On March 8, Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swami sat down with Senior Journalist Kaveree Bamzai in front of a fully-packed audience to talk about China. 'The Chinese Model: Can India Catch Up?' was the question, and the answer? Quite simple really. "I don't want to catch up with them I want to overtake them," said Swamy. He was speaking at TNIE's ThinkEdu Conclave 2022. He added, about following the Chinese model, "Before the Ching dynasty, for more than 2,000 years, China was under the cultural influence of India. In China, it is dictatorship and I don't want to follow it."
"We have to really decide to defeat China in a war. If that happens, the whole world will support us. We alone have the potential and with the human spirit of our soldiers, we have to defeat them once. It is part of nation building that we have win a war against them," he said.
The biggest disagreement he had against the present government is that they are not following the polices like freeing temples from the hands of the state and not fighting the Chinese for taking Indian territory. "Is he (Modi) fighting the Chinese? He is just saying that they have not come inside our territory when they have taken up 4,000 sq km," he said.
Swamy and his host took the conversation beyond China, talking about a multitude of topics. When called a "rebel" in his own party, he said, "I am called a rebel in the BJP. When you oppose something, argue it. When you lose, you admit. That is the old Hindu system of shastra. Adi Shankara has perfected it." He added that it is not necessary to always toe the party line and one has to stand up for their ideologies.
Stating that he is a rebel in the Ukraine issue as well, he said that it is an unarmed nation by traditional standards with functioning democracy and freedom of speech. "It has been invaded by a superpower with VETO with heavy tanks. The world should oppose it. There is nothing to equivocate. When the BRICS meeting (which India and Russia are part of) took place in Delhi, they passed a resolution that if anyone uses arms to resolve conflict, it is criminal act. The whole country should rise in protest that we are neutral on the issue," he said.
Swamy also commented on issues like Ram Setu, the takeover of temples by the state and other such issues he has been taking up are moving slowly but succeeding. "In the Ram Mandir issue, I brought in the new idea that it was not a property dispute but a matter of faith. The Preamble of the Constitution and even some sections of the IPC say that where there is faith, the court can't do anything," he said. He complimented the Muslim community who accepted the court order. He also alleged that Modi took credit for Ram Mandir without doing anything about it.
ThinkEdu 2022 is the grand tenth edition of what has consistently been India's biggest education conclave for a decade now. March 8 and 9 will see some stalwarts of India's academic, economic and political ecosystems bring ideas, ideologies and reflections on the past, present and future of India's education system. The sessions will be viewed by a live audience, in addition to the 2,750 registered users on the Conclave's digital space. Over the last nine years, the Conclave has seen some true stalwart thinkers such as former Presidents, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and Dr Pranab Mukherjee, MPs Jairam Ramesh, Smriti Irani, former CM of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah, NITI Aayog's CEO, Amitabh Kant, and spiritual guide, Sadhguru.
