A week ago, as media reported that Prime Minister Narendra Modi met several Union Ministers along with Party President JP Nadda, Rajnath Singh and others, rumours gained ground that there might be a cabinet shuffle on the cards. Amidst the rumours, several politicians, who have otherwise not got the favours they expected from the government, have now started clamouring for a position. First among equals in that respect was BJP politician Subramanian Swamy.
Subramanian Swamy is known to be Janus-faced. A dodgy politician who can be useful to any party while he is making noise and filing cases against the other side, however, no party has truly been able to trust Swamy to give him a position of power. For the past several months, Swamy has been making all the wrong noises. Almost as a threat – ‘Give me what I want or I do to you what I did to Atal Bihari Vajpayee’, it screams.
With the rumours of the cabinet shuffle doing the rounds in the echelons of power, Swamy has yet again displayed his inimitable arrogance to almost blackmail the party for a position of power.
Subramanian Swamy took to Facebook and Twitter, which he now uses as a personal diary to vent his angst, to talk about why he “deserves” to be made a minister, despite being one of the most unreliable politicians for any political party.
Swamy took to Facebook to say that he has been a Cabinet Minister twice in his life and both times, he did not ask to be made one. He then went on to say that Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, should display “gratitude” for all that Swamy has done for him between 2005 and 2014 and make him a Minister. He just casually reiterated that this should be done without him asking the PM for it, while publicly whining about it.
This was, of course, not the only post. After all, it is Subramanian Swamy that we are talking about. He never just stops as displaying his pettiness once.
In a grammatically incorrect post, Swamy said,
Only a couple of hours ago, Swamy said that he “does not need to be FM”, this, only a few hours after publicly hankering for a position, while saying that he should be given the cabinet position without asking for it.
While saying that he does not need to be the Finance Minister, Swamy made sure, however, to emphasise tacitly that he only wanted a position in the government because he wanted to rescue India, not because he has always harboured political ambitions. He said he wanted to become the Finance Minister because Arun Jaitley, the late finance minister left the economy in a mess. Much like his blind followers, Swamy declared, rather humbly, that he was the only person who could rescue us.
After displaying the largesse of his heart, Swamy then goes on to say that he does not want the position because the Prime Minister wants all his Ministers to be submissive, something he cannot be.
Interestingly, in just these two posts, Swamy seems to display adequately why the Prime Minister perhaps does not trust him enough to handle the finance of a country with 1.3 billion people. Someone who cannot maintain a logical flow in Facebook posts is hardly equipped to handle the finance of the country, one would conclude.
First, Swamy seems to say that he should be made a Cabinet Minister because PM Modi should display “gratitude” (We are not sure for what. Perhaps Swamy thinks he hypnotised millions to vote for him by the sheer power of his thoughts). Then, he says he does not want to be the Finance Minister, followed by why he NEEDS to be the Finance Minister (for the sake of the country, of course). But then, he immediately, in the same post, says that he does not want to be the Minister because that would mean being subservient to PM Modi.
Now, if his flow of logic is to be trusted, it means that Swamy rather be a free agent (Not that being a free agent has got him anywhere) than work for the benefit of the country (since he says only he can save the economy now).
Even if we judge him only based on his own posts and not his past shenanigans, Swamy does not exactly cover himself in glory, given that he displays ego the size of Africa, pettiness that can only be found in the seventh circle of hell and incoherence that is idiosyncratic to the man he supposedly wants to bring down – Rahul Gandhi.
In fact, to pad up his hankering for a post, Swamy retweeted posts that essentially said that he was Krishna and his word, was like the teachings of Bhagawat Geeta (Perhaps terming it the ‘Gospel Truth’ would be more appropriate).
Jonathan Swift once said, “‘Tis an old maxim in the schools that flattery is the food of fools. Yet now and then your men of wit, will condescend to take a bit” and perhaps, Swamy embodies the maxim to the letter.
Hubris and threats of insubordination certainly cannot be the bedrocks of why someone is giving a position to govern an aspect of the country. One can only hope, that the Government of India does not indulge his vanity and foist another megalomaniac on us ‘unwashed masses’ – we already voted one out in 2014.
