength even today.Those tweeting “Godse Zindabad” are irresponsibly shaming the nation.”

https://twitter.com/HardikPatel_/status/1444183715014328322?s=20

The BJP has shown the door to Subramanian Swamy, Maneka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi all at once. This shows that while the BJP is willing to accommodate dissent among its ranks up to a reasonable degree, it is not inclined to have its hierarchy infiltrated by self-vested individuals who do not have the best interests of the party at heart.