At this point, a background of the BJP-Swamy fluctuating relationship is called for. As far as I know from the Sangh Parivar, Swamy’s name was mooted as a Union minister in the Morarji Desai government, to which Vajpayee had protested. In 1980 the RSS told Swamy that Vajpayee was about to finish him politically and the Sangh would not be able to protect him, given the sheer clout of the political biggie.

Swamy’s life in the Jana Sangh had also become difficult because Indira Gandhi, then back to power, was doing everything at her command to take him out of the party. She knew Swamy’s family, which had strong links with the Congress. Swamy’s grand-uncle was S Satyamurti, after whom the office of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee is named. Indira Gandhi knew Swamy had close relations with C Rajagopalachari while K Kamaraj used to stay in Swamy’s ancestral place off and on. Swamy, though, was persuaded by his mother, a believer in Hindutva, to switch to the Sangh.

When Swamy had gone underground during the Emergency, Vajpayee was against the move. He used to write letters to Swamy, asking him to surrender to the police, whereas it was the Sangh’s decision that a large chunk of its force must carry on with the campaign against Indira Gandhi’s autocracy while staying incognito. In 1980 after the Janata Party split while Swamy had emerged as a star of the fight against Emergency three years ago, the RSS told him that the political swayamsevaks, many of them now MPs or in the electoral race otherwise, were going to form another party, the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Swamy, an anti-socialist to the core who had lost his job at the IIT and Delhi University because he had refused to swear by socialism — to make a statement against communists — had a problem joining the BJP at that point because the party had stated its ideology as Gandhian Socialism.

The media of that era read it as a ‘hardliner’ Swamy being kept outside while a ‘moderate’ Vajpayee was in. They also said the Sangh had planned to keep Swamy outside to destroy the Janata Party; we know the party existed as Swamy’s one-man show until he joined the BJP before the 2014 election, while they were socialists, on whom there is no RSS influence, who had abandoned it much before. So, it is not just now when the BJP’s media management is in a shambles that journalists speculate what must be brewing in the ruling party; ill-informed media speculation has happened before.

The RSS had braced for the situation; it just asked Swamy not to turn so hostile to the BJP that it would become difficult for him to return to the Parivar. Swamy walked that tightrope till 2005 when Vajpayee was reported to have gone into a vegetative state. At that juncture, (then RSS chief) K Sudershan asked Ram Madhav to fix an appointment with Swamy, where the then Sarsanghchalak urged him to start building bridges with the party again. In due course, Swamy, Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti returned to the party fold — again due to the mediation by the Sangh leadership. The RSS assured Swamy (as it did to others who returned) that his stance against Vajpayee wouldn’t be raked up in the public.

Therefore, the Sangh is with Swamy while Narendra Modi is not known to have a soft corner for the Congress’s Dynasty, which would make Swamy uncomfortable in the present ruling party.

The interview resumes.